Like a hermit stretching and squinting as he emerges from his cave, we’re slowly and cautiously re-emerging from our two and a half year blogging hiatus. Hey, long time no see! We don’t really have a good reason for the hiatus, it’s mostly laziness but also because we felt like our adventure was coming to an end and we didn’t really have much to report. We had stopped being a “travel” family, always on the move, and transitioned to a “resident ex-pat” family. We began the blog as a travel journal for ourselves and for our families. We wanted to share our adventures with them and 
assuage their concerns by showing them we were still alive. More recently, we’ve realized that we may no longer be living the lives of nomads, but our life is still very different from the one we left in the US. It’s a life full of interesting experiences and discoveries that we’d like to document for ourselves and if others find it helpful or interesting, then we’re glad to be of service.

Our transition into the life of ex-pats has been so gradual and incremental that it is only now, in hindsight, that we’ve come to see it more clearly. We didn’t set out to be expats. It was never our goal or dream. We landed in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, México at the end of our planned year of travel with every expectation of returning to Portland, Oregon and resuming our old lives. We’d just give ourselves three months to come up with a plan. After three months, we decided we’d give ourselves another three more months, then six more months, and so on until we discovered that we’d been here for three and a half years and that we are well and truly expats.

We have established a great network of friends here and our son has become part of a community that he loves. We’ve realized that there is so much of this experience that we haven’t captured and we want to be sure we have something to look back on. For now, San Miguel de Allende is our home and we don’t have any plans to move. That said, we’ve always had a wanderlust and we are plagued with itchy feet, so we know one day we’ll move on again. But in the meantime, we scratch that itch by exploring within México.

So, what have we been up to since our last post? Well, frankly we don’t have the energy to list everything or to go into details, but here are just a few of the many, many things we’ve done on that list:

• Become temporary residents, on the way to permanent residency
• Dropped our US residency and insurance
• Purchased global insurance and found an endocrinologist for our son and visited various doctors and dentists (all good!)
• Lots of outdoor adventures such as rock climbing…indoor and outdoor
• …and hiking, swimming holes, horseback riding etc.

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• Participated in community performances, talent shows, and kids theater
  
• Attended multiple summer camps and art camps
• Bought a car, got a Mexican drivers’ license, and navigated all of the documentation and insurance
• Lived in three more houses since this post
• Adopted a calledora or street dog, who we named Olivia
  
• Made many, many friends….and seen more than a few of them go 😦
• Been through two Méxican election cycles and seen two mayors elected
• Lead Natural History tours
• Lead Mexican History tours
• Three Dias de Independencia
• A zombie party….sesos….
• Three Dias de Los Muertos
• Spent a week in Valle de Bravo, Mexico
  
• Spent a week in Ajijic, Jalisco
• Spent a week in Oaxaca, Oaxaca
• Multiple weekend and overnight visits to Mexico City (CDMX)…so, so much to do, to see, to experience…to eat (drool!)
• Three overnight trips to Puebla, Puebla
• Overnight trip to Tequisquiapan, Querétaro
• Day trip to Bernal, Querétaro
• Day trip to Mineral de Pozos, Guanajuato
• Attended a Renaissance festival in Cadareyta, Querétaro
• Visited many, many of our surrounding communities
• Attended two private schools and will be attending a third starting this August
• And so, so, so much more…

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All of which leads us to this summer winding down, the upcoming school year kicking off, and the perfect opportunity to “reset” or “reboot” the blog and talk about “Our Ex-Pat Life” and 8th grade in México (or Segundo de Secundaria)…Nos Vemos Pronto!!!