With a country of 3.5 million and at least half of that population living in the country’s capital, it’s no wonder Panama City is so horny…the honking type of horny that is. The traffic might not follow you out of the city, but the horns will. Beeping the horn when behind the wheel is a way of life here and almost like a method of carrying on a conversation with whoever’s willing to listen, the girl walking down the street, other cabbies, or even the hot dog vendor at the corner.

Coming from Texas, we don’t honk our horns unless we’re telling you to get out of the way or worse. Moving to Panama and driving anywhere, through tiny towns or the big city, we would get honked at. For a long time our blood pressure would go through the roof. The hubs and I would look like screaming teapots left unattended on a stove if someone honked their horn behind us. We couldn’t figure out for the life of us what we were doing wrong. Honestly, how can someone honk their horn at you while sitting at a stoplight? It was difficult for us to enjoy exploring the country when we felt berated by the locals behind the wheels of their own cars.   more ...

There can be a lot of pressure when moving to a foreign language speaking country when only your better half knows the lingo. It puts stress on one side to constantly translate and the other racing to learn the new language as quickly as possible. In the case of my husband (a.k.a. the hubs) and me, he was already fluent in Spanish before moving to Panama whereas my lingual skills were limited to words like fajitas, fiesta, and margaritas.

During our first three months in the country, we didn’t socialize. The most translating the hubs did was ordering my food at restaurants, which I picked up quite quickly, although he is quite the gentleman and prefers to order for me while dining out. Our fifth month in Panama rapidly changed with the opening of our taco stand.

I have all the know-how in the kitchen and the hubs brings his appetite. I had to teach all of our new Spanish speaking employees how to recreate intricate Mexican recipes. The hubs was charged with the task of interpreting.   more ...

Panama is home to the second largest Carnival celebration in the world. Businesses shut down while people hit the streets for five days of drinking, culecos (tanker trucks spraying the crowds with water), gluttonous amounts of food, and scantily clad women adorned floats. Thousands of cars and busses line the main highway in a traffic jam as far as the eye can see from Panama City to the interior for all the major parties; the largest event being in Las Tablas, Panama where the festivities begin the Friday before Ash Wednesday.

Although carnival stretches over five days, only one day is a national holiday, the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday. The banks are closed for a week. Restaurants are unattended for days. Small mom and pop shops remain unopened only during the one national holiday in hopes of making a few sales throughout carnival. Not everybody is free from work though the cities are near empty. What are those people doing?   more ...

When my husband and I moved to Panama last January, we were looking forward to a slower pace of life. Considering that we were only 30 and 32 at the time, we weren’t looking for retirement. We knew we were interested in business opportunities available in Panama, but the last thing we ever thought of opening was a Mexican restaurant in La Chorrera, Panama (a city about 30 minutes outside of Panama City).

So how did this whole crazy idea come about? When we lived in Texas, we could get Mexican food anytime we wanted. Our favorite Mexican food is the taco…the ones on the soft double stacked corn tortillas with grilled meat. Since I mainly cook Mexican food at home, the hubs, being the entrepreneurial man that he is, naturally suggested that we take my recipes and open a Mexican restaurant in Panama about 3 months after we moved here.   more ...

Just because you move abroad doesn’t mean that everything in your life is suddenly 100% different. You will find yourself partaking in many of the same activities you did back home, like going to the movies. The hubs and I have always been avid movie goers and didn’t let moving to Panama, a Spanish speaking country, slow down our movie date nights. Waiting in line to see midnight showings of Lord of the Rings, all the Matrix movies, and Ironman 2 barely scrapes the tip of the iceberg. Since our big move in January of this year, we’ve learned a few tips and tricks to enjoying our movie theater experience in Panama.

If you’re considering moving to a non-English speaking culture, or have already moved to one, these suggestions will help you know what to expect before you sit in front of the big screen, otherwise you just might not want to watch another movie in a theater abroad again.   more ...

As an expat in Canada, finding affordable car insurance can be like trying to shift those last few pounds to reach your target weight. You’ve come so far; found somewhere to live, started in the new job and worked out the recycled waste collection schedule. You’ve decided on the car you want and the monthly (or bi-weekly) payments are do-able – then you get the insurance quote…

When you emerge from the short depressive episode this brings on, you’ll set about searching the web with renewed vigour, determined to track down a more realistic figure. Over and over again, the same, unreasonable amount keeps coming back. Like the figure on the scales, it just won’t shift.   more ...

Ok. Maybe that’s a bit extreme. But have you ever been surprised how much “stuff” you own? Minimalism is easy when you’re a couple, but add children to the mix and your “Stuff Quotient” soars. Strollers, highchairs, stair-gates and outgrown apparel populate the shadows of the basement or gather dust in the attic. With children, comes a move to a bigger place, perhaps with a garden, and suddenly you have “outdoor stuff” too – mowers, blowers, trimmers and garden furniture. There’s an urge to fill the new living space with more “stuff” that somehow represents and defines you - your beliefs, your personality, your memories.

Two years ago, we were living in Britain and expecting our third child. We had just finished a big renovation project that increased the size of our home and were in “Stuff Acquisition” overdrive – we had rooms to fill, a bigger canvas to stamp our identity on. Then, we made a decision that would turn our world on its head. My husband accepted a post in Canada.   more ...

You could be forgiven for thinking moving to Canada doesn’t entail the same consideration journeying to a third world country might. After all, it has a stable economy, an established infrastructure and an accepting attitude, right? But it’s always the small, innocuous things that lurk below our radar that can make life miserable with their irksomeness if overlooked.

There are a few things to be aware of that will help your Canadian experience go smoothly. They may seem obvious to some, but that’s easy to say with the benefit of hindsight:

1. There’s a voltage difference. The plugs are different but so too is the voltage. In the UK its 240v compared to Canada’s 110v. A plug adaptor alone won’t be the solution to your problems, as I found to my chagrin when my steam steriliser couldn’t reach the temperature required to properly sterilise my baby’s bottles. Cue boiling them in the kettle each night as sterilizing tablets were nowhere to be found here.   more ...

Moving to another country with children can be a stressful experience. The tearful confession, “I want to go home,” is the last thing any parent wants to hear. Adults will be going through their own period of adjustment and this, coupled with the logistical matters that lay claim to their time in the early days, can leave them ill-equipped to give their children the help they need to cope with the transition.

The good news is that, when properly prepared and supported, children often adjust more quickly than adults. The key to a move with minimum fuss comes down to 3 main things:

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For us, 2012 will be the Year of the Road Trip, the year we travel to Tadoussac to see the whales swimming in Quebec’s first purely marine national park, where the Saguenay River meets the estuary of the St Lawrence. I’m excited at the thought of the drive and the stops we’ll make en route, but this wasn’t always the case. My confession? For a while back there, I lost my driving mojo. What was once a source of enjoyment provoked a cold, sinking dread in the pit of my stomach. No-one was more surprised than me, lover of fine cars and consummate speed junkie (think Jeremy Clarkson without the gob).

For a long time, before exchanging my British driving licence for a Canadian one, I would mentally rehearse driving here. Closing my eyes, I would imagine every part of the journey into town, all the intersections, traffic lights and lane changes, haunted by the fear I would end up on the wrong side of the road and terrified of the potential carnage.   more ...