Awesome thread, really enjoying it so far. This is almost exactly what I want to do next summer, and I feel I would face a lot of the same struggles you are facing.

How did you find a place to live, and your roommates?
How long in advance did you start searching for a place before you moved?
Did you set up your accounts when you got there? How easy was the process?

Keep up the grind, and good luck!

Cool thread, Jen. Keep up with the writings and the hard work!

You are very fearless and cute, moving to another country playing 25 NL.
I'm in and wish you good luck!!

Yo. Thought your questions were great, but I couldn't provide an adequate response without posting a bunch of links that would get flagged by the administrators. So, I made a post just for you on my blog which you can find through my profile. Let me know if you need more details and where you decide to go! The post will be live tomorrow morning. Thanks for reading!

Happy New Year 2014!

Video Holiday Card

Hope you crush 2014, good luck!

Lol so awesome. Gl op

Sent from my Nexus 5 using 2+2 Forums

Enjoy following you. Good luck!

I’m back to grinding in the New Year. I’ve got a different sort of plan laid out for the month. Rather than going on a huge volume schedule I decided to cut my tables down even further and just move up. After a very long downswing at 25NL, I recovered and became slightly profitable. Key word slightly. Regardless, with all those hands under my belt, I feel that I’ve improved significantly as a player, and can justify popping up to 50NL. Also, I did the math and found that I’m saving roughly 3 bb/100 in rake playing 50NL instead of 25NL. Day 1 went well, so I’m cautiously opting to stick with this plan.

The water has been off in my house for almost two full weeks. It’s awful. Things here are always “getting fixed tomorrow” and today never happens to be tomorrow. So I’ve begun lugging around 10L jugs of water from the poolside hose up to my condo every day. I haul one up, do the dishes, go back down, get more water, haul a new jug up for laundry, and repeat for floors, the toilet etc. etc. I’m exhausted.

Did I mention my new found motivation for working out? Yea, the gym has a shower. I feel too guilty just going down there to use the shower though, so I make myself workout first, and my reward is the shower. To me, pumping my legs on a cycle, or lifting weights, or doing crunches is the most repetitive boring thing in the world. To cope with my boredom, I began to bring down my Spanish tapes to practice out loud while I did my workout. I was greatly displeased when a sixteen year old boy walked in as I was mid-sentence asking where the cinema was located. The stop button for the recording was on the other side of the room, so he got a good laugh in while I fumbled to turn it off.

Day 16. Still no water. I am now pleading with my real estate agent to help get someone to come fix it. I've sent water bills, collected names, attempted to send messages using an online free translator. sigh.

I found a great site to use for hunting new places to live here in Mexico on Vivanuncios.com.mx so I'm actively looking further South. I'm going to attempt to spend a total of $600 a month wherever I live; including rent, utilities, food, water, and transportation costs. I suspect about 40% of that to go to rent, $80 for utilities, $100 for food, and the rest for shenanigans. Wherever I go, I'm going to make sure the water turns on.

I've been participating actively on PokerStars January Daily Challenges and am attempting to acquire as much free money possible on all sites I can. I made the mistake of putting funds on William Hill though, and I will never do that again. It's been five days since my last withdrawal request, three support chats, submission of notarized documentation, and I still don't have my money.

I've been formulating a strategy for the month to best utilize my time. While I love Zoom, I've found it very difficult to play the game on Stars against such a large player pool. I end up paying off unknown nits too often and don't feel I'm playing my best game. I've really been enjoying playing on Full Tilt Rush later in the evening with a smaller player pool. I feel guilty saying that, because I never thought I'd play on Full Tilt again, but it's a great game.

I've been working on a detailed list of things I want to see in Mexico. I believe my next destination will be out of a rented room in a big city. I don't want to be committed to any one place for very long, and I'd like to see some of Mexico's great architecture and true culture.

Looking forward to mobile micro travels I'm sorting through my remaining articles of clothing to lighten my load further. I may have to leave behind the external monitor as well. Sacrifices must be made.

Cool thread. so cool, at first, I was waiting for the level to show up!

I'm sure someone in Rosarito will be able to help take the monitor off your hands if necessary.

I admire your adventurous spirit and determination. Impressive thread, life is much more rewarding when you live it as an adventure on your on terms, GL.

updates??

Thank you!!

It would appear I've been a bit lazy about updating this thread, my apologies! I can be a bit of a free spirited person which sometimes results in a lot of half finished projects. I will pledge to be better in the future and update at least once a week... maybe more!

I'm on my last week in Rosarito. I booked a ticket to Guadalajara a few days ago on Volaris airlines and will be traveling there solo the 27th. My ticket for the 5 hour flight was only $70 out of Tijuana. I haven't picked out a room yet, and will likely stay in a hostel for a night or two while I shop around. My plan is to rent off vivanuncios classified ads and pick a room from there with a Spanish speaking family. I imagine communication will be super difficult, but maybe in that sink or swim environment, I may become conversational.

Poker has been going fabulous. I ended up backtracking on the plan I posted a couple weeks ago (sorry I'm sporadic), playing 25nl for an extra week on non-zoom tables, crushing it, and am now 6 tabling 50nl. I don't really have a great explanation for what happened to me these past two weeks. I talked poker with some of my good friends back home (who are much better players than I), and found some big leaks in my game that I adjusted. One of my leaks was that I was playing too many hands in my small blind and UTG; sorry won't say more. After those talks, everything changed and I looked at the game different. It took a really long time, but it looks like all my hard work is finally paying off.

I have some more updates, but am off to LA for the day to pick up a suitcase; decided to keep the monitor. More soon!

The electricity got shut off so I'm cascading on my laptop in downtown Rosarito at a coffee shop. I'm slightly uncomfortable with the onlookers and little kids are constantly coming up to me offering chicle and dulces. I am wearing my extra large headphones and avoiding the eyes of the mariachi men awaiting a new patron to serenade. There's something that feels off about this picture. Locals are scrounging by and on constant lookout for any dollar or two they can get from the sale of small goods or some means of entertainment. Paralleling this picture, I sit playing on a laptop with a few hundred dollars flying through the center of an electronic game world. I feel privileged but in a dirty, undeserving way.

I order my second drink to appease the shop owner, a black tea for the outdoor patio. My roommate is on watch with my laptop grinding a few tables and keeping the cold away. Night is falling. I don't feel comfortable anymore but I have to finish this SKO tournament that never seems to end. Rosarito's had a spike of murders these past couple weeks. Cartel related I presume, but can't be sure. I don't want to be caught out after dark. I end up donking the tournament post black tea. Not my proudest poker moment but in the middle of shivers and paranoia I did it hastily.

Poker was good today. Up five buy-ins and feeling confident. At home I sit by candle light writing out my hands and analyzing my play on hm2 and equilab. I'm a sucker for office supplies and mark my work with red, blue and 8 other colors of highlighters I keep close at hand. Sometimes I think I'm wasting my time with all the colored boxes running down my page, but I can't resist. It gives me almost as much satisfaction as playing with a 4 colored deck. My inner nerd likes what it likes.

No water and now no electricity?? what happened?

What stake you playing now? Still trying to move up? Gl with your continued grind.

stay safe op

Touchdown Guadalajara. It's been two days and what an adventure. I had originally emailed and planned to stay with a Senora Lopez and her family when I arrived, but somehow I could not convey where I wanted to go to the cab driver and ended up in Hostal de Maria, right in the center of the downtown historic center. Similar to my experiences with the locals in Rosarito, everyone is wonderful here. Granted, very little English is spoken, but I'm really enjoying the challenge.

My room isn't the most exciting thing in the world. The first night here, I got eaten alive by mosquitoes. Apparently, I'm very tasty. I tossed and turned until the sun came up then grudgingly got out of bed to check out the city. Despite my lack of sleep, I had a great time. The front desk guy, Pedro, was super helpful and gave me a map of the downtown area with recommendations of where to go. Guadalajara is like nothing I've ever seen; the architecture and culture here is so pure and alive. People were frequently entering the churches at all hours for prayer, walking into museums to pass lunch breaks, and sitting on park benches just to enjoy the day.

At some point, I realized I'd have to do something about my living situation and needed to grind, write, and get my month planned out. I came back to check out rooms for rent online and to my pleasure, Pedro had a desk set up for me with outlets for all electronics. Being treated so well, I just couldn't imagine staying anywhere else, so I booked the room for the rest of my stay. $2300 pesos.

I've been putting in a lot of hours away from the table, so my volume hasn't been something to brag about, but I made a big leap in improvement this past month and I believe the results will be great in the future. Grinding 50nl for the next month, and shooting for a EV bb/100 of 5.

I'm exploring donk betting. I always assumed it was bad, but I'm not completely convinced. I like toying around with new ideas and trying to learn to exploit the regulars better. I'm going to have to poke around in the forums to see if anyone else is discussing this.

The church bells are ringing outside and it's getting late, but I have another four hours to grind. I recommitted myself to volume. It's about the money but it isn't. I realize improvement is key and if I'm not thinking about enough hands, then I'm probably not improving. I bought CReV and am playing around with trees of varying lengths. I try two players, then I ad three, I look at equities and play with various turn cards. I rather enjoy it in a nerdy, micromanaging kind of way. I 'm hoping to find that extra BB somewhere in one of those trees.

Parque de Azul was on my hit list today. I wanted to stop by the street market and grab a shirt, but I'm a little tight on pesos so I instead, I strolled through the center toward the butterfly cage and aviaries. A duck and I had an imaginary conversation and I thought of something new to try in poker. If it works I'll have to bring him a treat.

What a stupid duck.

lol!

love the thread and the writing, keep it rolling

mobile Phablet upload