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From Paris To Panama: Celebrating Thanksgiving Overseas

Make The World Your Home

Kathleen Peddicord by Kathleen Peddicord
Nov 22, 2018
in How to, Ireland, Lifestyle
0
two turkeys in front of barn

Image Source: iStock/Nkarol

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All American expats I know are today paying their respects, in big ways or small, wherever in the world they happen to find themselves, to the tradition of Thanksgiving.

Including us.

We’re enjoying Turkey Day this year in Baltimore, Maryland, the jumping-off point for my own live-and-invest-overseas adventures more than 20 years ago.

I write from the table in my mother’s kitchen. As I work, she’s working, too, preparing all the requisites of a traditional American Thanksgiving celebration… just as I’ve watched her do so many times before.

The house smells of melting butter and cinnamon… the turkey is sizzling as it browns in the oven… and the water in the big black kettle atop the stove—the one my mother inherited from her mother—is coming to a boil. Time to drop in the potatoes…

My sister’s children are playing video games together in the living room.

My own children are spread far and wide this year. My daughter and son-in-law are in Panama, helping to hold down the fort at LIOS HQ in Panama City… and my son Jackson is in China, studying for exams (well… that’s the hope) that will mark the end of his first semester as a freshman at NYU Shanghai.

This first empty-nest Thanksgiving I’m more sentimentally inclined even than usual. And, fresh off last week’s visit to Ireland, I’m remembering our first Thanksgiving as Americans abroad…

You couldn’t buy a turkey, plucked or in any condition, really, other than roaming around a barnyard, in Waterford when we first arrived on the scene.

Nor could you find cranberry sauce or pumpkin filling for making a pie in any supermarket.

Our first Thanksgiving in Waterford, I discovered these realities the hard way, by asking at every market in town. My inquiries were met with blank stares.

Finally, I asked a friend, Gerri.

“I understand that you don’t have Thanksgiving here in Ireland,” I said, “but you do eat turkey, don’t you? Where do you get it?”

“You raise it. Or you buy it from a farmer,” Gerri explained.

By the time we left Ireland, seven years later, it was possible to buy a frozen turkey in any of the big supermarkets that opened while we were Waterford residents. However, those first few years, a turkey for roasting was a home-grown specialty.

Our first Thanksgiving in Waterford, therefore, Gerri introduced me to a farmer friend of hers able to fulfill my turkey agenda.

We could have paid him to pluck the bird for us, but Gerri thought it’d be fun for me to try my hand at it myself. So she and I, one cold, misty November Saturday morning, found ourselves in the drafty old barn of her farmer friend, recently dead turkey on the plank table before us.

Eventually that turkey was plucked, but I don’t think I could, in good conscience, take the credit. Mostly, I watched, shivering, as Gerri obliged and prepared the main event for my family’s first Thanksgiving overseas.

Ever since, we’ve debated—return home to Baltimore for Thanksgiving… or share the tradition with friends in the different places where we’ve found ourselves this time of year over the years?

Now, more than two decades into this living and investing overseas adventure, we’re torn.

Baltimore will always be my home town, of course… but “home” for me now is not an address on a map but a frame of mind.

Now I carry Baltimore with me… as I carry Waterford, Paris, Panama City, and other places where Lief and I have put down roots and made connections that have become our extended and ever-expanding family.

The motto of NYU Shanghai, where young Jackson is currently studying, is: “Make The World Your Major.”

I say: Make the world your home…

Happy Thanksgiving.

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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