Saturday, June 07, 2014

La Vida Recientemente

I’m not sure I chose this life or it chose me yet. I do know that life “back home” did not fit with my philosophy of how I wanted to live.
-- Expat in Mexico


1) Leaving the US -- When I got back to the US from Latin America a few weeks ago, I was thinking about what to do next. I knew I wanted to keep working in the environmental field, but I also wanted to live overseas. Those two together are not easy especially without a Masters degree. So I decided that if I couldn't work in the environmental field overseas, I'll teach English. That'll be my backup plan, my Plan B. I can always volunteer on the side at an environmental organization while teaching English. So after I took care of things like selling my car and meeting with some friends/family in California, I left the US and headed to Mexico. I was going to be an expat. Indefinitely. This should be interesting.

2) Latin America, Take 2 -- the last time I was in Latin America, all I did was sightsee my last 2 weeks. It wasn't always fun though. Sometimes I felt like the guy in the song Man in a Suitcase by the Police. I sometimes felt like I needed a break from traveling, weird as that sounds. Those two weeks were hectic and kind of burned me out -- heading up north from southern Guatemala all the way to Mexico. Buses, hostels, tourists, sight seeing, repeat. So next time I do something like that again, I'll try to stay more than 2 nights so it wouldn't be as stressful. Unless the place is really awful.

3) Hostels in the US -- I have to say that hostels in the US are very different from hostels in Latin America. I stayed at a couple of hostels in Berkeley, LA and San Francisco, where there were people living there indefinitely. That was weird. In Latin America, everyone in the hostels were travelers, not locals.

4) Things I've Lost While Traveling -- my Cal baseball cap I've had for ages, lost somewhere in Mexico on my way to Bacalar.

5) New Hobby: