Where'd you go @VenSíPuedes?
"Expat Life" is just regular life with different grocery stores and trying to catch the summer blockbuster in one language or another
So... it's been a minute. Like, a “haven’t seen you since June” minute.
Which in internet time is basically a geological era.
And messes around with the algorithm as they say.
You know those Instagram accounts where people move abroad and suddenly their lives become a curated montage of European farmers markets, golden hour aperitifs, and children who somehow never have ketchup stains on their shirts?
Yeahhhhh, I don’t know those people.
Turns out when you move countries but you're not retired and don't have a trust fund, you just... do the same stuff.
Except now you're Googling "how to get a mammogram" in Spanish and having minor panic attacks about whether you’ve transferred the correct amount to the summer camp to pay for your child’s spot.
This summer has been a beautiful chaos of very normal-ish things.
The highlight was four different summer camps across two countries. One week the kiddo is doing puppetry camp in Atlanta (we adults got a nice vacation out of it!). And the next week, we’re at day camp in an entirely different country, fielding WhatsApp voice notes from the camp director about my child’s apparent (sensory-related) need to wear long sleeved shirts at an outdoor summer camp in THE TROPICS: capitalization required, it’s Dora-the-Explorer muggy and buggy and rainy.
“Parece que tiene calor” or “He seems hot”
Yeah he’s definitely hot.
But the bugs are worse than the heat - at least in his mind.
“I will send extra water with more ice in the bottles” or “Enviaré agua extra con más hielo en las botellas.”
And I may or may not have hidden some of his favorite long-sleeved monster truck shirts till he is back to being an indoors kid.
While we were in the States, we managed to squeeze in some sorely missed annual passholder time at Disney, also known as the hottest place on earth.
Orlando in the summer is brutal, and each year gets progressively worse.
Oh, and did I mention we're working?
Because: spoiler alert for all those people still daydreaming about moving to Thailand or Portugal or Ghana through some well-edited YouTube videos of “how cheap!!!” it is - "moved abroad" doesn't equal "early retirement".
My husband's still traveling for work - which now means I'm solo parenting while he's in yet another time zone, and I'm trying to figure out if that weird beeping noise coming from the freezer means we lost power.
But for how long? Is the food still good?
Meanwhile, I'm over here booking Spring Break 2026 trips for clients and helping them find rain ponchos at Disney World (for right now, this minute, via text message) AND writing grants for my most favorite nonprofit.
My next Substack will be called “Hey Momma, the multi-hyphenate”.
Nothing says "living the expat dream" like frantically typing grant applications on a deadline while your child “does puppetry” on Outschool at full volume in the next room and you're pretty sure you hear expensive beeping coming from the kitchen.
The power went out? But for how long? Is the food still good?
Adding to my TO-DO list.
"Can you work on your grant somewhere quieter?" my kid asks.
Dude, this IS the quiet room.
Your puppet sounds like it’s being bludgeoned to death.
What the hell is that skit about?
So yeah, international remote work is just regular remote work with more complicated time zone math and the occasional power outage that makes you question all your life choices.
We did a few weekend getaways that sounded amazing until we realized we’re still packing the same amount of snacks, still forgetting someone's favorite goggles, and still having the "Are we there yet?" conversation.
Dude, we just left the house.
And through it all? Laundry.
So much freaking laundry.
International laundry.
Bilingual laundry.
Multicultural laundry.
Outgrown laundry.
Wet laundry.
Full-of-sand laundry.
Rocks-in-the-pockets laundry.
Stained and paint-spattered laundry.
Even my tween was dragging his laundry basket, unbidden, across the house to do the laundry.
One load + one detergent pod = clean swim trunks to hit the community pool later.
He was going for a “night swim” with Momma.
Because we had watched Jaws for the first time and wanted to swim under the stars while we discussed the movie.
The pool is a dozen floors above ground level, so no risk of predators… except maybe mosquitos cuz THE TROPICS.
We mostly floated and reminisced about the giant green sea turtle that bumped my bum while snorkeling in Barbados three summers ago.
And Daddy
saw a puffer fish in the water but didn’t tell us anything until we were back on the catamaran because we were already SCREAMING about the touchy turtle.Not quite Jaws level. But still…
Excitement level = 10.
Danger level = 0.
Memories level = 10,000.
Happy and grateful laundry.
So I guess we could have kept posting through all this.
Could have scheduled some content about "5 Tips for Expat Families" or "How Moving Abroad Changed Everything!" Those posts would have been as authentic as my attempts to look like I have it together as a parent.
Insert Disney villainess cackle here…. I don’t.
I’m truly very proud that we managed to keep everyone fed, relatively healthy (only one respiratory sickness logged but it required visits to 4 drugstores to find the prescribed medicine in the correct dosage), and mostly happy for another day.
(Home)school starts soon, so we will be back on a better schedule then.
Cannot promise we will be in one place though.
We will be back with more stories about the unglamorous reality of family life abroad. Because if we're being honest, that's way more interesting than another sunset photo anyway.
What did you do this summer? Did it involve sketchy puppets or monster truck shows? Pleaseeee tell me it involved less laundry than mine.
So that's where we went,
and community. We went into the beautiful, exhausting, completely normal abnormality of regular life in a not-regular place.This post is free, but if you enjoyed it and would like to support our writing, please do:
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xo Ven Sí Puedes | Come If You Can and
"Trying to catch the summer blockbuster in one language or another." Oh, we know this well. We have a nice movie theater in our part of Mexico, but you have to watch the movie times. DOB means "doblado" or dubbed in Spanish. SUB means "in English with subtitles." And for some reason, SUB is often the LAST showing so if we wanna see The Fantastic Four our choices are 9:20pm or nothing. I am totally fine with watching films from Mexico or Spain in Spanish, but we do not want to hear the Thing say, "It's Clobbering Time" in Spanish. It's just not the same. The one nice thing about English with Spanish subtitles is if you're learning, it's usually a good way to read how they'd say it in Spanish. But 30 years ago when I was in high school, the subtitle writers were really prudish about cursing, especially with Rated R movies. Al Pacino would be letting loose with some really salty language, and the subtitles would say, "Malediccion" (Bad Words). Really, Subtitle People??? I know for a fact Mexicans get really colorful with their cursing, so for a high school student trying to learn Spanish, it felt like a missed opportunity to not see any fun translations on the big screen.