La Vida Pica

a Colombian economist says...

I had a good natter with a Colombian economist working in London today. She had translated my CV professionally a couple of months ago but we hadn't met yet. She said that all of her Colombian friends in England who had children subsequently moved back to Colombia (because of the children). She also said she would move back immediately if her English husband agreed. And, she said Howard would have a very warm welcome from Colombians, as they love foreigners. This puts Howard's mind to rest on many levels. Oh, and her Colombian friends' English husbands all learned Spanish well.

enjoying the fruits early

We normally avoid imported food (except for chocolate and arepa flour, and coffee and tea, and the mixed peppers...) but today I was at Tesco with Elsie (we normally try to avoid Tesco as well!) and an unusual fruit caught my eye. Hm, what's that? Picked up the package and saw it was from Colombia! Physalis berries. How exciting! Way too cheap (£1 per packet). Took them home. Yum. Said to Howard, "We didn't need scenarios and pros and cons lists... We just needed to taste this to know that we want to move to Colombia!"

Mi educación colombiana

Today we were listening to Totó La Momposina and Bomba Estéreo (see photo below), both from Colombia.

Usually we are listening to W Radio Colombia (Colombian talk radio) or Colorín Coloradio (a Colombian children's radio station) or UN Radio (Universidad Nacional de Colombia) or Radio Nacional (which plays traditional music).

I read the Colombia Reports headlines, and read Mike's Bogotá Blog and Don't Give Papaya faithfully.

And today I Skyped with Alex (in Colombia) for 1.5 hours, really putting into practice my verb tenses, via my daily Rosetta Stone lessons. Elsie caught the last half hour and was so inspired that she insisted I only speak Spanish to her for the following half an hour. She loves to pretend she can already speak fluently. I try not to be resentful that she will be fully/fluently bi (tri?) lingual within a year.

And a first draft of my book chapter is due tomorrow. But that's nothing to do with my Colombian education.

A Pattern of Moving

Most of the sighing I referred to in the previous post probably relates to my own personal patterns of changing my mind and moving a lot.

So, another recap.

Moving

From the time I was born until I left home at 17, I was moved eight times, most (if not all) entailing changing schools (when I was of school age). That's an average of every other year. Which makes moving feel easy. It feels normal. Even if it's stressful, it feels normal. That's quite a habit.

As an adult, I continued it. I moved to Los Angeles, Las Cruces, Santa Fe, Cambridge (Mass.), back to Las Cruces, Phoenix, Albuquerque, New York City, back to Las Cruces, back to New York City – 10 times between the ages 17 and 29. Averaging nearly once per year!

From NYC, I just moved to Thornbury, a few months in Wales, and back to Thornbury. I'm 41 now, will be nearly 42 when we move to Colombia. That's only three moves in 13 years. HEY: that's a really big change! So with all the pulls to keep moving, I have re-evaluated the situation and (mostly) stayed put.

Changing My Mind

Oh, I'm ever so good at changing my mind. Career/livelihood has always been a tough one for me. I'm not sure what I wanted to be when I grew up (teacher/actress?) but my path has twisted and curved many a time. You can put a judgment on that, if you like.

At university, I started out wanting to be a nutritionist, then a journalist, then settled on economist, but by the time the four years were coming to an end, I wanted to use the degree to study law, but then went towards film. There just didn't seem to be any career path that could contain everything I liked to do! Which is understandable. And I'm sure everyone has this, but, for some reason, this always stumped me. A problem with commitment? I don't know. Is it fair to say I should've committed to something I didn't want to do full time?

I'm certainly proud of all the different things I did as I followed interests around: internship with district attorney's office, research assistant for a professor studying Nicaragua, cocktail waitress, nanny for twins, master control engineer for a TV station, coordinator of volunteers for an AIDS charity, MA in Economics, teaching economics to all different cohorts, working for a political party as a webmaster/membership secretary/managing editor, and now, finally, my work in education for sustainability at universities (past seven years!!). Although there was a pull to go off into counselling, I didn't. So sticking with this "career path" has been quite a contradiction to the pattern.

This post is partly in response to the reactions I get when I tell people about plans to move or plans to "do" something different. I get defensive. I shouldn't. I have no regrets about moves and paths I've taken. It's all been brilliant.

My new motto is: Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean someone isn't out to get you. And what I mean by that is, Just because I've got (old) patterns of moving and changing my mind, doesn't mean it isn't the right thing to do.

Colombia: Take 2

Hey friends and family,

Moving to Colombia is back on the cards. For those of you that are sighing, we thought it'd be nice to do a recap for you... Welcome to Memory Lane

10 May 2010

Do you remember about three years ago? When we had the ::in a yurt:: blog, and explained our reasons for leaving Thornbury?

Well, it's time to explain our reasons for leaving Thornbury... again.

Our goals have not changed over time. We still want to live more sustainably, with land to grow food and keep chickens. A way to use energy more efficiently and hopefully with renewables. We still want to live "in community" (not just in a community).

But we've run up against the same problems over and over again. Land (especially with a house, or at least planning permission for a house) is expensive in Britain. And it's very expensive in Thornbury, which happens to be the place in Britain where we have the most friends and loved ones. Which is essential for Elsie Maribel.

And we don't want to go into debt.

So, over the past three years, we've run things over in our heads, looked into different options, almost moved to Lincolnshire, gave a remote part of Wales a try, and stayed put in Thornbury.

This, however, is no longer sustainable, or desirable, for a number of reasons.

1. Our budget is really tight living in this rented house. And that is with me working four days a week, which isn't going to continue because I will only have three days a week starting in August.
2. Our lifestyle is more challenging than it needs to be. We are living in a nuclear family, which is isolating and unnecessary – when you think about it clearly. So many families live like this: each making separate meals, doing chores separately, finding it difficult to find child care. Some families are more extended than others, with grandparents living around the corner. We don't have that, though.
3. We aren't meeting our goals by living here: tiny garden that we cannot cultivate and no renewables. (Howard did manage to put in a wood burning stove last year, which has helped enormously in keeping us warm downstairs.)

Last summer, along with our friends from Germany (who include a boy six months older than Elsie), we were actively looking for a (possibly joint) solution. Everything was untenable.

Then one day, Howard said: "It doesn't have to be in Britain." My ears perked up! Really?? We'd thought about living in Colombia a couple of years ago, but with my CFS/ME, it just seemed unrealistic that I'd have the energy for what we were envisioning, on top of learning Spanish properly. But NOW. Now I'm CFS/ME free!

Howard said he had started looking into Costa Rica (due to a more sustainable transport system). So I looked it up and immediately saw that we couldn't afford to move there as foreigners needed to come with some outrageous amount of US dollars equivalent.

So I said, "But we could move to Colombia, since I'm half-Colombian, it wouldn't apply there."

And so began our investigation, which culminated in our trip to Colombia in January... and our decision to move to Colombia on 1st October 2010. Less than five months away!!

The move isn't entirely definite yet: still some costings to be made, but 1st October is still the goal.

I'll give you some more thoughts and facts on all that as I find time. But wanted to get the ball rolling and this has sat as a draft for a LONG time. :)

Then

21 June 2010

The big news happened this month. Another sort of saying goodbye. Goodbye to the Colombian dream. After loads of research, we finally came to the conclusion that moving to Colombian was too much of a financial risk. The cost of moving would eat well into our savings, thereby leaving not much over for buying land or a house. And there was no guarantee of replenishing the savings quickly or easily. PLUS, Howard would only be allowed to take 7 of his 9 bikes, which is like cutting his nose off. So it's a no go deal.

Then

26 July 2010

We've decided to stay in Thornbury until work necessitates that we leave (if it ever does). And I'm going to do a three-year, part-time counselling degree, which should help job prospects in the long term (hopefully). In any case, it'll be fun. One day per week. This replaces the one day per week I've lost on my job.

Then: those of you who only get your news from us via this blog will have missed the decision to not do the course (another financial risk and a low-paid job at the end vs some high-paid work I was getting and that was keeping me busy); thoughts about moving to Stroud, York, and the Isle of Wight; thinking about doing the course again (my job situation has been so unstable, low-paid but higher certainty seemed logical); and then realising I am employable (well-paid) and the uncertainty is just something we have to live with. Until Christmas 2011, we were fairly set on staying in Thornbury, due to the people factor (the place in the UK with the highest concentration of loved ones).

So let's go through the thinking...

• Living sustainably – We ask ourselves, is our own personal energy better spent on making ourselves as self-sufficient as possible, or in making the community/world more resilient and sane in the face of current and impending economic and enviromental (etc) crises? Behaviour change isn't the solution: system change is. So we don't need to be able to afford to buy land and a house, have chickens and grow our own food. We can work on system change from anywhere.
• Financial risks – Therefore, a move to Colombia is no longer a financial risk (not in the way we mean). We can afford to move and still have money to move back (if it comes to that), but money for in between isn't as essential now.
• The bikes – We reckon we gave up too easily two years ago. We are pursuing things and it looks like Howard will be able to take all his bikes and tools to Colombia. (We have family in Colombia to thank for helping us with all the logistics and details.) ... However, let me emphasise, we have agreed that the bikes aren't make or break for this move to happen.
• Employability – Last time we planned to move to Colombia, I was hoping I could continue my project coordination work from there, and not quite sure what I'd do if I had to work in Colombia. Howard getting a job was a last resort. Since then, however, Howard has been doing work as a mobile bicycle repairman, and is kept quite busy during the "mainstream" cycling months . He's feeling confident that he could start a similar business in Colombia (where cycling season never ends). As for me, I have freelance work that I can do from anywhere, but if that dries up, I'm confident that the new work I've been doing on the circular economy could get me plenty of work in Colombia. And the fall back of teaching English isn't too shabbily paid.
• Loved ones – And that brings us to loved ones, and to the main reason we want to choose Colombia as our base from which to work on system change. Elsie adores people. She loves it when there are get togethers and lots of people to interact with, watch, play with, entertain. Although we have an extremely lovely handful of friends here in Thornbury, they are inevitably busy, either with family, work or other stresses. We can go a whole week without seeing anyone for more than an hour. And that's very isolating. It's hard on us as parents, to not have any family support, but also hard on Elsie, not to have family like that around. We realise that, in our culture (in the West, but particulary in the USA and the UK), it's quite common for families to feel isolated. But I know so many people with extended families that see each other very often that I long for this for Elsie and for me and Howard. (Howard and I could do with spending time with each other, for a start! I think we've been on four or five dates since Elsie's been born.) So: where in the world can we find family support? Bogotá, Colombia has 23 close family members, with three more arriving next spring (not us!). They don't see each other every day, but there are get togethers at least every week. And Elsie will love that. And we plan to live with my grandmother while waiting for our ship to come in, and Elsie can't stop talking about that. And we plan to rent an apartment near family, especially my grandmother, so we can still see her every day.

Ah, so I went from NYC (pop. 8 million) to Thornbury (14,000) to semi-rural Wales (maybe ~2,000?), back to Thornbury and now to a huge ol' city, Bogotá (pop. 7 million).

When? end of September 2012 or 1st October 2012 (waiting to hear about a face-to-face meeting I need to attend)

How? Get to London (train or car), hotel, fly to Paris, hotel, fly to Bogotá

Why? Because there's lots to do in this world, and we want a strong & loving family base from which to do it!

Who? What about YOU? Are you coming to visit? Open invitation once we have our apartment/flat (by Christmas 2012)!