Hello. My name is Rob. I’m a 30 something year old guy living in NJ, about 10 minutes outside the Big Apple that is NYC. I have a lovely wife of 5 years, a beautiful 3 year old boy, and a tiny little baby girl who is due to join us in this world in early August. Everything sounds great, right? Well right now, it is… for the most part. We’re about to change all that though and turn our family’s world upside down. In August, we’ll be moving to Ecuador to start a new chapter in our lives.
Let’s rewind for a moment…
Since 2003, I’ve lived in Concord, NC, Myrtle Beach, SC, outside of Chicago IL, the Middle East, and now I’m in NJ. You could say my family and I get around a lot. I could easily blame my wife for all this… travel. She isn’t much for settling down and gets a bit of an itch for something new every few years. Truth is, I’m pretty much the same way. It’s one of the many reasons I fell in love with her and consider myself such a happily married man.
Things aren’t always peaches and cream…
To put it mildly, since moving to New Jersey in the fall of 2010, the family and I have had a few rough spots. Here’s a quick recap – We moved here in a blizzard in which I crashed the moving truck into the side of our new apartment. There have been 2 Hurricanes, one of which was the devastating Sandy, an earthquake, more blizzards than I can count, a Thanksgiving Day kitchen fire, the loss of our unborn child, oh… and ANOTHER fire in which we lost 75% of everything we owned. Now I know things could have been a lot worse and I am forever thankful for what I have, but you might see how we haven’t quite felt our time in NJ has been well spent.
The house fire was last September and both the wife and I have never quite gotten over it. To be honest, we wanted to run home, to the beach, anywhere other than NJ the day after it happened. We kept our sanity for the most part and put on a brave face. We stuck it out here for as long as we could, which in August will be almost 3 years, a year since the fire.
We did begin actively looking for other options in early 2013. And by other options, I mean anywhere other than New Jersey. I thought at first that I would transfer with my job to one of our southern locations, but nothing really seemed to fit. I LOVE my job, but it does keep me away from my family on nights and weekends. My wife… let’s call her Alanna. It’s her name anyway. Alanna has a teaching resume that the most seasoned educator would be jealous of – she’s a veteran of the classroom both in the states and internationally in Ethiopia and the UAE. I also have bit of experience in teaching and international travel. So Alanna put her smart cap on and soon enough she had found an open position for a teacher matching my skill set in… Ecuador. Most people I’ve talked to don’t even know where the country is. If that’s you, don’t be ashamed, I probably couldn’t have pointed it out on the map before this month either. Ecuador is a lovely South American country on the west coast nestled in between Colombia and Peru. The Equator runs smack dab through the country, and well… that’s where the title of the blog gets its name.
I sent in all my information, resume, cover letter, etc and bingo… I immediately got an interview. The next week I was speaking with officials at the school over Skype and the next week, after a few weeks of intense research, discussions with my wife and hopes and dreams, I accepted the position. So here I am, getting ready to move to Ecuador in 4 months. This blog will serve as a journal of my experiences both leading up to the move, as well as my day to day life in South America. I am in no way a seasoned writer like my wife, but I hope you’ll enjoy the reads now and then.
