‘Finding friends in Ireland is not very hard because they’re not closed off’

Claudia Tlatehui moved to Dublin about a week after she married her Irish husband, Karl Barry, in Mexico in May 2019.

The pair met while both studying architecture abroad in Budapest and were in a long-distance relationship until Tlatehui made the move.

Following two years of the couple travelling back and forth between Dublin and Mexico, her now-husband proposed.

“After three years [together] we got married, so that’s when I moved here in 2019, and I moved here because it was easier for me, because I’m an architect and I speak English and he didn’t speak Spanish back then,” Tlatehui says.

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Their wedding was a “big celebration,” with around 40 Irish friends and family travelling over for the event in Mexico.

“I think it was great, because Irish people and Mexican people are really similar, they’re not that different so it was great to see my friends getting to know the Irish friends, and we tried to put Mexican traditional dance and food on as well so that they got to try that and experience it during the wedding,” Tlatehui says.

She has worked for an architecture firm since moving to Dublin and is currently completing her professional diploma in architecture.

“It was a bit tough in the beginning I think because it’s different weather so we have to design and have to build accordingly to different requirements, regulations as well, they’re different. Obviously, both countries have their own regulations, but here, there’s a lot of rain, there’s a lot of cold, winds,” she says.

“I kind of had to go back and get used to that and go back and start from zero as an architect, like ‘okay, I have to forget a little bit of what I already know and start again with this new Irish system’, and I knew the technical language in Spanish, so in English obviously it was hard to remember, like a technical word for a part of the roof or something.”

Tlatehui says her brain tricked her into thinking she would be returning to Mexico a while after moving to Ireland, having spent a month here and there consistently in Dublin for years previous.

“In my head, when you move, it’s kind of hard to realise that even though things are happening, even though you moved, even though you know that you’re going to live in a different country, I think your brain still doesn’t get it 100 per cent, it’s still thinking, ‘okay, maybe I’m going back to my normal routine’.”

It took a few months for her to start thinking of Dublin as “home”, she adds.

“When I realised that I view Ireland as home was, I think it was the first or second year, that I came back from holidays and arrived here in Ireland, opened the house and was like ‘ahh, I’m home’.

“Right now I feel like even, we were in Mexico last month actually, and I told Karl, ‘I kind of want to go home now’, so this time, every time I go back home now, we come to Dublin because we live here in Ringsend, I always get that feeling [of being home],” Tlatehui says.

The architect was very close with her family in Mexico, having lived in her family home up until she moved to Ireland, she says, which was another struggle with the move as her mother and sister were no longer there 24/7.

“But luckily enough, and thank God, my parents-in-law are great, I have a great relationship with them and my mother-in-law, she’s my mum as well, so when I moved here we were doing everything together. She has three boys and no girls, and she was so happy,” Tlatehui laughs.

The pair are extremely close, doing facials together and gardening tomatoes, green tomatoes, courgettes and beetroot together, with Tlatehui’s in-laws only living 20 minute’s drive away in Glenegeary.

“Do you know the way when you get married and the Dad says, ‘okay, this is my daughter I give to you to take care of her’? They literally took that as a literal thing and that’s great because they’ve been really, really welcoming to me, and I love spending time with them as well, and my husband I think is the same,” she says.

“I think we’re very family [oriented] people from like the Irish family, and me and my family, even when my family come here and visit, it’s great to have both families together and enjoy time and just do things.”

Like many who moved to Ireland in 2019, the pandemic hindered Tlatehui’s ability to make friends. However, she has since overcome this, using work, a local tennis club, Facebook groups and her husband’s friends’ partners as friend-making mechanisms.

The lifelong connection between schoolfriends is another thing Tlatehui feels is similar between Ireland and Mexico.

“In Mexico, you grew up with a group of friends from school, and even if you go to a different college or whatever, you always have that group. I have my friends since we were kids, we’re very attached and we do things. Here [it’s the same] with meeting Karl’s friends.

“I think finding friends in Ireland, it’s not very hard, because they are really nice people, they’re really friendly people and they’re not closed [off] to having more friends as well, so that’s a great thing, and it’s kind of similar to what I was saying that the Mexican and Irish are very similar,” she says.

“This probably sounds very architect, but you’re more aware about the space you are living in when you move somewhere [as opposed to visiting somewhere],” Tlatehui explains.

“Once you’re here, you kind of see every single detail, or especially me, sometimes I see some buildings, I’m like ‘oh it’s amazing what detail it has,’ so I think experiencing the whole city for me has been more than what I expected Ireland was.”

Tlatehui wants Dublin to be her forever home with her husband, as she has never had any bad experiences except for “the process to get all your documents and do visas and stuff,” which she says is a bit too complicated.

We would like to hear from people who have moved to Ireland in the past 10 years. To get involved, email newtotheparish@irishtimes.com or tweet @newtotheparish