Book Club in La Manzanilla

Last night I went to my monthly book club meeting. I love my book club, I've been with this group for nearly 7 years now. The members are great and interesting people, working, raising kids, married, divorced, retired.

We have a few rules:

Anyone who suggests a book must have already read it. We had a couple of disasters early on with reading a book based on a book review and the entire group hated it.

We talk about life and catch-up with each other for the first half hour and then we talk about the book. Sometimes get back to the catching up pretty quickly. But not always. The Book Thief was a long and interesting discussion as was Infidel.

We have lots of wine.

We've tried downloading discussion questions to facilitate the discussion, that rarely works for us.

Most of the members HATE to read non-fiction, this causes a little bit of strife but we work through it.

Did I mention the wine?

I'm really going to miss these monthly meetings!

I'll have to get a book club going in La Manzanilla

Ah, but it won't be the same....

Why leave the US for La Manzanilla- Living abroad is not for everyone.

Why, why, why? My parents think it's because we hate the US. My husband and I have traveled enough to understand the blessing of being born in the US. My hope is that the US reaches its full potential, I believe we have a long way to go but I also believe we have the ability to get there.

A few weeks ago I was reading my favorite column from the Sunday Wall Street Journal- For Love or Money. If you are not familiar with it I recommend it, he writes about family money issues such as, Should you give your kids money for good grades, The importance of understanding your future partner's spending habits.

Anyways the author had just been giving the chance to move to Hong Kong and work as a foreign correspondent. You can see the full article here

He talks about giving his kids the chance to view the world as more then just vacation destinations. The chance for his wife to spend more time with the kids and just a different life then the one they have in the US- and their in the US is great as you know if you've ever read his column. It really resonated with me, so I sent it to all my friends and family.

The next week, after returning from an apartment hunting trip, they had a change of heart. No move.

Leaving the US- especially as a working family with school aged kids is not for the faint of heart!

I'm glad our process to move to La Manzanilla was nearly two years in the works and that we've spent enough time there to understand what it is we are getting into....to a degree! More on that later.

Only 3 more months until the move to La Manzanilla

Ok- now I'm starting to get freaked out. Only 3 more months until the move to La Manzanilla and we still are working on our bathroom remodel, I've just taken on a new client (what am I thinking?) and we have just now started going through our "stuff" to decide what gets sold, stored, tossed or makes the trip south.

Wow- we have a lot of stuff. I'm amazed, 5 years ago we moved into this house after spending a year traveling around the world with nothing but a couple of backpacks. We sure managed to accumulate a lot "stuff" in 5 years. Of course having a 5 year-old son increases your collection of things!

I think to myself- well if I don't want to take it to La Manzanilla then is there really any need to keep it? Certainly photo albums and meaningful mementos of our travels and family we will store, but do I really need 5 serving dishing, 3 sets of dinner plates, 7 sets of sheets, a litany of wine glasses- for both red and white, 5 different fry pans....you get the idea.

Part of the reason to move to Mexico is to reduce and use less.

Ok- back to sorting through all the stuff.

Something New in La Manzanilla

Ok- This is my first attempt at blogging. Just giving it at test. Thinking about adding it to my website www.VisitLaManzanilla.com.

We are getting ready for a big life change, moving to La Manzanilla Mexico. Along with my husband and 4 year-old son we are heading south, we'll be building a house, Lyle will be starting school, we'll all be working on our Spanish.

Biggest question we get is, "why." My answer, "why not."