Jason and I visited Argentina for a few months from February to May of 2008. We loved our time there and want to go back to visit in the future. Some of our favorite parts of our visit were the architecture of Buenos Aires, the fabulous steaks and ice cream, the passionate and sophisticated culture and the low prices!

Some Argentina Info:

Argentina is the second largest country in South America (geographically), after Brazil. Here is a map of South America showing Argentina. It is the green country that fills up nearly the entire tail of the continent (with Chile being a sliver of a country on the west side of Argentina):

Buenos Aires feels like a mix between Paris and New York City, with a stronger leaning toward Paris.

Some of the most recognizable national symbols of Argentina are the tango, the best beef in the world and an obsession for football (known in the US as soccer).

Above is a picture of a part of Buenos Aires that looks a bit like Times Square in New York.

Regions of Argentina

Argentina is made up of vastly different climates and geographic regions. It has beautiful coastal areas, tropical rain forests, deserts, large grassy plains (called the Pampas), and huge mountains with glaciers.

Rocks, seashells and seaweed on the coast of Peninsula Valdéz, Argentina.

The name Argentina is derived from the latin word for “silver.” It seems that early explorers in the 1600’s named the country Argentina when they discovered deposits of silver there.

A Brief History of Argentina

Early History

Several different groups of Native South Americans  lived in Argentina over 11,000 years ago. One of those groups was the Incas that spread into the northern region of Argentina.

Colonization

In 1516, European colonizers came to Argentina. By 1580, the Spanish had created a colony on the site of present day Buenos Aires. African slaves were brought to the colony by the Spanish settlers, and many of their descendants remained in Buenos Aires for several centuries.

The British attempted to invade Argentina in 1806-07 but the population of the country was able to drive them off, largely without help from mainland Spain. Argentina gained independence from Spain in 1816.

Independence from Spain

In the years that followed Argentina’s declaration of independence from Spain, civil war tore the country apart. It wasn’t until 1856 that there was an end to the fighting and the constitution of Argentina was written.

After the country stabilized, there was a flood of investment and development in Argentina from foreign countries. Agriculture in Argentina became modernized, which led to an ability for the residents of Buenos Aires and other populous areas close to the city to spread out into the desert and Patagonia.

This time of spreading was called the “Conquest of the Desert” which led to many deaths in the indigent population. Add the devastating effects of foreign diseases to the equation, and the indigent population was nearly wiped out. Today, less that 2% of Argentina have indigenous ancestry. Argentina is truly a nation of immigrants, mainly coming from Italy and Spain.

Argentina’s Golden Age

Argentina enjoyed a “golden age” of development and prosperity between 1880 and 1929. Immigration from Europe reached a feverish pace. At one point, Argentina was the 10th richest country in the world! This led to a sizable aristocracy with highly visible signs of wealth, such as large estates, gobs of fine jewelry, the latest fashions from Paris, fine furniture and collectibles, etc.

And the Military Coups Begin

When Argentina was hit with the great depression in 1929 (the same depression that affected the US at that time), the military in Argentina decided to oust the sitting president. What followed was period of military rule interspersed with brief times of democracy, although the military continued to play a large part in government during the democratic years.

The Perons

In 1946, Juan Peron was elected into the presidency. He was a former general in the Argentine army.

Although Peron was an elected president, he used some dictatorial and fascist methods. Nonetheless, the people of Argentina loved him because he was an improvement over the past military controlled regime and for his efforts to help the working class.

The public also loved Juan Peron’s wife, Eva Peron. Her affectionate nickname among the people was “Evita.” She was a woman born into poverty who rose to fame and power as the First Lady of Argentina.

While her husband was in office, she focused on helping the poor and disadvantaged through her own charitable organization. She is praised and adored in Argentina to this day for her efforts.

Picture of Evita Person

Although Peron was a largely loved and praised president, he was forced into exile in Spain when a military coup removed him from office. The various forms of military regime ruled until 1973 when Peron was brought back to Argentina for the presidency by popular demand.

Peron died during in July of 1974. Peron’s then current wife, Isabel, succeeded to the presidency by virtue of her appointed position of Vice-President by her husband.

Isabel ruled for two years, during which time she upheld some of her late husband’s most fascist methods. At the end of those two years, a military coup forced her from office in 1976.

The “Dirty War” Regime

After this coup, a particularly brutal military regime was in control of Argentina. Any protests of the government were squashed with lethal force. This time of oppression is called ”the Dirty War.”

The Dirty War was characterized by the kidnap, torture and murder of dissidents of the military or the dictatorial regime. Thousands of Argentines went to work, school or church during this time and never came home. They were called “the disappeareds.” The family and friends of the disappeareds never knew exactly what happened to their loved ones.

It was revealed years later that the disappeareds were abducted by the military regime and were tortured to get information about subversive groups in the country. After they were tortured, they were murdered and disposed of.

Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo

There is a group of mothers of the disappeareds called “The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo.”  They have fought for three decades to find out what happened to their children and grandchildren. Every Thursday, they march for a half an hour to symbolize their continued fight to be reunited with or honor their missing children. They wear white scarves on their heads as symbols of the white doves of peace.

Jason and I were able to observe the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo during our stay in Argentina. It is a very moving thing to see these women who have never given up their quest for their disappeared children.

Democracy is Back, But the Country’s Still in Trouble!

In 1983, this last military regime in Argentina ended. Many forces combined to bring down the military regime responsible for the Dirty War, from domestic economics, to international pressure due to human rights violations, to heavy corruption in the government. Democracy was reinstated in a national election and has remained in force until the present day.

The succeeding presidents in Argentina faced the fallout from many years of poor fiscal management by military regimes. Not only was the country in massive debt, but the once thriving exports of Argentina were dismally few and imports were crippling the national economy.

Add to these problems wide spread corruption in the government and a declining confidence in most South American countries’ ability to repay loans, and you’ve got a country on the edge of economic collapse.

The Economic Crisis of 2001

The government of Argentina enacted measures to keep the economy from falling apart, including freezing all bank accounts in the country in order to prevent a mass of people withdrawing their money all at once in a panic. This led to street riots in which police attempted to intervene. When several people were killed, the general discontent reached such a peak that the sitting president of Argentina resigned.

There was a period of confusion about who was in power when three presidents took office and then resigned, one right after the other within three weeks’ time. When the government finally stabilized, the legislature of Argentina decided that they had no other choice than to default on the country’s international debt.

The value of the Argentine peso plummeted. The already high unemployment rate rose higher. Many people lost their life savings overnight through the freezing of their savings accounts by the government and then the foreclosure of their bank.

Already soaring inflation skyrocketed. Many, many people were thrust in to poverty overnight and others already living in poverty were beyond destitute.

Many wealthy families lost their estates and antique furniture to default settlements. Others sold their fine things in order to get by. As a result, there is now a large stockpile of beautiful antique furniture and collectibles for sale in numerous antique stores in Argentina. Defensa Avenue in Buenos Aires is home to the biggest number of antique sellers per capita in the world.

Recovery

In 2002, the new president turned his attention to nursing the broken economy back to health. He focused increasing exports and re-industrialization. Succeeding presidents have continued to focus on exports, as well as restructuring the defaulted international debt to pay it back. Domestic changes in income policies for workers and nationalizing utilities that had been privatized helped the inch forward on the way to health.

Seven years later, Argentina is recovering from the economic crash of 2001 at a steady rate, although there is a long way to go. Living conditions have improved and the unemployment rate has lowered. Inflation has not decreased very much, though, and this is a continuing concern.

Today, Argentina is an “emerging market” that has much of the industrial and civic infrastructure of first-world countries, but not all of them. Wine is becoming a huge export in Argentina, along with beef, soybeans and grains. Some US companies are outsourcing their customer service call centers to Argentina, due to a high population of English speakers combined with cheap labor costs in the country.

Coming up on Jet Set Now

In my next post about Argentina, I will tell you more about Argentine culture, food and infastructure. Until then, tell me what you would like to know about visiting Argentina.

Do you want to know how to move to Argentina for six months or longer? Do you want to know the must-see attractions in Argentina on a short trip? Do you want to know what it’s like renting a furnished vacation apartment? Those are just some examples. Ask me more in the comments below.

Photo credits: Argentine flag by Finizio; Map of Argentina by thejourney1972; Buenos Aires by GustavoBuriola; Rocks, Shells and Seaweed by Rainer Brockerhoff; Arc in Cordoba, Argentina by mherrero; Evita by Dr John2005;

This post is the second installment of the story of our arrival in Argentina in February of this year. When I left off in the story, I told you about our international plane ride.

When our plane landed in Buenos Aires, I was excited to see what my new home was like.

I hadn’t done much international travel before this experience. I had gone to Canada once with my family when I was about 9 or 10 years old. The only thing I can remember about Canada is that there was French as well as English on my cereal box while I was there.

I had visited Japan with my local children’s song and dance group when I was 11, but we were trapped entertaining visitors in an American-style theme park for most of the trip.

I had visited Tijuana, Mexico with my family for a day when I was 13 or 14 years old. Not much to write home about.

And finally, I had visited Paris with Jason during our fourth anniversary for ten days. Now THAT was a trip. It made me hungry to see more of the world.

So really, I wasn’t the most experienced international traveler when we landed in Buenos Aires. I was very curious to see what it would be like to live in this foreign city for several months.

We retrieved our luggage and piled it onto two carts. We had 11 pieces of luggage, which was not fun. It’s a novice mistake to overestimate your need for certain items from home. Boy, have we corrected that mistake by now!

We had been warned that the exchange rate for currency at the airport was expensive, so we exchanged a minimum amount of cash at the airport and waited to visit a bank to exchange the rest.

When we began to exit the airport, a woman I didn’t know came up to me and seemed very interested in talking to me. When she got closer I saw that she was holding a picture of my family taken at my sister’s wedding. This sister I speak of is Jill, who is married to my Argentine brother-in-law, Javier.

It seemed that this woman was connected to Jill in some way, but I didn’t recognize her from any of the pictures Jill had shown me of Javier’s family.

The woman quickly explained in very limited and broken English that Javier’s mother, Susanna was here and came to pick us up. I was very surprised because Susanna’s earlier plan to pick us up at the airport had fallen through.

Susanna arrived by my side shortly after this woman and I began conversing. She hugged me and welcomed me to Argentina in the Argentine dialect of Spanish, which is called Castillian. She then turned to Jason and welcomed him just as warmly.

I was glad for this fun surprise. It was nice to have people there who wanted to show us a good time and get us safely to our hotel. A man joined us shortly, and Susanna attempted to explain who these two unfamiliar people were. The woman finally explained that they were acquaintances of Susanna’s family and had come to help us to our hotel.

We had too much luggage to take in one trip, so Jason went ahead with the couple to take the first load to our hotel. Susanna and I waited behind for them to pick us up with the rest of the luggage.

Susanna didn’t speak very much English, and I didn’t speak very much Spanish, but I had my Spanish-English dictionary with me, so we were able to communicate a little in Spanish while we waited. Susanna expressed a lot of interest in me, asking a lot of questions and encouraging me in my attempts to answer her in Spanish.

When the car came back to pick us up, I was fascinated as I looked out the window as we drove toward Buenos Aires. There wasn’t much to see other than fields until we reached the city. We drove through some of the historical parts of town, so I was impressed with the beautiful old buildings.

We arrived at our hotel in the famously chic district of Recoletta. Our hotel was quite nice, although our room was very small. It reminded me of hotel rooms in Manhattan.

After we brought our luggage upstairs, Susanna and our host couple asked us if we were hungry. We indeed were hungry, as we had been on a flight for about seven hours since Mexico City. We decided to go to a restaurant and get something to eat.

By this time it was the middle of the night in Buenos Aires, so when we walked through the streets to the restaurant there were very few cars in the road or people on the sidewalk. The tall and beautiful buildings of Recoletta were eye-cathcing, though, and I looked forward to being able to see them in daylight. Here is an example of the beautiful buildings in Recoletta:

Photo: Recoletta by building:  krylov

We were very lucky to have locals with us for our first foreign meal. They recommended a good restaurant and helped us pick out our first Argentine steak. They also showed us the local custom for dressing salads with olive oil, vinegar and salt and tossing the leaves with two spoons.

The steaks and salads were delicious. Argentine beef is indeed the most delicious beef in the world, and Argentine produce tastes like it was picked straight out of a little garden! Our food contained stronger, fresher, more delicious flavors than most of the food I have ever eaten in the United States. And the meal was quite cheap, too!

As we were eating and conversing, the couple with us pointed out that a famous Argentine fashion designer was sitting just a few tables from us. This felt just like being in New York and spotting a celebrity!

During our meal time conversation, our hosts gave us tips for living in Buenos Aires; where to go, what to avoid, etc. It was really nice to be able to spend our first night in Argentina with my sister’s family member and some other locals.

We retired to our hotel excited about moving into our new apartment in the neighborhood of San Telmo. The picture the picture at the beginning of this post is a shot of San Telmo at night.

We knew that San Telmo is the oldest neighborhood in Buenos Aires, that the tango was born there and that it is the home of the largest open air market in Argentina. Other than that, we didn’t know what to expect from our new home neighborhood.

Look for the next installment of our Argentina story here at Jet Set Now on Tuesday, September 16th. Until then, what else would you like to know about Buenos Aires, Argentina?

We’d been planning this day for months, but we couldn’t believe we were leaving our New York life behind to try and learn Spanish and soak up a little porteño culture. (Porteño is another word for residents of Buenos Aires; Argentina’s largest port city.)

We were excited to discover Argentina’s European and Latin America mixture and history. One of the things we most looked forward to was seeing buildings like the one displayed in the snapshot posted at the beginning of this post. Old, beautiful buildings built in colonial, Victorian and/or Edwardian times.

So it was with excitement and a bit of anxiety about the unknown that we boarded the first leg of our international flight to our new home. We would be stopping in Mexico City to make a connection to Buenos Aires.

Jason and I had studied some Spanish on our own in order to be able to talk about basic necessities with locals once we arrived. It helped quite a bit that Jason was already fluent in French. Once you learn one romance language, it’s so much easier to learn another one!

I thought it was fun to hear the announcements on our flight in both Spanish and English and to think that this is the language I would be hearing around me constantly for months.

When asked by the flight attendant serving dinner if I wanted “pollo o carne,” (”chicken or beef” in English) I was so intimidated that I got all mixed up and thought she was asking me what I wanted to drink. This was the first time somebody had asked me something directly in Spanish and I was over thinking things.

I had cleverly picked up on the fact that the work for Coke in Spanish is “Coca” during the flight, so I quickly blurted, “Coca!” The flight attendant then had to repeat her question in English so I could get it. I felt silly and asked for “pollo.”

So, my first attempt at simple Spanish on our trip was a bust, but I knew I couldn’t let it discourage me. I was just going to have to sound like an idiot for a while until I got the hang of things.

In Mexico City, we had to go through a laborious emigration procedure, and then waited for our next flight. It’s a good thing Jason knew enough Spanish to get us where we needed to go, because I could have ended up waiting in the wrong terminal or something.

The shops in the airport ranged from high end luxury boutiques to tiny stores that sold cheap tourist items. Salespeople would stand by the line that all international arrivals had to go through and shout about the various wares they were selling. They were more aggressive than I was used to, but not much. Being a New Yorker, I’ve experienced pretty aggressive people on the street!

Later, when we were boarding our flight for Buenos Aires, I noticed that a bunch of extremely tall men in casual athletic wear were boarding ahead us. Some of them were wearing jackets emblazoned with the name of a basketball team in Spanish.

I was thinking, “Wow! Cool! Argentine basketball players!” I hadn’t heard that basketball was a sport that Argentinians liked. I heard that people only cared about football (which is what we North Americans call soccer) and polo in Argentina.

It was cool to see a part of Argentine culture that I was not likely to be exposed to while we were living in the Buenos Aires. I wouldn’t have even known to look for a basketball game!

When I looked around at the people on this flight, I saw quite a mixture of people. Some very cosmopolitan, some more muted and casual, some with very light skin tones, some very dark.

I knew that Argentina is made up of an assortment of very few native people and very many immigrants from different countries and ethnicities. For example, under 2% of the population are indigenous people, and the remaining 98% of the country come from mostly European ancestry.

Spain and Italy provided the two largest groups that came to Argentina. My brother-in-law is Argentine and he is a full-blooded Italian. Both of his parents grew up in Argentina, as did he, but his parents are from Italian families that emigrated to Argentina.

The Italian cultural influence in Argentina shows up in its food. Delicious pastas, Italian bread and strong coffee are staples here, as well as long, leisurely afternoons in some of the excellent cafés in Buenos Aires.

Here’s a great picture of me at an Argentine restaurant enjoying some of that awesome Italian bread with my brother-in-law’s parents, Dino and Susanna:

There is also quite a bit of British influence in the Argentine culture, due to the country having a substantial number of British immigrants in its history as well. The most visible example of this influence is the popularity of the sport of polo in Argentina.

Although polo is a sport for the somewhat financially successful in Argentina due to the costs of owning a horse, it is widely followed there. The most popular players of this sport in Argentina are like rock stars.

So after that cultural lesson, suffice it to say that I found this history in Argentina to match up with the variety of people I observed around me in the airplane during our flight. I was excited to see if the capitol city of Buenos Aires was just as cosmopolitan and European as I had been told.

That’s all for today’s installment of our travel stories. This story will be continued in a post on Thursday, September 11, on this blog. Until then, tell me what you would like to know about our stay in Argentina in the comments below. I want to be sure to include the information that you want to know!

As some of you may already know, Jason and I embarked on our latest traveling adventure in Portland, Oregon a little under three weeks ago. We have wanted to live in this place since our garage band days in college.

Every band we knew back then talked about how cool Portland was, how great it was for bands. We checked it out on a five day vacation six years ago, and fell in love with the City of Roses.

Now we get a chance to live here for several months and soak in the Pacific Northwest. The picture above is me at an overlook of the Columbia River, just a few miles east of our new urban home.

In the upcoming weeks, I’ll be sharing stories, pictures and videos of us in our latest location, as well as in our old locations of Buenos Aires, Argentina, New York City, the red sandstone desert near Lake Powell, etc.

Many people from the Jet Set Now community have asked us to stop neglecting our blog and tell them about these locations! We have heard you and will be telling you all about our travels on Tuesdays and Thursdays until we get caught up.

In between these updates we will share with you tips, tricks and info about planning, paying for and enjoying a Jet Set lifestyle of your own. You can expect one blog post a week on Monday, Wednesday or Friday about these topics.

So, until tomorrow, Jet Setters, when we will go back in time and discover our three-month trip to Buenos Aires, Argentina earlier this year!

May 2008 - Harlem

It was interesting being on the other side of the sublet agreement. In the past when we’ve gone to AK for the summer, we’ve always been able to quickly find a tenant who would pre-pay the summer. We’d even make a profit. Now we’re the ones looking. We had to act fast and be flexible to find something that fit our needs.

We spent the first month back in the city living in a luxury condo building on the edge between Columbia University and West Harlem. This is a steadily gentrifying area due to the proximity to the university.

We enjoyed taking in Harlem — the most neighborhood-y neighborhood in all of Manhattan. People are constantly in the streets and on their stoops enjoying each other’s company. It’s clear there is a healthy sense of community there.

June 2008 - Astoria Queens

Buenos Aires spoiled us. We got used to having so much space that the more cramped quarters found in Manhattan were started taking a toll. So we found a three-bedroom sublet in Astoria Queens and joined the “bridge and tunnel” crowd.

Astoria is just across the East River making it easy to get back into Manhattan. As much as I enjoyed having more space, I also missed being constantly in the vibe of the city. We quickly realized that the walk to the subway was longer and the taxis fewer.

Our sublet was near Astoria Park with a fabulous view of the lighted bridge at night. Astoria has a strong Greek community. The houses all have small, well-manicured yards…and yes, some of them with Greek statues.

Next time we come back, we’ll have to try a Brooklyn experience. We’re trying to be well-rounded and multi-borough-al (ummm, not really a word).

Utah

Now we’re in Utah visiting family and have some amazing photos from Lake Powell. We have a lot more to share. We’ll see if we can be more consistent about posting. All this traveling has been a lot of fun, but it can be hard keeping up on everything.

What hints do you have for more consistent blog posting or for managing all our ambitious tasks while traveling?

Things I Will Miss About Buenos Aires

• Taking taxis everywhere (They’re so cheap!)
• The Argentine version of Spanish (Castillian)
• The food! You can tell how excited I am to eat the Argentine steak in the picture above.
• The low prices
• The friendly people
• Cab drivers that blast opera music
• The European architecture
• The awesome metal flower sculpture that opens and closes with the sunlight (see pic above)
• Kisses on the cheek when you say hello and goodbye
• Our awesome friend, Fernando Maclen

Things I Will Not Miss About Buenos Aires

• Getting counterfeit money when taxi drivers give you change for 100 pesos
• Sub-par toilet paper/napkins in restaurants/sheets
• Moldy smell in many public buildings (Due to poor ventilation?)
• Dog poop everywhere on the sidewalks
• Sidewalks that are often wobbly or are just piles of rubble
• Bidets (I still have never used one.)
• Gaining weight because I couldn’t resist overeating the amazing, cheap food!
• Crazy drivers (The lanes in the road seem to be only suggestions in Argentina!)
• No seat belts

If you ever move to Argentina, I recommend bringing your own sheets, never giving a taxi driver a 100 peso bill and doing some kind of hypnosis to be able to resist overeating the food.

What are you most curious about living in Argentina? I’d love to answer your questions in the comments below.

Well, one of the benefits of a jet set lifestyle is that you can change your location plans at any time. We decided that there was no reason to stay in Buenos Aires and wait for winter to hit us if we would rather be in New York enjoying the spring and summer!

So, we booked our flight, sublet a place in Manhattan, and told our Bs.As. landlord that we would be leaving early. And now, here we are in NYC for at least seven weeks, and possibly for the whole summer!

You may be wondering if culture shock was a major reason for us ending our stay in Buenos Aires early. When Jason and I asked ourselves if that we true, we had to say, “I suppose so.”

Yeah, culture shock and homesickness are hard to deal with and we needed a little stay over in our home city to wean ourselves off of our US lifestyle.

There are challenges to adjusting to a jet set lifestyle, but they’re challenges that pay off big time once you overcome them. The great thing is that the choices available to you as a jet setter can help you ease into international living.

We’ve also learned that three months is a pretty good amount of time to spend in a jet set location. I’ve heard from other global nomads that three to four months is a sweet spot for location hopping, and now we can confirm that with personal experience.

Jason and I are looking forward to our plans to continue learning Spanish while we live in Panama, the Dominican Republic, the Mexican Caribbean or some other Spanish speaking location in the near future.

We loved our stay in Buenos Aires and plan on returning to Argentina someday, especially with our future children. We want to see the Iguazu Falls, parts of Patagonia and Mendoza on future trips.

For now, we are gearing up our plans for our next jet set location. It may be Spanish speaking, it may not. After we attend the New Media Expo in Las Vegas in August, we will be open to go anywhere!

Where do you think we should go? What do you think of our early return to NYC?

Photo credit: bondidwhat

But what I’m talking about it something that comes with the territory of having a lot of freedom when it comes to how you spend your time. (Which is something that happens to a lot of us who work for ourselves.) What I’m talking about is a tendency I have to loose my focus on what I need to do in order to keep my jet set lifestyle running!

When virtually unending options of how to spend my time are opened up before me, I can let time slip away focusing on things (even productive things) that give me some sort of pay-off right now at the expense of the more important payoff that I want in my future. I can tell you, it is even harder to focus on goals and tasks when you are living in your dream location and just want to explore all the time! As a result, I end up feeling frustrated and disappointed in myself when I failed to reach my desired goal because I lost sight of what I wanted most. Oh, yeah, and I kind of procrastinated a bit. OK, a lot.

I had a goal of writing an amazing post about how to plan your new jet set lifestyle using my “to do” list that I saved from when we were preparing to move to Buenos Aires. I told everyone who is taking my e-course to look for that post today. When I sat down to actually write the post, the amount of information I needed to sift through and organize was pretty huge. It’s important stuff, but pretty daunting to cover comprehensively.

So, I procrastinated and now it is much too late to organize and compile all that awesome information into a coherent blog post by the end of the day. Sure, I could do a shoddy job and just gloss over what needs to be done in order to embark on a jet set lifestyle, but that wouldn’t be doing you, or myself, any favors. You wouldn’t find that information helpful and I wouldn’t gain any new subscribers or readers from a sub-par blog post. So I decided to reschedule my “how to” blog post and write a post that could flow easily from my heart about a challenge I am facing that you might be able to relate with.

Have you ever found that you repeatedly lose focus when you are the only one directing your actions? I often find that I perform beautifully with structure, external deadlines and the expectations of others, even if I am miserable while doing it. (For example, I had an unfulfilling managerial job for 2 years that made me dread going to work every morning. My bosses always told me that I was the best manager they ever had!)

Now that I have the freedom that I so often longed for, I find that the lack of external structure and pressures leave me “blowing in the wind” a bit. Even though I have a passion for what I do and am excited about what I know I can achieve, I drop the ball. Even through I plan and write down all the right things, like goals, next actions, timelines, deadlines and rewards for completion, I sometimes follow anything but my written plan.

Maybe I spent too long surviving off the expectations of others to expect myself to completely change how I direct my actions in such a short period of time. I used to always think that that I was a natural “self-starter” with “initiative” and “focus.” Turns out that I may only be those things when I stand to face some pretty undesirable immediate consequences if I slack off.

You may think that I am being too hard on myself over the incident of a missed deadline on this blog. But I tell you this is a pervasive pattern that has become clear in my life since leaving the rat-race and embarking on a whole new way of living; taking total responsibility for my own happiness, mistakes, successes and failures. Writing this blog post is another step on the way of taking responsibility for myself so I can get back control of how I spend my time!

What about you? Have you experienced a “motivation vacuum” when you suddenly had the freedom you were looking for? What do you do to keep yourself on track with how you spend your time?

Don’t get me wrong, we love Buenos Aires! We couldn’t be happier that we embarked on this new jet set lifestyle that will take us to a new country every few months. We’re enjoying learning Spanish and soaking up the local culture. It’s just that our friends and our city are doing things without us, and we feel like we are missing out.

Our homesickness has brought to my mind that many jet setters must experience the same thing! And how do we handle this homesickness so that we don’t get depressed or miss out on all the fun things that we can experience at our current location?

I’m not sure what the answer is, but I have a few ideas. I’m going to try a few of the ideas listed below and see how they well they work in alleviating our homesickness.

1) Meet and hang out with more people in our current location.

Our usual workaholic ways keep up somewhat isolated from meeting more local people. We have met a few people through an awesome listener to Jason’s Internet Business Mastery podcast. We’re lucky that this listener, Fernando Maclen, heard that we were moving to Buenos Aires through the podcast and contacted us to meet up. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have met anyone else so far besides our Spanish tutor! (Oh, and my sister’s inlaws, who happen to live in Buenos Aires as well.)

Pretty much, all the people we have met have come to us, which is pretty sad. I pledge to get out there and meet some more Argentine peeps. I’ll tell you how it goes.

2) Keep in better touch with our friends and family.

Whenever we move, Jason and I usually do a decent job of letting all of our family and friends know where we are moving to and that we’re still alive once we get there. There are a few friends and family members that we talk to once or so a month, and fewer still that we contact more regularly.

I’ve been a little lazy in keeping in touch while we are away. This blog will give us more of a chance to communicate our experience to our loved ones (which we haven’t really done so far), and give our loved ones a chance to write back to us about their lives. We’ll see if I can open up the lines of communication again with those near and dear to my heart.

3) Get out and see more sites in our current location

The afore mentioned workaholic nature of our personalities also makes it a little difficult for us to plan out time to experience our new city of Buenos Aires on a regular basis. We seem to have gone on a massive site-seeing spree when we first got here, and now we rarely venture out to new areas. I pledge to plan an execute one awesome “day-out-on-the-town” in a new area of the city every other week. We’ll see if this helps us forget a little bit about the city that we just left.

4) Start a membership site for jet setters here are Jet Set Now.

This is something that I’ve had in the works since the idea for Jet Set Now was first formed in our heads. I always thought that a membership site full of fellow jet setters would be the ultimate travel tips resource as well as an antidote to occasional loneliness. Talking with others who are going through what you are going through always seems to be a soothing balm on our aching problems. But building a membership site is no small endeavor, so it will take a little time for this dream to come to fruition.

5) Just wait it out.

I think it is just par for the course to experience some homesickness while on your jet set adventures; especially when you first embark, as we just have. We’ll see if time will lessen our longing for our New York City home and all the people that we love who still live there. AND, my dear friend from NYC, Ariel Hyatt, is coming to visit us here in Buenos Aires in a few days, so that should help the homesickness in the meantime. It’s a good thing, because we need it!

What about you? Have you ever been homesick while living or traveling abroad? Do you have any suggestions for a cure to our homesickness?

Photo credit: kenyee

When that realization came to us, we decided that being full-time band members wasn’t for us. We wanted to start having kids sometime in the next tens years, and constant touring, smoky bars, and living off Ramen Noodles didn’t seem to be the best environment for raising a family.

Even when we began experiencing music biz success, we thought we would probably have to tour most of the year to keep the success going. At the time, I thought there was no way that I could ever want to raise a family on the road.

Now, years later, we find ourselves in a similar pickle. We love our international travel lifestyle and can see ourselves living this way indefinitely. But what about our future kids? Do we have to limit ourselves geographically once we start raising a family?

If not, how can we avoid the “third culture kid” phenomenon where kids who grow up moving from country to country feel a loss of identity, isolated, and homeless into adulthood? How do we handle long-term travel with kids in foreign countries? And what about giving birth in a foreign country? (Yikes!)

In the years since our band days, we have learned that we very often limit our thinking far short of the possibilities in life. In keeping with that realization, I believe that we don’t need to limit ourselves to one geographic location in order to successfully raise our future children into happy, healthy and loving adults. In that spirit, I have started a new category on our website called Jet Set Families, a resource for anyone interested in healthy long-term travel with kids.

I will interview families living abroad, talk to adults who grew up traveling from country to country with their parents, and break down child psychology and development research into everyday language. I have a masters degree in clinical social work (psychology), so that will help me translate the psychobabble into plain English.

All of the things I will learn for Jet Set Families will help Jason and I fulfill our dream of long-term travel with our future kids. What about you? Do you want to live a jet set lifestyle with kids? Do you currently travel with kids? What are your biggest concerns about having a jet set family?

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