Standing in your closet and trying to decide what to bring with you on a long or even indefinite trip around the world can be overwhelming. This image is AI generated How many options do I need? Will it be really cold or hot where I'm going? What if I want to spend time in a totally different climate? How much can I squeeze in under the weight limit? Should I pay to ship it all? All of these questions and more wracked my brain as I started the packing process for our Digital

A Bittersweet Farewell to Washington State We spent a lovely summer in Washington State, where I fulfilled the end of my contract managing a women's leadership institute for work. After nine years of working on this program every summer, it was bittersweet to hand it over to a new team. I will be forever grateful for the opportunity to be a part of so many young women's leadership journeys and am so happy to remain in touch with many of them to this day. This image is AI-gene

If you've been keeping up with my blog, you'll know that the Mediterranean was our first choice destination to move to, due to the weather, food, scenery, and people. But we chose Mexico in order to make the move easier on our oldest cat, Sitah. Sadly, she developed cancer just after we arrived in Mexico. She passed away a few months later in December, just two months shy of her 18th birthday. We were heartbroken to say goodbye, but grateful that she got to enjoy her final da

This post is aimed at foreigners planning a short- or long-term stay in Oaxaca de Juarez. We have generated a list of ten practical tips you may find helpful in daily life. We do not have experience with the Temporary Residency permits, because we utilized the 6-month U.S. citizen tourist visa, so we can't give advice on that. First, before traveling or moving to any new country or community, you should be asking yourself: Why do I want to do this, and how will my presence as

Just before bedtime on a Friday night, Sitah started displaying strange behaviors, visiting the litter box every few minutes and constantly licking her rear end. We knew right away from past experience that something was wrong. I didn't want to wait until morning to seek treatment because I knew her condition would only worsen in that time. Having only lived in Mexico for one week, we needed to find an emergency vet ASAP. Thank goodness for Whatsapp and Google Translate, whic

Our top three criteria for choosing a country to move to were: Safety Warm Climate Low Cost of Living Safety for obvious reasons; Warm Climate because I'm like a lizard- I'm always cold and feel the need to sun myself to warm up; and finally a Low Cost of Living since we didn't know what type of jobs we would get and how much they would pay. The point of moving abroad for us is to live a simpler and less stressful lifestyle, which means not having to work endless hours to mak

Traveling with pets is a big source of anxiety for many pet companions, and we are no different. Our cats Sitah and Duke are 17 and 14 years old now. It's been eleven years since we have traveled any significant distance with Sitah or Duke. In the past year, Sitah has lost a lot of weight, and Duke now has a heart murmur. So we were very concerned about their ability to manage a long journey. Starting about five months before departure we consulted with our veterinarian about

On a sunny but cool fall morning in October, Trevor's mom and stepdad drove us to the Seattle-Tacoma airport with our cats and luggage in tow. It had been a lot of work to prepare our house for sale, plan the move, and sell all of our belongings. So it felt really good to finally walk out the door for the last time and drive away towards a new chapter in life. Overall, we were blessed with a smooth trip from Seattle to Oaxaca, with a scheduled overnight layover in Dallas. The

When we started telling people we planned to quit our jobs, sell our house, find remote jobs, and move abroad, they had questions...When did you decide to do this? How will you make a living? What will you do with all your stuff? Will you ever move back home? The truth is I've had wanderlust since childhood. When I was five years old my father started leading trips as a chaperone for People-to-People International. Soon after, my mother joined him as a co-chaperone. Every sum