“Will You Tell Us About What’s Not So Good?”

This week a good friend asked me a very good question, ” Will you be honest and write about things you don’t like when your living in Panama?”. My answer was,”Yes!”. I don’t expect to like ‘everything’ about living in another country. As a matter of fact I expect there will be many things I miss about living in the states and many things I don’t like about living in Panama. Truth be told, there are also many things I don’t like about living in the states. That being said, I’m not leaving the states to run away from anything in particular , that to me, would be foolish. I think no matter where you live there are aspects of life that are less than perfect. Who ever said life was meant to be perfect anyways? I don’t know, but I for one, am not in search of paradise.

“What?”, you may ask, are you in search of? Do I ‘really’ have to be in search of anything? Haven’t you ever just wanted a change? Maybe for the vast majority of people a change might not mean the same kind of major life change that we are embarking upon. Possibly a new job, a different hair color (of course hair comes to my mind😁),a new car a new hobby or maybe a new couch would be a satisfying change for most folks. Those changes can quite possibly provide ample satisfaction, for sure. I can’t say exactly why both Scott and I feel so strongly about our unstoppable desire to embrace such a drastic life change. Except that we both feel deeply drawn to and find great satisfaction in new experiences and in learning about new cultures. Also we are at a place in our lives where we both crave a major change of our lifestyle .

We don’t have unrealistic expectations of everything in Panama going smoothly for us. As we are preparing for our move we have been keeping up on a few forums in Panama . There are three forums we read on a regular basis one is ‘Gringos in David’ and ‘Americans in Panama’ , also ‘Panama Laws For Expats’. These forums provide a good sense of what other expats in Panama have to say in regards to their life there. We observe some folks who seem a bit nutty and others who , to us, have sound advice to share . One opinion we often read from established expats who have lived in Panama for many years is ,”If your looking for heaven on earth, DON’T COME TO Panama!”. It’s not the same as the states and if your expecting life to be anything like what you are accustomed to in the U.S. you really should not be moving to central America, or moving out of the U.S. at all! There are endless aspects of living in a different country that are very different and often frustrating to newbies who decide to uproot themselves and dive into expat life. While Scott and I feel like we’ve done many years of in depth research about this move, and we think we have a fairly good idea of what we’re getting ourselves into, we also realize that the reality of living in another country may not be anything like we imagine. It’s not unlike our experience of deciding to design and build, our own house without hiring any contractors. We spent a lot of time researching, reading asking questions, and planning but in the end there were many unexpected things that we faced in the process . In spite of that we would do it again, without hesitation.

The clock is ticking and time is passing so fast! It won’t be long before I’ll be writing about my new life and you’ll be reading about all those unexpected aspects of my expat life. While I’m expecting to have a long period of adjustment to a new and very different life, I look forward to the good the bad and the ugly. And ,Yes, I’ll share it all!

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