Larry was\u00a0a global nomad. Then he met Angela, a local girl in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. They got married, had a couple of kids, and put down deep roots in that community.<\/p>\n
A decade later, Larry started bringing\u00a0up the idea of living overseas for a year. He missed\u00a0traveling abroad, and pointed out\u00a0that in places with a lower cost of living it’s cheaper to go for a year and live like a local\u00a0than to visit for two\u00a0weeks like a tourist.<\/span><\/p>\n Most of Larry’s job could be done anywhere he has Internet. That meant he could keep his US dollar income while theoretically living on much less. He figured that in the right setting, they might be able to spend a lot on travel and touring the region, and still\u00a0have some savings left over.<\/span><\/p>\n His biggest motivation, however, was his\u00a0children. He\u00a0really wanted them to have the benefit of becoming “third culture kids<\/a>“\u2014people who lived for a year or more in another country before the age of 18. According to research, some of these benefits include:<\/span><\/p>\n Larry\u00a0lived in East\u00a0Asia\u00a0for six years as a teenager, when his parents were Seventh-day Adventist missionaries.<\/span><\/p>\n “For me personally,” said Larry, “I found that living in a foreign culture benefited me spiritually. Coming home, I was better able to understand the difference between religious rules driven by culture (such as wearing a suit and tie to church, or those special veggie meat dishes at Adventist potlucks) and rules at the core of humanity, common to all (like the 10 Commandments). When you see the authentic expression of Godly praise using rhythmic instruments in places like Africa and Southeast Asia\u2014behavior which would get a white kid thrown out of some Adventist churches in the U.S.\u2014you realize how big our God is, and how wide are His arms to encompass such diversity.”<\/span><\/p>\n Larry\u00a0wanted his children to understand these cultural nuances\u00a0at a deep level, which can be magnified by living overseas as a child.\u00a0<\/span>(For more on Third Culture Kids, see <\/span>http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Third_culture_kid<\/a>.<\/span>)<\/span><\/p>\n One day in April\u00a02014, in a moment of weakness, Angela said that she would consider moving the family abroad for a year. So\u00a0they started planning their\u00a0adventure together.<\/p>\n To a large extent, the goal of giving their\u00a0children the Third Culture Kid experience could\u00a0be accomplished by living pretty much anywhere outside the U.S. So they\u00a0started exploring ideas:<\/span><\/p>\n The trouble with moving to Asia is the time difference. To match his\u00a0office’s work hours, Larry\u00a0would need to work midnight to 9:00 a.m. every day. He\u00a0was so committed to going overseas that he\u00a0was willing to do that for a year.<\/span><\/p>\n Fortunately, Angela thought otherwise. One day, after talking about Taiwan for about a week, Larry\u00a0casually mentioned that she could learn a little Mandarin to shop at local markets. “I’m not learning Mandarin,” she said. “If I have to speak another language, I’d rather speak Spanish.”<\/span><\/p>\n And that was that. They started looking southward.<\/p>\n Larry and Angela considered a lot of places in Latin America, but eventually met Paul Opp, founder of the People of Peru Project<\/a> in Iquitos, Peru. After talking with him, they\u00a0decided to move there\u00a0to help out with their girls home in the Amazon Basin of Peru.\u00a0In November 2015, Larry and Angela went on a scouting trip to Iquitos to prepare for their move, but soon discovered this wasn’t going to be a good fit<\/a> for their\u00a0family.<\/p>\n After coming home, they decided to push back their departure 5 months and move to Mexico instead. They then spent the next 3 months considering a number of places, such as Guanajuato, San Miguel, and Sayulita. It was a long process of doing online research and talking through their priorities. In the end, they chose Ajijic <\/a>for their year of adventure in Mexico.<\/p>\n Larry was\u00a0a global nomad. Then he met Angela, a local girl in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. They got married, had a couple of kids, and put down deep roots in that community. A decade later, Larry started bringing\u00a0up the idea of living overseas for a year. He missed\u00a0traveling abroad, and pointed out\u00a0that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anadventuretogether.ctsmg.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/22"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anadventuretogether.ctsmg.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anadventuretogether.ctsmg.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anadventuretogether.ctsmg.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anadventuretogether.ctsmg.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/anadventuretogether.ctsmg.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/22\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95,"href":"https:\/\/anadventuretogether.ctsmg.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/22\/revisions\/95"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anadventuretogether.ctsmg.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Third Culture Kids<\/h2>\n
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Exploring Ideas<\/h2>\n
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Latin America<\/h2>\n
About Ajijic…<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"