If You Could Go Back to Your Old Life, Would You?

Evaluating our decision, two years after first arriving in El Salvador

Hola, amigos 😊

We just passed our 2-year anniversary of first coming to El Salvador on April 23, 2022 to check it out. Time sure flies!

It’s been another few hot weeks in Paradise aka El Salvador, filled with some ups and downs. Rainy season is starting now, which is great, but the humidity is here again, full-force. We’re thoroughly enjoying mango season right now too—it’s amazing to have them everywhere…mangoes rolling along the street, on trees in empty lots, and hanging from the four mango trees at our property…ahhh!! Definitely our favourite fruit of all time 😋

I think I must have jinxed our air conditioning by my comment in the last blog (about not taking it for granted), since our main unit was broken for 4 days straight—and we were living in a sauna! 🥵 We had to escape to the pool a few times for some reprieve. Thankfully the unit has been replaced and we’re back to feeling sane again, even with it set at 28 Celsius!

For Earth Day on Monday, the girls and I met up with some friends of ours at the beach, and we all filled bags with garbage (basura) as we chatted and walked along the black sand beach. Afterward, my friend rewarded the kids with popsicles she’d brought, and they jumped in the waves.

Now to get to the point of this blog…

A woman I met recently asked me this question while we were chatting about life here:

“Do you ever wish things hadn’t gone the way they did in Canada, and that you guys still lived there now?”

I was a bit taken aback, and my mind filled with all sorts of responses, because I’m so used to our new life. But I do think about that sometimes.

My answer: “Yes….but no!!”

That is such a loaded question for me!! And I know my answer will take you on a bit of a wild ride!

Yes, sometimes I miss the comforts of the home we had, being near loved ones, having my own job, with the perks that came with it, including being able to afford two vehicles, and have our kids in a great private school.

I miss going out for a run in the cool spring air with my friend. Or for a bike ride on the forest trails near our home. And I miss putting on warm clothes—yes, I miss my hoodies—haha!

I miss being around our extended family, and having the friends I’ve known for years living nearby. It was a good life, full of great things. It was also a comfortable life in many ways, full of familiar things. Not challenging us to grow in too many ways.

I would drop our older girls off at school at 8:30 every weekday morning, and not see them again until 3pm. If I was working that afternoon (which I did 2-3 days a week), I wouldn’t see them again until the next day! Now I see my girls ALL day everyday!! We swim together, we shop together, we bake together, we eat together, we learn together. We just bought a keyboard for the girls, and they’re excited to learn songs and scales on their little piano. They recently joined some friends taking archery lessons from an ex-pat here on the beach.

There always seem to be learning opportunities here. When we were in Berlin, El Salvador a few weeks ago (more on that later), we got to explore some ancient caves that a family had discovered on their own property.

Replicas of ancient masks

On Friday, Tom took our oldest to the city, on a “daddy-daughter date,” so I decided to make the day fun for the other two. We baked cinnamon buns together, and they learned about yeast and how it only grows at warm temperatures, and that heat can kill it. They had a blast helping with all the steps of making them!

Later they enjoyed the sweet buns with their friends. In Canada, we didn’t have much time for baking together, and after a full day at school, they wouldn’t have had the energy. We still do some book work for learning, but definitely not for 6 hours a day!

Even before we had kids, Tom and I had a dream to take our family travelling, to expose them to different cultures, and to help them learn another language.

To fulfill a dream usually requires some sort of sacrifice…and some amount of discomfort.

We HAD to make a lot of sacrifices in order to leave all that was familiar and just go. How else could we show our girls the world..?! Experiencing life in a developing country had always been my dream for my kids—so they could see how most people in the world live.

If we hadn’t sold our house, and given up so many things, long-term travel and a new life in another place wouldn’t have been possible. And with how things were going in Canada, we had basically already decided it wasn’t a good place to raise our girls, even a year before our official decision.

Because of Covid, losing my job as a nurse over the mandates, and then being told that the un-jabbed would be locked into Canada in late 2021, we were given the push we needed to get started on a life that was beyond our wildest dreams!

I know you’re probably wondering what this quote has to do with anything I’m talking about—haha! Well, Tom came across this powerful quote by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn recently. He wrote this after suffering beyond anything we could imagine in a Soviet prison camp. I wanted to share this quote, because it isn’t usually in comfort that we learn and grow, but when we’re challenged and stretched in ways that are often pretty uncomfortable!

Losing my job was definitely an awful experience. But it opened my eyes to some of the true colours of our Canadian government. Leaving Canada in such a hurry was never how we’d pictured going. We had about 3 weeks to leave from when we first decided, which was in early October 2021, when we heard we’d be getting locked in soon.

As for the last couple months of my job as a nurse, I’m so thankful that I worked in a place where the majority of my coworkers were open-minded. Open-minded enough that we could usually speak freely. Most of my coworkers were horrified at what was happening. Even some of those who’d taken both doses were empathetic, and one said:

“I can’t believe that they’re not making this a personal choice anymore. If it hadn’t been a choice for me, I don’t know if I would’ve taken it. I really don’t like doing things when they’re forced on me…”

I was so thankful that she said that. Many were heart-broken—crying at work nearly every day—about how awful things had become! And asking,

“What should I do?? I don’t want to take it, but I definitely CAN’T be unemployed!!!”

From a Canadian protest

When I mentioned to one coworker (who’d confided in me that she really didn’t want to get the shot) that we were thinking of going to Mexico, she said,

“Wow, Mexico?! My husband and I are thinking of going there too. But our children and grandchildren are here, and it’s just so hard to leave them behind..”

I truly believe God guided us to leave Canada and go to Mexico (see my second post), and then guided us here. That first six months of travelling and exploring in Mexico was like the fulfilling of a promise to ourselves and our kids. It was incredible how much they saw and learned by releasing baby turtles, watching dolphins in the wild, holding baby crocodiles, exploring ancient Mayan ruins, and hiking to beautiful waterfalls (see this post for more) . We also grew closer as a family during that time, and our girls became each other’s best friends.

That was over two years ago already.

Now that we’re settled down, living in El Salvador, things have slowed down a bit in some ways…and gotten crazier in other ways!

We wouldn’t be helping street cats if we’d stayed in Canada. This has been a rough task at best, with 3 of the cats we’ve helped in the last year now having died for various reasons. It’s hard. But our girls are learning valuable lessons, and they are more aware of the fragility of life because of this mission. We’ve now fixed 15 cats in this community…and counting!

Here is sweet Laura—my girls named her. She’s the mamma of 3 kittens we adopted 6 months ago. She has had multiple litters, and daily life for her is a struggle to find food. Now she’s fixed, so she won’t have to worry about caring for more babies.

A few weeks ago, we went to a little Bitcoin conference in Berlin, El Salvador. It was my first time to ever go to a Bitcoin conference, and it was amazing to see how Bitcoin adoption is changing the little mountain town of Berlin. There are over 100 vendors accepting payments in Bitcoin. That makes it the third biggest “Bitcoin circular economy” in the world! And it was all spearheaded by a young local couple, Evelyn and Gerardo, who went up there with a vision. Now the expat and local Bitcoin community is growing, they have a Bitcoin Center in the town, and they’re educating people not just about Bitcoin, but teaching them computer skills, how to speak English, and equipping them for better-paying jobs. If you’re interested in learning more about it, you can check out JeThoreau’s Substack.

JeThoreau

It was great to meet new people and reconnect with some we already knew. We meet people here quite often who say they’ve been following us online, and some that say we inspired them to come here.

Tom met a Canadian guy at the Bitcoin conference who told him he’d seen a picture of our family online over a year ago, and said to himself,

“If that guy can make the move to El Salvador with three kids, then I can definitely do it!!”

I was at the Bitcoin Farmers Market a few weeks ago, and in conversation with many different ex-pats living or visiting here. And I realized,

“Wow—I don’t have to censor my speech! Practically everyone settling here is coming for the same reasons. They all seem to believe in personal sovereignty, bodily autonomy, and freedom.”

As you can see, our lives have taken some unexpected twists and turns in the last few years, and there have been lots of challenges and “stretching” experiences along the way. But we’re glad we made those difficult decisions, and we’re thankful for the community we have found and helped to build here. And thankful for a place where we can start fresh in a country that shares many of our values.

I want to write more on this topic…I have a story to share that some of you might find quite interesting about my own journey of “waking up” and digging deeper.

To be continued…

Stay strong, friends. You are loved ♥️

Thanks for reading amigos!

And thanks to one of my Canadian readers for coming to visit us in El Salvador recently! It was a pleasure to have you guys here, and we look forward to seeing you both here again soon! ♥️

Nos vemos pronto, amigos 👋