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Our Lives Are International, But Panama Feels Just Like Home

Nothing Compares With The Feeling Of Coming Home...

Kathleen Peddicord by Kathleen Peddicord
Sep 17, 2018
in Lifestyle, Panama
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Touching down in Panama yesterday, after five weeks on the road, I embraced the strong sense I felt of coming home.

Technically, Lief and I live nowhere. Officially empty nesters since our son graduated high school, we’re footloose and fancy-free… with the frequent-flyer accounts to prove it.

We hold residency in Panama but are no longer based here full-time. These days, we’re moving around the globe as business and personal wanderlust dictate, organizing our travel calendar on the fly.

This year we’ve spent time in 11 countries and counting.

Sounds great, right?

Yes, this first year as parents without kids has been productive for the business, allowing us to chase opportunity when and where it has presented itself… from Portugal to Spain… from Colombia to the Dominican Republic… and from Thailand to Singapore…

And, for sure, it has been fun and exciting to be able to pursue back-to-back adventures across four continents.

These past several months have also, though, frankly, been a bit unsettling… and a little tiring.

Living nowhere can be hard work.

Settling back in the taxi as we pulled away from Tocumen International yesterday afternoon, I relaxed as I haven’t in some time. Lief and I, I reminded myself, weren’t headed to yet another hotel. We were on our way to our own little apartment on Avenida Balboa…

Where we’d be able to unpack (after living out of suitcases for weeks)… to sit together on our own couch to enjoy our evening glass of wine (rather than in the lobby bar of our hotel)… and then to sleep in our own bed.

Driving from the airport into the heart of the city, I watched for all the familiar landmarks… and smiled at the new construction since we were last in town. You can’t blink in Panama City without the landscape in front of you changing before you reopen your eyes.

Today we rose early, dressed, and drove to the office… our usual commute even if we haven’t made it for weeks… picking up where we left off…

What’s news since we’ve been away… we wondered of our Panama City team…

Panama City turned 499 last month and has begun the countdown to the 500th anniversary of its founding… meaning fiestas galore through next August.

The Next Singapore

Also last month, Panama City’s Mayor José Isabel Blandón unveiled an overarching plan for further infrastructure and social projects. Billed as Panamá Resiliente (Resilient Panama), the program includes 45 initiatives to do with public transportation, education, environmental awareness, streamlining of municipal services, citizen involvement, and green infrastructure.

Bottom line, the idea is to improve city parks and avenues, create gymnasiums and other active spaces, plant more trees, and connect the whole of the city with free Wi-Fi.

This city continues to push aggressively to make a name for itself on the world stage as the next Singapore.

Having spent time in Singapore recently, I’d say Panama City has its work cut out for it.

At the same time, driving home along Avenida Balboa yesterday afternoon, I reminded myself that it wasn’t too many years ago that this part of this city looked very different.

When we initially took up residence in Panama in 2008, the park-lined 10-lane thoroughfare that today runs through the heart of this country’s capital all along the Bay of Panama was in its earliest stages.

That is, it didn’t exist.

Avenida Balboa was six lanes with no median, no shoulder, and, in some sections, not even as much as a sidewalk separating the traffic from the fronts of the apartment towers.

Nary a tree or a flower anywhere in sight.

That first year living in Panama City, we’d watch as crews worked around the clock and seven days a week to meet the deadline for the completion of the first phase of the mammoth city-center improvement project known as the Cinta Costera.

Today, a decade and four Cinta Costera phases later, traveling this part of this city you could, in fact, imagine yourself in Singapore.

Step by step… bold infrastructure improvement venture after bold infrastructure improvement venture… a new garden here, another bike path there… this place continues to push ahead with its Next Singapore agenda.

The little engine (backed by the great big Canal) that could.

Kathleen Peddicord

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Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord has covered the live, retire, and do business overseas beat for more than 30 years and is considered the world's foremost authority on these subjects. She has traveled to more than 75 countries, invested in real estate in 21, established businesses in 7, renovated historic properties in 6, and educated her children in 4.

Kathleen has moved children, staff, enterprises, household goods, and pets across three continents, from the East Coast of the United States to Waterford, Ireland... then to Paris, France... next to Panama City, where she has based her Live and Invest Overseas business. Most recently, Kathleen and her husband Lief Simon are dividing their time between Panama and Paris.

Kathleen was a partner with Agora Publishing’s International Living group for 23 years. In that capacity, she opened her first office overseas, in Waterford, Ireland, where she managed a staff of up to 30 employees for more than 10 years. Kathleen also opened, staffed, and operated International Living publishing and real estate marketing offices in Panama City, Panama; Granada, Nicaragua; Roatan, Honduras; San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; Quito, Ecuador; and Paris, France.

Kathleen moved on from her role with Agora in 2007 and launched her Live and Invest Overseas group in 2008. In the years since, she has built Live and Invest Overseas into a successful, recognized, and respected multi-million-dollar business that employs a staff of 35 in Panama City and dozens of writers and other resources around the world.

Kathleen has been quoted by The New York Times, Money magazine, MSNBC, Yahoo Finance, the AARP, and beyond. She has appeared often on radio and television (including Bloomberg and CNBC) and speaks regularly on topics to do with living, retiring, investing, and doing business around the world.

In addition to her own daily e-letter, the Overseas Opportunity Letter, with a circulation of more than 300,000 readers, Kathleen writes regularly for U.S. News & World Report and Forbes.

Her newest book, "How to Retire Overseas: Everything You Need to Know to Live Well (for Less) Abroad," published by Penguin Random House, is the culmination of decades of personal experience living and investing around the world.

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