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    Super Cheap

    • Chitré, Panama
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    • Home
    • Countries

      Top Destinations:

      Whether you’re looking for fun and sun, a peaceful retirement, or the chance to earn some extra income, you’ve got a real world of opportunity open to you… In short, we’ve done our best to narrow down your best options, but only you can decide the right country for you.

      • Spain
      • Portugal
      • Panama
      • Belize
      • Colombia
      • Cyprus
      • Mexico
      • France
      • Montenegro
      • Browse All Countries

      Best For:

      • The Best Places To Retire
      • Health Care Abroad
      • Cost Of Living
      • Investing in Real Estate
      • Establishing Residency
      • Gun Laws In The World
      • English-Speaking Countries
      • Safest Places For Retirement
      • Best Places In Latin America
    • Budgets

      How Much Will It Cost You To Live Overseas?

      The only honest answer is, we have no idea. And neither does anyone else. The only one who can answer that question is you. Here’s the most important thing to understand about budgeting your new life overseas…

      Super Cheap

      • Chitré, Panama
      • Santa Marta, Colombia
      • Phuket, Thailand
      • Dumaguete, The Philippines

      Cheap

      • Medellin, Colombia
      • Boquete, Panama
      • Kyrenia, Cyprus
      • Hua Hin, Thailand
      • The Algarve, Portugal

      Affordable

      • Valencia, Spain
      • Cascais, Portugal
      • Las Terrenas, The DR
      • Pisa, Italy
      • La Rochelle, France
      • Mazatlán, Mexico

      Luxury

      • Ambergris Caye, Belize
      • Kotor, Montenegro
      • The Panama City Beaches
      • Paris, France
    • Resources

      Global Living

      • Living & Retiring Overseas
      • Raising A Family Abroad
      • Foreign Residency & Citizenship
      • Offshore & Diversification

      Making Money

      • International Real Estate
      • Banking
      • Employment
      • Investing

      Follow Us:

      • Meet Our Experts
    • Real Estate

      Join our Weekly Newsletter
      Overseas Property Alert

      Sign up for our weekly newsletter to receive expert insights on the best international real estate investment opportunities.






        We Value Your Privacy! We will not share your email address with anyone else, period.

        Buying Real Estate For Cashflow

        • Discover tips and strategies used by global property investing veterans

        Explore Our Latest Posts

        • Learn how to invest and purchase property abroad…

        Go To The Overseas Property Alert Site

        • How To Become Independently Wealthy And Fund The Lifestyle Of Your Dreams
      • Conferences

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        • Explore Our Events Site

        Live and Invest In Spain Conference

        Offshore Wealth Summit

        Greece Workshop

        VALENCIA, SPAIN

        Sep. 17-19, 2025

        PANAMA CITY, PANAMA

        Oct. 15-17, 2025

        VIRTUAL

        Nov. 13, 2025

        LEARN MORE
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        Contact Our Events Team

        Toll-Free U.S. and Canada:
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        From Outside North America:
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        Reach us with your questions by email at: events@liveandinvestoverseas.com

      • Store

        Unlock The World

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        Overseas Havens Reports

        • Expats' comprehensive destination guides

        Conference Kits

        • Hours of coverage  from our latests conferences

        Lahardan Books

        • Titles on living and investing around the world
        • Explore Our Store
        Your passport to a life well-lived abroad

        Services

        overseas living letter offers affordable retirement guidance
        The Simon Letter Wealth Protection Insights
        Global Property Advisor Global Investment Opportunities

        Our Customer Service team is here to assist with any questions or concerns CustomerService@LiveandInvestOverseas.com

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        Home In Focus: Panama

        Celebrating Christmas In The Tropics

        by Kathleen Peddicord
        Dec 20, 2024
        in In Focus: Panama, Lifestyle
        0 0
        Tropical beach and snowman figure made with sand

        AdobeStock/EMrpize

        These days, as you know, Lief and I are dividing our time between Panama and Paris.

        This year however, we’re Stateside. We’ve spent much of the holiday season in our new home here in Woodstock, Illinois. In a couple days, we’ll head to my hometown of Baltimore where we’ll meet up with the rest of the family and spend Christmas.

        Meantime, back at LIOS HQ, our Panama City-based Live And Invest Overseas team is preparing to celebrate our 17th Christmas in the Hub of the Americas.

        They’ve strung white lights around the trunks of the palm trees in our back garden, hung wreaths on our front gate, trimmed a fresh evergreen in our boardroom, and picked names for Secret Santa…

        Our first Christmas in Panama City, 17 years ago, not knowing better, we bought our tree from the Super 99 grocery store near our apartment. We chose it from among the trees leaning against the front of the store, baking day after day in the hot sun, took it home, and then watched as our little tree lost nearly all its needles long before the 25th rolled around.

        Our second Christmas in Panama City, we asked for help. Where’s the best place to buy a tree in this city, we wondered of friends. A big, fresh, live pine…

        We were directed to a shop called Tzanetatos, on Vía Brazil, a warehouse with pallets of hams, wine, olives, and other holiday fixings, and, in a giant refrigerated area at the back, fresh Christmas trees, delivered direct from Canada.

        Ah, this is more like it, we thought as we stood in the meat locker in our short sleeves and sandals, shivering and rubbing our hands together for warmth. We chose the tallest tree they had, took it home, and enjoyed it through the New Year.

        We’ve returned to this same spot for our tree every year since, remembering to wear sweaters. Some shoppers come dressed in snow parkas.

        Celebrating Christmas in the Tropics all these years, we’ve never had snow, of course, but we’ve always managed the scent of pine in the office and fresh needles underfoot.

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        Christmas Activities 

        In our early years in Panama, we also enjoyed watching our son participate in his annual school Christmas pageant.

        Jackson attended Panama City’s French school his decade growing up in Panama.

        When we arrived on the scene, Paul Gauguin had a total student population, starting from pre-K, of about 75 children. When he graduated three years ago, Jackson was part of a student body that numbered more than 1,000. The school had moved a few years earlier from its original small house in a residential area of the city to a building 8 or 10 times the size in the new Panamá Pacífico city-under-construction.

        I was surprised when we enrolled Jackson years ago to discover that many of the students at Panama’s French school were Panamanian. Why would a Panamanian family, living in Panama City, choose to send their children to a French-language, French-curriculum school? I still don’t know the answer to that question, but today many more Panamanian families are opting for Paul Gauguin, creating an expanding tri-lingual generation.

        Of course, not all the students at Paul Gauguin are Panamanian. Jackson was one of a few Americans. His friends were kids from families that call themselves Spanish, Mexican, Colombian, Irish, English, German, Chinese, Japanese, Canadian, and, yes, French.

        The parents of these wandering youngsters are in Panama as entrepreneurs, like Lief and me, or because the international companies they work for have placed them here. Some of the parents of Jackson’s school friends were in Panama working with the U.N. and other international organizations. Others were in the country for work related to various of this country’s many infrastructure projects. They and their children migrated to Panama from Mexico City or Caracas, Buenos Aires or Santiago, Paris or Madrid…

        And, again, their numbers increased manyfold while we were part of the charming community they create.

        Our first year in Panama, Paul Gauguin’s Christmas pageant took place in the 300-year-old Teatro Anita Villalaz in the center of Casco Viejo’s Plaza de Francia. Even back then, when the student body was much smaller than it is today, it made for as eclectic a collection of small children as you might ever find.

        Some of these children, then and now, have lived in three or four other countries already, though they’ve only barely begun their little lives. Most speak Spanish and French; others also speak English, Italian, German, Japanese, Chinese…

        They switch among languages effortlessly and manage to communicate among themselves cheerfully and with far less misunderstanding than you might expect.

        That first year, on stage in the grand old theater on the Plaza de Francia, the young but worldly bunch from Ecole Paul Gauguin, Jackson among them, performed Christmas songs in Spanish, French, and English, including some we recognized but many we didn’t.

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        “Children in Palestine and children in Israel, children from the Americas and also from China, this day, let us think only of Christmas,” began one song in French.

        Over the past two-and-a-half decades that Lief and I have been raising our children overseas, we have worried sometimes about the lives they’ve been living.

        Jackson, for example, born in Ireland, went on to live and attend school in Paris and then Panama City. He’s an American by birth but has spent more of his life outside of the U.S. than he has in it.

        If you were to ask him, Jackson would tell you that he’s Irish, with the passport to prove it. I wouldn’t call him American or Irish or French either, though the parents of his friends are shocked always to discover that Jackson’s parents are American.

        “But Jackson is French, is he not?” they ask us, trying to make sense of Jackson’s Parisian French in the context of our American English.

        “No, he’s American, like us,” I explain, not sure how else to describe him.

        Jackson is a young guy without a country but embracing the world. Indeed, the motto for NYU Shanghai, where he’s in his final year of study, is “Make The World Your Major.”

        At the French school in Panama City, Jackson connected with 1,000 other guys and girls just like him who, one evening each year, would join together to fill the tropical night with the sound of Christmas songs from around the world.

        On behalf of my hardworking team down in the Hub of the Americas counting down now to the big day, Feliz Navidad.

        Enjoy this special time of year, wherever in the world you find yourself celebrating.

        Until next time,
        Kathleen Peddicord signature
        Kathleen Peddicord
        Founding Publisher, Overseas Opportunity Letter

        Tags: 'Christmas In Panama''Christmas''France''Ireland''panama city'celebrate ChristmasChristmas OverseasexpatsPanamaParis
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        Kathleen Peddicord

        Kathleen Peddicord

        Kathleen Peddicord has reported on opportunities for Americans to live, retire, and do business overseas for 40 years. She has traveled to more than 75 countries, invested in real estate in 24, established businesses in 7, renovated and built properties in 6, and educated her children in 5.

        Kathleen has moved children, staff, enterprises, household goods, and pets from the east coast of the United States to Waterford, Ireland, then to Paris, France, and finally to Panama City, Panama, where she has based her Live And Invest Overseas business. Peddicord and her husband, Lief Simon, now divide their time between Panama and Paris.

        Peddicord was a partner with Agora Publishing’s International Living group for 23 years. She opened, staffed, and operated International Living publishing and real estate marketing offices in Waterford, Ireland; Panama City, Panama; Granada, Nicaragua; Roatan, Honduras; San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; Quito, Ecuador; and Paris, France. Peddicord launched Live And Invest Overseas group in 2008 and has built it into a successful multimillion-dollar business. Today, she shares her firsthand experience of expat life with more than 500,000 readers of her publications, including Overseas Opportunity Letter and Overseas Living Letter.

        Kathleen has been featured often in The New York Times, MSNBC, AARP, CNN, Bloomberg, CNBC, and more and writes monthly about expat matters, international real estate, and offshore diversification for Forbes and U.S. News.

        Kathleen has written several books including the memoirs “At Home In Ireland” and “At Home At Los Islotes” and her latest title “At Home Abroad,” all published by Lahardan Books. Her best-selling "How To Retire Overseas: Everything You Need To Know To Live Well (For Less) Abroad” was published by Penguin Random House in 2018 and her “Buying Real Estate Overseas For Cash Flow (And A Better Life)” was published by Wiley in August 2020.

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              HOME

              Top Countries

              • Spain
              • Portugal
              • Panama
              • Belize
              • Colombia
              • Cyprus
              • Mexico
              • France
              • Montenegro

              Best For:

              • Health Care Abroad
              • Retirement Living
              • Cost Of Living
              • Investing in Real Estate
              • Establishing Residency
              • Gun Ownership
              • English Speakers
              • Safety
              BROWSE ALL COUNTRIES

              Budgets

              How Much Will It Cost
              To Live Overseas?

              Super Cheap

              • Chitré, Panama
              • Santa Marta, Colombia
              • Phuket, Thailand
              • Dumaguete, The Philippines

              Cheap

              • Medellin, Colombia
              • Boquete, Panama
              • Kyrenia, Cyprus
              • Hua Hin, Thailand
              • The Algarve, Portugal

              Affordable

              • Valencia, Spain
              • Cascais, Portugal
              • Las Terrenas, The DR
              • Pisa, Italy
              • La Rochelle, France
              • Mazatlán, Mexico

              Luxury

              • Ambergris Caye, Belize
              • Kotor, Montenegro
              • The Panama City Beaches
              • Paris, France

              Resources

              Global Living

              • Living & Retiring Overseas
              • Raising A Family Abroad
              • Foreign Residency & Citizenship
              • Offshore & Diversification

              Making Money

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              • Employment
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              LEARN MORE
              PRE-REGISTER

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              LEARN MORE
              PRE-REGISTER
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              From Outside North America:
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              Working Hours
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              Reach us with your questions by email at: events@liveandinvestoverseas.com

              Store

              Overseas Havens Reports

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              • Hours of coverage  from our latests conferences

              Lahardan Books

              • Titles on living and investing around the world

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