It seems we were just settling into our new life with our new house. BUT, part of our plan had been to spend the better part of our first year in Panama (ok… that didn’t exactly work out as planned) and then head back to TN to get my condo ready to sell. There were many reasons we chose to do it this way.
- We still had a lot of “stuff” in our home or storage area in TN. We had paired down about 80% of our “stuff”, but the last 20% (aside from Pete’s tools which he knew he wanted to bring to Panama) were items which were the hardest to go through. Some sentimental stuff. Some loved and well used items. Some just general household goods. We knew we needed a plan and in October of 2023, we had no plan. We just knew we wanted to get to Panama and start our retirement life. Now, almost a year later, we were ready to tackle the remainder of “stuff”.
- We now had a better idea on our life in Panama and what we wanted/needed to ship. For instance, when we bought our home, it came unfurnished. We had to buy furniture, bathroom towels/mats, ALL the kitchen stuff (pots/pans, dishes, silverware, glasses etc). However, ultimately, we’re going to need more stuff (wait…. didn’t I just tell you we got rid of most of our stuff and now we’re buying more???) to furnish the main house. This affected some decisions on what we’d bring.
- We needed to put my condo up for sale. For various reasons, we needed to wait until November 2024 to sell my condo. Heading back in August gave us time to clean up and prep the condo for sale, while also getting us ready to ship our stuff down to Panama.
The trip wasn’t all work. We were able to see a lot of friends and family during the 2+ months we were stateside. We flew from David, Panama (our closest airport, about 45 minutes from our home) into Panama City, where we caught our next flight to Miami. From Miami, we flew to Raleigh and spent a few days visiting our oldest son, Ryan, along with his girlfriend Roshel. Oh…. and our granddog Echo.
From Raleigh, we flew to Fort Worth, and spent a week with Pete’s family. Then up to Philadelphia, where I was able to crash the birthday party of my best friend Heather. (she knew I was going to be in the area but wasn’t sure exactly when. Her husband Bill reached out and we were able to surprise her). From Heather’s house in Chambersburg, we drove back to the Philadelphia area to spend a few days with my Mom. We also got to see some of my favorite relatives, aunts, uncles and cousins. And then finally it was time to head to Tennessee and get to work.
We arrived in TN at the beginning of September. For the next 6 weeks, we worked on the condo, both inside and outside. This was our last chance to get rid of items we wouldn’t need, repair a few things in the house and pack up and itemize all that was going to be shipped. We also had many dinners with my youngest son, Liam as well as quite a few lunches and dinners with close friends. We were busy, but it was manageable.
We picked up our rental truck on a Wednesday, packed up the truck Wednesday and Thursday, handed over the keys to the Condo to our real estate agent on Thursday and headed out of TN on Friday. We spent Friday night outside of Macon, Georgia and Saturday, we rolled into The Villages, Florida to spend a few days with our friends Carol and Jon. This was such a welcome diversion after a week of working hard. We left their house early Tuesday morning for the last leg of our trip, heading to Miami. Along the way south, we passed many areas that had been devastated by hurricane Helene 2 weeks prior.
We arrived in Miami Tuesday evening and discovered we were staying at a hotel we had been at before, with a wonderful bar/grill just off premises…so dinner was easy. Wednesday morning was the last stressful day. We drove to our shipper and after waiting for about an hour to get to their dock, we were able to unload our household goods being shipped to Panama. And then…. we were home free! We had a leisurely lunch, returned the rental truck and headed to the airport for our flight back to Panama.
On October 23, 2024, we returned to Panama from the states, EXACTLY one year to the day from when we had first arrived! Pete felt it was a bad omen. I likened it to a complete do over, as the country wide protests in 2023 had been very hard. At any rate, returning to Panama felt like we were finally home!