Taking A Risk & Dreams

Taking A Risk & Dreams

Yesterday, I was listening to the radio and heard Bette Miller sing 'The Rose'.  I've heard it a hundred times but it was yesterday that the words brought some thoughts about "the dream afraid of waking that never takes a chance."  I don't want to have regrets that I missed opportunities in life to really live & dance and I've not always been like this.

"I say love it is like a flower.
And you it's only seed.
It's the heart afraid of breaking
That never learns to dance.
It's the dream afraid of waking that never takes the chance"

When I was growing up, I was never a risk taker, I always followed the rules and colored within the lines.  I dotted my I's and crossed my T's with perfection.  I was never messy and didn't like messy.  Any adventure I was willing to take was within a good book. 

Then, why do some people take risks and others do not?  Does risk taking have to do with self esteem? 

I have heard so many negative comments about our plans to move Ecuador & that THEY would never do it.  So, why in the heavens am I moving to Cuenca, Ecuador? 

When did I become a risk taker?

Life in the military does force you take risks that you would not taken... 

I think my life began to change when Ed had to go to Vietnam for a year.  The risk of loosing my husband was more than I could think about.  Ed left on a cold February morning when our daughter was just two months old and our son was 17 months.  That year I had to make major decisions for the family without Ed's input on the matter.  I was taking a risk that I would make the 'wrong' decision.  OK, so putting new tires on the car was not a life changing matter but it did involve some serious money in those days.  But, I also learned that year, I was stronger than I ever believed; I worked part-time, ran a house, raised two babies, paid the bills, and kept up Ed's spirits as best as I could by letting him know we were OK at home.

For the next twenty years, as our children were being raised, the Army gave me opportunities to take risks and continue to grow.  We had assignments to Seoul, Korea and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and trust me, I would never have selected either of them.  But, with "I can do this" attitude (often faked for a while) both turned out to be good moves for us. 

It was about five years ago when Ed 'pushed' me into becoming a travel agent.  I had been asked by a small local travel agency to join them and they would train me.  My first thought was "No, I'm not qualified to do that."  Ed had to remind me that I had just planned and pulled off (by myself) an elaborate eight week trip for us to China, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand.  To become a 'professional' seemed like a risk to me.  I told the travel agency that I would try it for just six months and would not sign a contract with them.  It was just a year later when I opened my own licensed agency.

Billy Wilder said "Trust your own instinct.  Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of some else's"

My instincts are good about people, travel and turning their dreams into destinations.  My business grew and I have loyal clients that trust me.

Owning the travel agency offered me the occasions to travel on my own, which I had never done before.  I was offered two professional training trips to Thailand by the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) to become a Thai expert.  These training trips lasted about 14 days and were fully paid for, including airfare, by TAT.  Also, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has Hosted me to attend several major travel forums in Asia.  All these were training trips and they covered my airfare and hotel during the conferences.  I've traveled to Hanoi, Vietnam; Phnom Pehn, Cambodia and Bali, Indonesia with ASEAN.  But, it was much more than just the wonderful trips for me... I was learning to trust my own instincts, explore dream locations, and learn to take risks all on my own.  Wow, what blessings those trip have been to me.

So, am I more comfortable now taking risks because:

1.  I have taken risks in the past and had some success  OR
2.  I now have a stronger sense of self esteem

Did the chicken or the egg come first???

For years Ed and I have been talking about doing more traveling but staying longer in the places.  But, the problem was we owned a home and had two darling mini-schnauzers.  It was just in February 2012 that we really looked at how much we wanted to follow that dream & we questioned if it was even possible AND were we willing to take the RISK.  It was a huge risk....

Mark Twain wrote:

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did.  So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails.  Explore.  Dream.  Discover."

Neither Ed nor I wanted to look back and have regrets about not taking the risk.  What would be the worst thing about moving.... we would hate Ecuador and then just find another location to move to OR maybe multi destinations is our path!  We took Bill Cosby words to heart;

"Decide that you want it more than you are afraid of it."

So, we sold our home, had an estate sale, donated a ton of stuff, sent items to a local consignment shop, and gave the kids the items they wanted.  The hardest part by far was finding a new home for our girls, Maggie & Scarlett.  But, that even worked out,  we found a great couple who wanted both sisters and were experienced schnauzer owners. 

So, Ed and I have "thrown off the bowlines" (our home and possessions) and will be leaving our safe harbor of family & friends and will allow the trade winds to fill our travel sails.  Do we see it as a risk?  It doesn't feel risky now, just liberating & darn exciting.

So, my question to YOU is... what is your dream and what is holding you back from making it happen?  What are your bowlines?  Will you look back in 5, 10 or 20 years from now and have regrets?  I think many at my age have learned that our possessions are who we are, they tell the world we have arrived and are successful!  I was a serious about making my "I have arrived" statement but when I arrived so had all my friends and some had arrived at a much higher place than mine.

So, letting go of my "statement" possessions was different than what I expected.  First, I learned that my kids didn't want any of them and my friends wanted to pay a couple of dollars to own them.  Really, what they were to me were memories and I still have those memories.  It was also about the experiences I had in the places where I collected them and I still have those.  I guess I want more experiences and less things, so I'll take more pictures.....

Have a great day & think about your dreams.... Peggy

Lessons In My Life

Lessons in My Life

Our lives is a series of lessons and here are some of the things that I've learned.  Now, I'm not saying that I learned these lessons the first or even the second time they were presented to me.  But, with age I do feel I am getting better at learning.  I also hope not to have to repeat lessons several times over - for the last lesson was a tough one but I got it! .................

My father was an Army officer and spent 30 years on active duty.  I grew up living and traveling around the world.  One of my earliest memories is my father giving me an Army footlocker and telling me that it was for just my special things.  I was about four years old and we had been living in Germany since I was a year old.  My mother helped me pack my treasures into the footlocker for our move back to the States.  Things important to me then were my books, dolls, and toys.  The footlocker was one of the first things off the moving truck when we arrived stateside.  I got busy "setting up my new bedroom" very quickly and that gave me comfort and the feeling of roots.  My son now has that old Army footlocker in his basement.

My father had a second three year tour to Germany when I was about 10 years old.  I used that same footlocker to pack away my most treasured belongings.  Yes, at that age it was my books, dolls and games.  I can still remember my bedroom in Germany that had a large closet with shelves and drawers where I places my worldly goods.  I was "home" again.  This room also had a bunk bed (provided by the U.S. Army) and I loved laying on the top bunk and reading with a flash light.  I still love reading at night and am now blessed with an Itty Bitty book light that neatly clips onto my book or Kindle.  I've always loved reading at night and had missed doing it while the kids were young because I had returned back to college.  Back in those days the only reading I did was text books and maybe would have time to 'flip' through a ladies magazine.

Lesson:  Do what you love to do and make the time to do it!

Obviously, I was happy growing up in the military, because I married an Army officer who served 22 years on active duty.  We had been married only months before we moved to our first assignment together to Nuremberg, Germany.  Now, moving back to Germany was almost like going home for me.  We were assigned government quarters and issued furniture because we didn't own any.  This was my first home as a wife and it was important to make it feel like home.  My old habits of settling in quickly took root and became a life long habit.  I could proudly boast that I could arrive at a new place, unpack, pictures hung and host a dinner party in four days.  Settling had to happen quickly because some of our assignments were only a few months long and it still had to feel like home.

Lesson:  Where ever you live - it's HOME, so make it feel like home quickly!

Being in the military had one problem we had to deal with on each move ... weight allowance.  The Army would only allow us to move so many pounds of household goods free of charge.  If you went over that allowance, you would then be charged.  So, with each move it would become a challenge to "purge" in order to stay under the weight allowance.  I guess I had learned in my youth that you could NOT keep collecting stuff because it wouldn't all fit into my footlocker!  I can remember when I gave away my wedding dress in Korea to our maid.  She explained that having a western style wedding dress was the dream of many of the young Korean girls, so I gave her my dress for her wedding.  Several of my American women friends were aghast by this because they felt I should have saved it for my daughter.  To me it was just a dress and my daughter would want her own dress so I gave it away and never regretted it.

Lesson:  Your priorities change throughout the years - learn to let go of what is not of service to you any longer!

I had spent three years in Germany before I was four years old.  My mother had a young German maid who would cook, clean and also care for me.  I learned to speak German and loved German cooking.  Because my mother had to shop for my clothes on the local market, I also dressed like a young German girl.  When, we returned back to the States, I felt like a foreigner and didn't feel like I fit in with the other young American girls.  So, even at the young age of four years old, I could tell that I didn't say, do and look the same way as other girls.  I learned to see the differences and adapted quickly.  I also learned from this to try new foods for I just might like them.  One day my mother and I were in Keene, New Hampshire shopping when we stopped at a sidewalk hot dog stand.  She taught me to try sweet pickle relish and celery salt on my hot dog and I to this day I still eat my hot dogs that way!

Lesson:  Try it!  You might like it!

Lesson:  Always be flexible and adjust to new situations!

I have to thank my parents for my love of traveling and looking at life as an adventure.  My parents always made moving fun and exciting by focusing on the new that would happen.  I grew-up thinking that new was exciting and embraced all things new.  I can remember the day my new husband & I arrived in Frankfurt, Germany on our first assignment together.  I introduced Ed to great German beer at the Rhine Main Officer's Club.  Then, I was able to arrange for our train ride to Nuremberg through my German speaking skills that I could remember from ten years before.  For our first anniversary, we spent ten days touring Paris and Amsterdam.  I had to plan for a month for the trip because our budget was a totally of $120 which broke down to only $10 per day.  That daily amount covered hotel, food and sightseeing, it was a tight trip but one of the most memorable!

Lesson:  The best experiences do not have to cost a lot of money!

When Ed was selected to attend the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas in summer of 1981, I was told it was going to be the best year of my life.  When, we arrived in our government quarters on base, I thought this will never be the best year of my life.  We did have many great experiences during the year but it was not the best year of my life.  When, Ed came home with his next assignment from Ft. Leanvenworth and said that we would be going to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, I thought things were going from bad to worse.  That next tour was three years in Riyadh with the Office of the Project Manager of Saudi Arabian National Guard (OPM-SANG).  It was June 1982 and our children were ages 10 and 11 and this was a big move for them and I needed to express a positive attitude.  But, how do you get excited about Saudi Arabia....?  It was truly a great tour for our family and we had the best three years of our lives as a family.  We made some of the best friends there and are still very important to our lives today. 

Lesson: Life can be an adventure if you CHOOSE it to be....

During our three years we spent in Saudi Arabia, we got to travel outside the Kingdom a couple of times a year.  On our flight over to Saudi Arabia, we arranged to spend five days in Rome to introduce the kids to a little taste of Europe.  During our years in Riyadh, we made four trips to Spain, a train trip from Germany to Paris, and did a wonderful winter trip to southern Germany.  We even made a trip to Egypt for us to visit the Pyramids in Giza.  We also visited Greece and did a short cruise of a few of the beautiful Greek islands.  On our way back to the United States our family spent two memorable weeks in Ireland. 

Lesson:  I have a love of traveling and experiencing the wonderment of other countries.... It would also become my second career after we retired when I opened my own travel agency!

When our family returned to the States from our years living in Saudi Arabia, it was time to settle into our new lives in Columbus, Ohio.  The kids were in junior high and needed stability.  Ed retired from the Army while we lived in Columbus and that allowed Brian to graduate from high school there.  Ed was offered a job in Houston, Texas while Amy was in her senior year, but she decided to move with the family and finish her senior year while attending a local junior college.  We were able to go back & have her to walk with her graduating class.  The next years in Houston were family time and being together.  Amy met her husband who was working with Mission Control at NASA at Johnson Space Center.  Amy's new husband was from northern Ohio and the next year they returned back there so Dennis could help out with the family business.  Brian returned to Columbus to be with his high school friends.  So, that left Ed & me alone in Houston but not for long.  Ed got a new job offer with IBM in Owego, New York and a new adventure was going to happen to us without kids.  We didn't live long there before he was transferred to Columbus, Ohio to open a new office for IBM.  It was just 6 months later he was asked to move to Dayton, Ohio to open an office there.  During this time, Ed became a road warrior and travel about 80% of the time.  He was always on the road between Owego, N.Y; Washington D.C; Denver; San Antonio, Texas; Columbus, Ohio and Dayton, where we lived.  The only traveling I did was on several business trips with him or to visit our kids that were both living in Ohio.

During this time, I believed that Ed and I were finished with international traveling.  There were just so many places we wanted to see in the U.S but didn't have time to see them.  But, one day we were talking about our dream places that we wanted to visit.  The one place I wanted to see was China; to walk on the Great Wall and visit the Terra Cotta Warriors in Xian.  Ed's dream was to return to Southeast Asia; to return to Vietnam & Cambodia where he had been stationed during the Vietnam War in 1972 to 1973.  We then talked about if it would be possible to combine the trips and do just one long trip to cover both dreams.

It took me 15 months to put together this very complicated eight week itinerary.  We started in Hong Kong for 5 days, then into Beijing for a week to see the Forbidden City and the Great Wall.  We then flew to Xian for several days to see the Terra Cotta Warriors.  It was everything I thought it would be and was thrilled that I had turned my dream into reality.  We then took a 16 day cruise on Princess Cruise Line from Beijing to Bangkok, Thailand.  We spend a week in Bangkok before we flew to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam.  Ed had spent a couple of months in Saigon and it offered him time to see the changes in the country and city.  Our next city was Phnom Pehn, the capital city of Cambodia, where Ed had been stationed with the American Embassy during the war.  Then, it was onto Siem Reap, where the Angkor Wat Temples are located.  I was not thinking that I would I would fall in love with southeast Asia, but it was the beauty of the countries and the warm and welcoming people that drew me in and stole my heart.  When we left Asia for our 5 day stop in Hawaii, I cried to think that I would never return to this part of the world.

Well, it turned out that trip was not be my only trip to southeast Asia.  After, I opened my travel agency, I became a southeast Asian specialist.  I have now had seven memorable trips to the region and it is still my favorite place on the planet.  I have even escorted two small groups on a 21 day tour of Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam.  I love to share my love of this region with other people and watch as they fall in love with the countries. 

Lesson:  Having dreams are important to your life and always stay open to new experiences, they just could be more memorable than you ever expected!

Now, the last lesson I learned was just a couple of months ago.  I have written a full blog on this experience... it was driving a 27 foot U-Haul truck from Tampa, Florida to northeast Ohio.  It was both physically and mentally challenging for me.  There were several times during the trip I just wanted to stop the truck and never get back in it.  This trip taught me several lessons...

Lesson:  Helen Reddy's song "I Am Woman" can get me though a tough time and I don't care that I can't carry a tune, I will sing it loudly to get me past that rough spot.

Lesson:  I am not a quitter and will push through a tough time to do what I need to do!

Lesson:  NEVER volunteer for anything until you really know what you're getting into!

I know that I'm not finished learning but I sure hope the lessons in my future are not as difficult as my last one.

Peggy

Hitting a Moving Target!

Documents Needed and How Things Change = Hitting a Moving Target!

We have only recently decided, within the past 90 days, we were going to move to Ecuador and apply for residency there.  We have been very busy getting all the necessary paperwork completed for our move. 

First, research dealt with just trying to figure out what Visa we needed to get into the country and stay.  If you are a Tourist, you can enter Ecuador and receive a 90 day tourist visa upon your arrival at the airport.  But, we "heard" you could not renew that visa while in country - so could we complete our Residency paperwork within 90 days?  There is another Visa (12-IX) that requires you to apply for that while in the States and has much more paperwork connected but it is good for 6 months. 

12-IX Visa - is good for 6 months
1.  "Aplicacion de Visa" Visa Application completed & signed (Ecuadorian Embassy web site)
2.  "Certificado de Visacion"  Visa Certificate
3.  Original passport, valid for at least 6 months beyond the departure date
4.  2 recent color passport pictures with white background
5.  Police certificate indicating that there is no record
6.  Bank letter stating that the person has good economic standing & can support himself/herself

This application and all documents must then be sent to the nearest Ecuadoran Consular (Miami for us) along with $230 payment.

Ed wrote a long email to Ms. Serrano in the office in Cuenca that now processes  an Expats Residency paperwork.  His question to her was "do we need a 6 month Visa in order to have time to process our Residency paperwork OR could a Visa Upon Entry be renewed while in country".  Her reply was a week later but she told us if we submit our papers as soon as we arrive for our Residency, we should have enough time to finish the process because it is now only taking about two months.  But, she also explained that if the process should take longer that an extension to our Visa could be done but had to be applied for 30 days before the expiration date.

OK - we knew that we could just fly down and start the process right away and should be completed within two months.... good news for us.  So, the race was now on for us to get all our required documents ready.

Next big questions - what documents did we need to have with us upon arrival to file for our residency? ... Now this is where the Moving Target comes into play.  It seems the requirements for the Pension Residency seem to change weekly in Ecuador.  Papers that were NOT needed last week are now required. 

We also learned that some of the documents needed to be apostilled in the United States.  OK, what does that mean & how do you get that done????  It means the document - has a certificate that is used to legalize a document for use in another country.  The apostille certificate is a small square certificate that is attached to another document.  The apostille confirms that a government form, signature, seal or stamp on a document is genuine.

We needed certified birth certificates for each of us with a date within the past 12 months.  So, we wrote away to New Hampshire and Montana for our new certified copies.  Then, we had to send each one with a cover letter, back to that state's Secretary of State's office to have it apostilled.  We had to also have a new certified marriage certificate and that also had to be apostilled by the state of Virginia.  OK, we were moving right along with what we needed.

We printed off a form from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement website.  We had to provide the Ecuadorian government with proof that we didn't have any criminal record.  Once that certified document arrived, we had to send it to Tallahassee to be apostilled.  Yup, another box checked.

Then, we needed a certified letter from our doctor that we didn't have any type of communicable disease (TB or HIV).  That had to be sent also to Tallahassee to be apostilled.  We have heard that this letter might not be required any longer - but we will have it available if necessary.  Again, a moving target - today - NO but tomorrow Yes!

Now, we had to prove to Ecuador that we had a minimum pension of $800 per month plus an additional $100 for each additional person (just me).  So, for a couple it requires a minimum of $900 per month proof of steady pension income 'for life'.  So, we needed a certified letter from Social Security giving the amount of Ed's pension.  That had to sent to Tallahassee to be apostilled.  This original document must then be translated into Spanish by a bilingual notary who will then notarize it.  Then, all that is sent it to the Ecuadorian Consulate in Miami and they certify it.

OK, still more I's to dot.... we needed a couple of current color passport pictures with white back-ground taken, a color copy of our main picture passport page & it notarized, and then all the documents must be translated into Spanish.  The translation of the pages can be done in Cuenca when we arrive, we've been told but still researching if that is true.

We think that is all we need now... just like hitting a moving target.  We are always concerned that Ecuador will add something else before we're down there and have our paperwork into their system.  Our flight departs on September 13th. 

We owe a BIG thank-you for all the guidance & help we received from the 'Ecuador Expat' Facebook Group.  Everyone there has been so kind in answering all our questions.  We were doing research on the Ecuadorian Embassy website and that information wasn't even current & not helpful.  I asked the question on the group page and received the correct current answer very shortly.  I don't believe we could have gotten all this done without the Group's help.

Muchas Gracias,
Peggy