Latest Expat Stories

We moved to Mexico from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, in November of 2011.  I had visited Mexico many times before, and spoke some Spanish prior to the move.  My wife is Mexican born, but had lived in Canada many years.  We made the move with our 2 young daughters (2 and newborn), and our 5 year old dog.  We were going because of my wife's work (she had been offered a research position at the state of Veracruz' leading university. 

I expected some culture shock,...

Excerpts of an interview with Mark Leonard, June 29, 2016
 
Chuck: Thank you for joining us, Mark.  Your posts have always been so genuine and colorful.  Please tell our readers how you happened to come to Belize.
 
Mark: It’s all because of the Rotary Club.
 
I was living in Northern California when a friend in my Rotary Club went to Belize on a contract and came back saying that Belize is looking for economic development assistance, so I went down...

One of the objectives of our trip is to experience firsthand what it would be like to live in different environments abroad, irrespective of what we thought we knew beforehand.  We dubbed it the “Try Everything So You Really Know What You’re Talking About and What You Like Tour”, or for short, “You Don’t Know Until You Go”.  Part of that experience was to get a feel for the locals.  Herewith, our view of Mexicans and Mexican food.

 

The...

Within the creation of any great work of art, you can usually see certain elements of that great work in several previous works, but none of those previous works have all the elements at one time.  It is the same with great beaches.  You probably have your own list of the elements that make up a great beach.  Here’s the list for my wife, Jet Metier:

We have just recently retired and plan to spend winters in our condo in La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, Nayarit. We bought the condo 3 years ago and have spent school holidays (I am a retired school teacher) setting up our condo and exploring our village and neighbourhood a little. We barely scratched the surface but look forward to learning more about the area in our 6-month trip this year!
 
What we have discovered, we love. The locals are so generous and accepting of us "gringos'...

 

This is not a story about how Mexico celebrates its Día de los Muertos ritual, or how Americans come here to retire... then forget to die.  The other day I came across the black-and-white details of how and where US citizens meet their maker in foreign lands. You see, the US State Department is required by law to report non-natural deaths by US citizens in foreign countries.

Anyone who’s explored beyond the comforts of Western Europe knows...

He nailed it- though one need not be an economist or financial 'expert' to see the blindingly obvious. 

 

Free market principles are unfeasible in practice. Adam Smith in the 1770's made the [then] reasonable assumption that resources were inexhaustible but with the Industrial revolution and a world of 7 billion consumers, we realised this is no longer true. So the free market is a myth and increasingly outside interference has become unavoidable. The...

As you progress south on Highway 1 in Baja, you know you’re starting to enter La Paz because, just like in any other part of the world I’ve visited, as you enter a more densely populated area, the road adds lanes on your side, in this case, from one, to two, and then, eventually to three.

 

The first major thing you see when you arrive driving south on Highway 1 into La Paz is… Wal-Mart.  So we had driven 842 miles into Baja from Mexicali to La Paz,...

Are you still entitled to consider yourself an American if you choose to live abroad?

 

As Vice President of Business Development for Best Places in the World to Retire, I have been told by many people living abroad that they have been told (let’s say, by their sister-in-law, Betty) that, because of their decision to live abroad, they were no longer “American”.  A month and a half ago, my wife and I crossed over the US – Mexico border into Mexico and...