Mexico Cassie Adventure Time FAQs

Published by Cassie on 01/03/201801/03/2018

Mexico Cassie Adventure Time FAQs

If you’re interested in the idea of long term family travel but just don’t know where to start turning ideas into reality, then why not get in touch with me through me through my Work With Me page for advice?

I also recommend browsing my ‘Moving To Mexico’ travel series, written as we were in the process of moving continents.

MEXICO CASSIE FAQs

 1. What were your reasons for going?

There was no single reason for us wanting to leave. My husband and I both have chronic itchy feet and have always loved exploring the world. We always knew we didn’t want this to stop just because we had children. The question for us was how to make that possible.

If I have to break it down though, here are our reasons / push factors

• The stress of being two full-time working parents to two tiny children. Rushing to get them to nursery in the morning so we could work, rushing through the day to get everything done before picking them up in the evening and always being too tired to really enjoy our time together.
• I’m British. Nuff said? Look at our messy political situation and how it’s impacting on lives. I’m not ok with it.
• We’re pretty convinced that we won’t get the luxury of a nice, long retirement a la the baby boomers so we decided that instead of waiting to travel we’ll do it now instead.
• We wanted to escape the materialism and consumerist society of living that comes with living in a big city.
• We wanted to spend serious quality time as a family and be the ones helping our kids to become the people they will be, shaping their values.
• We wanted to expose our kids to new cultures and languages.

And the final push factor was when the kids and I witnessed a stabbing incident on our way home from nursery. Obviously, this is unlikely to show up on many peoples lists as a reason for making a big change but, sadly, it happened to us and definitely influenced our actions.

2. How Did You Choose Between Travelling And Living Abroad?

We originally gave ourselves six months in Mexico. We weren’t certain what we wanted to do with that time so booked ourselves one month’s accommodation and figured the rest would happen as it happened. Both my husband and I have travelled and lived abroad, together and separately so we took time to think about the decision and to factor in how we thought our children would react to the options.

Ultimately we decided we wanted to really learn Spanish so we needed lessons for everyone. We also decided that we wanted to get to know a community or two and see if we felt we could make a life for ourselves outside of our home country. So we spent six months in Mexico, one month in Oaxaca, one month in Tulum and four months in Merida. We moved back to Merida knowing exactly what we were moving to.

3. But how did you choose Mexico?

We had our honeymoon in Mexico in 2009 and loved every second of it. We realised that we had specific reasons for wanting to leave home so the country we chose would have to answer all those needs, really allowing us to slow down and spend quality time together whilst embracing a new culture and language.

We wanted to go somewhere the kids could go to school without too much trouble, where they’d learn a new language, and experience a new culture. With only six months at our disposal, we decided we needed a language that would be pretty accessible and actually useful long term. We felt that for us, this put Asia out of the running. Having spent a lot of time in Africa, we decided to save that wonderful continent until the kids are old enough to really appreciate it. Europe was just too expensive so we really felt that a Central or Latin American country was a good fit for us and we’d both wanted to explore more of Mexico.

4. How did you explain it to the children?

We were very open and honest with them from the beginning. We didn’t ask their opinion or permission but we did include them in the planning. We showed them maps of Mexico, and photos of places we were likely to see. We talked about the country and the language a lot. We hired a Spanish nanny one day a week so they would get used to hearing the language even if they couldn’t yet speak it.

We were always upbeat about the plans and talked about us as a family that LOVES adventure. We tried to define the family narrative as one of adventure and exploration.

I’m not going to pretend it was all plain sailing but the kids quickly adapted to the reality of the upcoming change and I will admit that we did sometimes resort to bribery! We promised the kids a trip to the toy shop immediately that we got back to Mexico (definitely don’t point out to me that we claimed we wanted to leave materialism behind!).

5. How did the children cope with the upheaval?

The first time we left home, for six months of adventuring, our little one was two and a half. She was fine about the whole thing. She didn’t need any more than to be close to her parents to make her feel safe. Our older one was just four. His anxieties played out through a deterioration of behaviour, which was pretty hard for us to manage even though we understood what was causing the change. It took a couple of weeks for him to settle down and accept what was happening. By the time we left Mexico to return to the UK we had two kids who didn’t really want to leave.

The second time we left, telling the kids it was a permanent move, the older one, now five and a half, was absolutely fine about it. He was sad to leave his friends and his school but he knew where we were going and could visualise the plan. The younger one, now three and three quarters, struggled more. This one loves hard and the idea of leaving her best friend really hurt her. She settled really well into her new school and life though.

In February 2019 I wrote an article about how we are faring after our first year in Mexico. You can read it here. 

6. What Have Been The Biggest Hurdles?

Probably the biggest hurdle is always actually moving from talking about having an adventure to actually having the adventure. We shouldn’t pretend it isn’t a big thing to pack up your comfortable life and take a risk.

We are both pretty calm and organised people so it hasn’t been difficult for us to settle down and work through exactly what we need to make a new life for ourselves.

People always say kids pick up languages like sponges. I don’t agree. Sure, they learn differently to adults and definitely have picked up the language, but it wasn’t overnight!  I don’t think it’s been the easiest year for them. They have had six months of extra Spanish classes to help them with their confidence. It was frustrating for them to not be able to communicate or join in at school as they wanted to.

7. How Could You Afford It?

That’s really the big question, isn’t it? Honestly, we’re pretty lucky. We’d both been working full time for a long time prior to doing this. Neither of us is particularly profligate. We don’t smoke, don’t care about fashion, don’t go out too much. We spend our money on good food and travelling. And we decided we’d rather pay for an adventure than keep on chucking money at extortionate nursery fees month after month. We decided to forget about saving for our pensions and use the money now instead while we can enjoy it and give our family an incredible experience. Will we regret that? Who knows, but I doubt it.

Now we’re taking a big old chance and figuring out how to make a life abroad and that requires finding income streams that work for us and comply with visa regulations as we are adamant everything we do will be completely above board. I work as a freelance writer and my husband is an IT consultant so we are sure that eventually, we can make this work for us. If we can’t, we’ll go home but we’ll still have had an amazing adventure, right?

So go on, head over to my “work with me page” and get in touch today. What are you waiting for?