After we decided to leave Guatemala, we had to sort out what to do next. Should we return to Canada, land that we love? Back to our homeland of moose and beavers, Timmie’s Old-fashioned Plain and triple/triples, and our beloved big blue house?
Truth was, I was going through climate-pause. After living in Guatemala for a few winters, I wasn’t excited to return to the robust Canadian winters. In 25 years of living there, my appreciation always fell significantly short of the full length of the season, meaning I was tired of being cold by mid-October. It’s my mom’s DNA, like hers, this body was wired for warm German bakeries.
In contrast, after 150 years of adaptation, Paul’s Canadian DNA was wired for skiing, ice fishing, making hockey rinks in the backyard, scraping windshields, scaling glaciers, impersonating an ice cube. It wasn’t the weather that turned his head south. But he’d lived his entire life in one city, and had an adventurous spirit. He was ready for a new home base.
We short listed some location criteria.
A place without complicated Visa restrictions
Year round warm climate
Culturally diverse
East coast because most of our family is there
Spanish/French schools
Convenient location to travel to other places
Oddly this narrowed the search to South Florida, where the weather is warm, the culture is diverse and lively, Spanish and French are commonly spoken (due to the Haitians and Quebecer snowbirds), and plane tickets are inexpensive to South/Central America and the Caribbean. Any place that checked all these boxes was certainly worth a try. We could chuckle past the retirement and croc jokes from…everyone.
Our house sold within days of being on the market, we found a great French/Spanish school, and a house to live in fell into our lap the same day. If that isn’t a door flung wide open, then I don’t know what is. SoFlo, here we come.
