I've been so lucky to be an expat for the past 7 years in Latin America. My main homebase has been Central America where I've lived in Costa Rica for 6 years and am now on my second year in Antigua, Guatemala.

A lot of my friends from the States constantly ask me if I miss home. And my response to them is, my home is here! So of course they want to know what makes expat life so much better than returning to the 'Land of the Free'?

I'd like to break down my reasons and give a push for all those people who want to make the move!

Reason #1

Schooling

I know, you're thinking, but the schools in developed countries are way better than in 3rd World Countries. And, you're probably right - to some extent. However, I'm in no position to send my children to a private school if I lived in the States. I would have to send them to public schools. And if I lived in a 'good' neighborhood, the public school system would be a good choice.

I grew up in one of those fantastic suburban schools, where my parents moved to the area because of the education system. Yet, I still went to a highschool with 2500 kids (and we were the smallest grade in the past 5 years). All my classrooms were filled with 30-40 kids.

My son has been going to private schools since he was 2.5 years old. His first school had 20 kids in the whole school and 3 teachers for every 6 kids.

His second school, an eco friendly one too, had 10 kids per class.

Still I wasn't too thrilled that the 'bilingual' education was limited to 1 hour of English every other day. Growing up in a trilingual household, my son was bored.

Since moving to Antigua, I have found a wonderful 100% bilingual where the lesssons are 50% English and 50% Spanish. His class is split up into 2 classrooms, each with 8 kids and 4 teachers to be with them!

My husband is talking about getting his PhD in the States and I'm freaking out, because I don't want my children to head to a school bigger than the population of Antigua, Guatemala!

Bio Marina K. Villatoro has been living in Central America (Costa Rica and Guatemala) for over 9 years and her site Travel Experta and Expert Travel for Costa Rica is all about traveling in Central America. Marina loves to help people plan the perfect vacation to this amazing part of the world! Contact me for advice and planning your perfect trip! You can sign up for her RSS feed and join the fun on her facebook fan page and follow her on Twitter at @MarinaVillatoro.

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