When I was pregnant with my first child, we dreamed of sharing the world with our daughter. We envisioned living in Southeast Asia again—we’d lived in Vietnam before having kids—and talked about all the things we would experience together as a family. We imagined frequent international travel, long trips, and adventurous explorations together. Then we […]
I started my business back in 2009 alongside a full-time teaching job at an international school in the Dominican Republic. And I’m the first to admit I had no idea what I was doing. I based early decisions off The Well-Fed Writer by Peter Bowerman, a book that inspired me with the idea that I could make a […]
This past weekend, my husband and I decided to surprise our children with a trip to a water park. Heralded the “largest water park in Portugal,” they had been begging all summer to go. But between my mom visiting from the US, getting ready for school to start, and what felt like endless doctors’ appointments […]
I started my business in 2011 while living in the Dominican Republic. At the time, I was teaching high school English language arts at an international school in the capital city, Santo Domingo. English teachers, as you probably know, work a lot. And given it was my first year, I had zero teaching experience and only […]
This past weekend, we took a trip to one of my favorite cities: Lisbon. Technically, we stayed in Cascais, a charming town about 30 minutes outside the city, but we spent two out of the four days in Portugal’s capital city. When we first moved to Portugal, we almost lived in Lisbon. It was an attractive choice: […]
This past weekend, our family took a short weekend trip to Monchique, a sleepy mountain town located inland from Portugal’s famous Algarve beaches. While we’ve been to the area plenty of times, especially to hike around Fóia, the largest mountain in the area, this weekend was all about the chill. It was also about celebrating […]
I get asked on a nearly daily basis for podcast recommendations. And while I still stand by my earlier list of recommendations, I’ve shifted my listening substantially since I published that post in 2017. So what are the 10 best podcasts of the moment, according to . . . well, me? As a self-proclaimed expert […]
I’m going to let you in on a little secret: I’m naturally disorganized. While I love order and tidiness, my natural state is chaos and mess. As a kid, this resulted in failed classes, academic probation for sports (I nearly missed playing in a volleyball game because of my grades), and entering college conditionally: my […]
In early 2019, we were living in southern Thailand on the island of Phuket. We’d been through what felt like endless obstacles during our short time there: a bat infestation in the house we rented; multiple hospitalizations; severe and constant sickness pulsing through our home. The kids had a bout with hand-foot-and-mouth that lasted two […]
On a weekly, and sometimes daily, basis, I meet a new individual looking to build a location independent (LI) business. If you’re new to this term, running an LI business means you can run the business from anywhere in the world. It doesn’t mean that you’re generating the fabled “passive income” while sipping piña coladas […]