I have been devouring this blog (Escape America Now / Advisory Services for Ex-Pats to Chile) over the last few days – it’s written by a 14 year expat that lives in Chile. He has SO much wonderful information on his blog that I can’t seem to stop reading it! The added benefit of it is that his fiscal views correspond to ours completely (though his social views COMPLETELY differ from mine – probably because I am an educated American woman and have a mind of my own & he thinks that equals radical feminism!). Anyway, his blog is just chock full of lots of honest information and I am really enjoying it – I am reading it backwards in time, but am reading every single article! There are so many articles that I am enjoying that I can’t link to them all, but the one I just read is 5 benefits of expatriation. More great reasons to leave! This one and this one are scary – but true. More pros and cons (mostly pros though!) of moving to Chile.
He is also very honest about some of the shortfalls of Chile, too, i.e. they seemingly lie a lot (can I live somewhere where I don’t know how to trust anyone?) and there are a lot of pickpockets (but very little major crime). I also read a book called Culture Shock that explains their customs – there are some definite differences that we would need to get used to! I would really miss my couponing…
This has been the major topic of conversation in our house the last week. Could we swing it? I mean, I am convinced that I WANT to go, but could we ACTUALLY do it? We would need jobs and we both are dead set against living in Santiago (I think about 5 million people? neither of us wants to live in a big city) but that is where the jobs are. La Serena is about 200,000 people, though, so if we could start a restaurant and teach english there, I think we could do it.
I’m just itching to do something new, shake up my life a bit. Mike is ready to go now. I know we need to visit 1st – if we don’t feel comfortable there on a vacation, there is no way we can actually uproot our life to move there. Mike’s Aunt Janet & Uncle Rich visited on Sunday & Aunt Janet told us to just do it – live without regrets. If only our money matched up with our dreams…
We have looked into flights (it’s over a thousand less to fly out of tijuana for instance) and boats (freighters so we could take the dogs) and shipping containers for some of our stuff (though I really would TRY not to take much!). I read a guy’s blog that drove from Maine all the way down, too! No way could I do that – I hate being in the car any more than a couple hours! I think the sooner we decide, the better though. If we wait too long, Olivia will be entrenched in school, activities, and with friends. Plus, we are just so comfortable here…but doesn’t everyone, at one time or another, just want to start over? But it’s so scary…decisions, decisions.
Anyway, bottom line, we need to visit. Then we can decide where all of this talking and dreaming is going! I hope it lives up to our (high) expectations!
Chile is an amazing country with wonderful people and beautiful landscapes. I agree that you should try to get out of Santiago — as life will be a little slower pace. But you’ll need to balance that with the need for a job.
Best of luck as you continue your research and get to know Chile.