groupertrooper

My husband, Michael and I are living in Texas with our daughter (2 yrs old) and are just doing research about moving south. I lived in Honduras as a child for 11 years and have always felt that was more "home" than the U.S. I was a boat captain on various live aboard dive boats, fishing boats, casino boats and crew boats and later a law enforcement officer for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission and now I am a stay at home mom and my husband is a Merchant Mariner running tow boats mainly in the Houston area. He is not ready to retire yet but is fortunate enough to have a job where he can pretty much set his own schedule, therefore, allowing us to contemplate moving to Central or South America. We were looking at Costa Rica but now we feel that Ecuador has more to offer as far as the cost of living. We feel that since Michael is gone from home for 2 to 3 months at a time, why not move somewhere where the income from those 2-3 months would allow him to take 2-3 months off at a time instead of just a few days here or there so that we can keep living the way we are struggling to pay the bills. Our plan right now is to sell everything, pay off our debts from that, and move!! My mother has been wanting to move south for years now and we plan to move her with us. I know that Michael may suffer from some culture shock at first but on our travels to Central America and Europe, he seems to adjust well and is very much a "people" person - he somehow is able to communicate for long periods and be understood even if he can't speak the language!!! It can be pretty comical! We feel that our daughter's life will be enriched and it can only benefit her in the long run to grow up bilingual, possibly trilingual as I did (mom is originally from Germany and the rest of her family still lives there so we visit them as often as possible). Anyway, that's a little about us. Hope to meet others who have made the giant step so we can get some more insight into this whole thing.