We have sold our "perfect" retirement home in Sun City Center, Florida. We have lived six years on the best street with the greatest neighbors. We enjoyed our pool, covered lanai and lake view everyday.
We have given stuff to our kids, sold, donated and thrown away the rest. We kept very little of our 44 years of collecting from around the world. The treasures that I kept now all fit into 20 medium size boxes, several large pieces of my favorite art work, and a few pieces of furniture that are now stored at our daughter's home. I (myself) even drove a 27 foot U-Haul truck from Tampa to Warren, Ohio with-off loads in Atlanta and Columbus, Ohio.
Ed, I and our two children had spent our first 22 years traveling the world, thanks to the United States Army. My father was also an Army officer and I had spent my first twenty years traveling with my family. Ed's next career was with IBM and it just meant more moves for us. We have figured that in our 44 years we have moved 32 times. So, when we came to Sun City, we both said it would be our last move and they would have to carry us out of that home. So, what has caused this madness with us?
Ed and I have been traveling much more internationally since 2007. I opened my travel agency in early 2008 and became a Southeast Asian Specialist right away because of our love for that part of the world. But, even after an eight week trip, we would come home and say what we really wanted longer stays where we could live like the locals and truly experience their culture and lifestyle. That was our dream, a more in depth experience of a foreign country. But, we knew we had our 'perfect' home and the two best mini-schnauzers, Maggie & Scarlett. We just didn't see how we could make our dream happen.
This past December, we escorted a small group to Prague then on a week Danube River cruise from Nuremberg, Germany to Budapest. The topic when we came home was again how can live our dream of longer travels and not have our feet anchored to a house. We had to decide if it was a dream worth going for or letting it go.
In January, I had to make a business trip to Indonesia and spent a week on Bali doing research on the best resorts and local sights to visit. I also found time for some quiet in-depth thinking about our dream and how to make it happen. When I returned, the topic for the next three months was IF and HOW to make the dream happen. Neither, Ed nor I, had any real problems selling the house. We did know it could take up to 12 months to sell, so would renting be a better option for us. We decided against renting...so...
We decided to take this wild and crazy life to it's next adventure and live our dream. So, at a neighbors party on Thursday, April 26th, 2012, we announced that we were putting our house on the market the end of May and would travel the world. We figured that a month would give us plenty of time to sort through the house, pull furniture out of rooms to better stage the house and get ready for a very large "Estate Sale".
Like so much of our life, it was about to get really crazy. We had a phone call the next morning from friends that had friends staying with them. This visiting couple wanted to see our home before they left to return back up north. Well, Ed and I got very busy moving furniture out of rooms and into the garage, cleaning up our clutter and making the house look more like a model home. It must of worked because three days later the first people to see our home bought it and wanted it closed by June 29th! We had pulled the trigger and had set things in motion and we had to step into high gear and make some really big changes to our schedule.
I first had to find a home for Maggie & Scarlett and I had been putting off that tough decision. I phoned our breeder and told her what we were doing and that I had to place both girls in the same home. She called me back in a hour and had found the perfect home for them. A couple that had a two year older male from this breeder had very suddenly lost their dog. They were thrilled at taking Maggie and Scarlett. The toughest day in my life was on May 9th and driving the nine hours to their new home and leaving them, I thought my heart had broken many times over. It has turned out that Maggie and Scarlett are in a perfect new forever home and loving it with their new mommy & daddy. We get to see pictures of them and they look so happy.
After 44 years of marriage, you would have thought we could have selected one of two of the same countries . Ed's top 5 selections never made my list....Oops! The first place on his list was Ecuador and I had to grab a map to find out exactly where in South American it was located. Ed shared with me all the reasons why it was his first selection and that got my curiosity up to do more research on the county. The more I read the more I wanted to visit that country.
The pull to Cuenca, Ecuador is very strong for both of us. It became our first destination to visit. Then, somewhere along the road to learning everything we could about the country, it became more. We now have plans on becoming residents and will just make plans to travel from there.
Why Cuenca..... Ed was raised in a town nestled in a valley surrounded by Rocky Mountains. He is totally a person who loves the mountains but would never return there because of the extreme cold winters. We are both burned out of the Florida heat and humidity and have talked about finding a better climate where to live. We have enjoyed five trips to Spain and have fallen in love with that country and believe we have found a city that will offer us a taste of that but closer to home. This is a new journey that we will travel together and take as it comes. We have learned that we are flexible and can bend with life so we greet this new experience with open arms and hearts.
This is just the start of this journey - please come back and see what happens next.
Peggy
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