Susanna Perkins

In one month, we’ll celebrate our second anniversary as expats. Two years. . . sometimes it feels like a very short time. Sometimes I feel as though I’ve been here forever. As I round off the second year of our

We’ve been living in Panama for almost two years now. Even though we’re here full time, year round, officially we are tourists. We’ve made no effort to “regularize” our status, as they say in the immigration biz, because we weren’t

My husband and I really detest the cold weather. Back in the early fall of 1988, we looked at each other one blustery morning and asked, “do we really want to go through another winter?” The answer was an unequivocal

I devoured my French ham and cheese dinner crepe like a starving refugee as my husband inhaled his Japanese noodle dish. I certainly wasn’t actually starving, but we were starving for the tastes of home. We’d been living in Panama

Before we moved to Panama in the spring of 2012, we sold off pretty much everything we owned. Some went through ads on Craigslist or eBay, but most of our worldly goods went to others in the course of a

I have a confession to make. Contentment and I are not good friends. I’m good at starting new things. I’m not good at long-term maintenance, whether it’s a job, a house, or a geographic location. I envy those who are

Several years before we moved to Panama I traded in my desktop computer for a large laptop. With a 17-inch screen, it was quite adequate as a desktop replacement and I worked happily with it for about four years. Occasionally

A funny thing happened on my way to Orlando last week. My flight landed at Orlando International Airport. I made my way through customs and immigration, retrieved my bags, then headed for the main terminal. If you know the Orlando

NSA spying is all over the news today. If you believe the allegations, the NSA and the FBI have been harvesting massive amounts of data from emails, social networks, phone calls and other communications for years. They say they’re only

For years I’ve been advising expats, “rent before you buy.” I’m so glad I followed my own advice, because my husband and I have just become poster children for renting first. If you’re expatriating because your company is sending you