Job Discussion Forums

DainaJ · Joined: 26 Jul 2006 Posts: 62

Melee,

What is your plan for your kids? Mexico is one of the countries we are considering.

MELEE · Posted: Wed Sep 20, 2006 11:06 pm Post subject:

Well there are a lot of variables that haven't been settled yet, because my husband is currently in graduate school, scheduled to finish in Feb. At the moment I'm the bread winner and working full time. The girls spend the first part of the day in a daycare that is funded by the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS), the cost of which is covered in my benefits. After my two hour lunch they stay home with a nanny. Of the 15 kids in their room at day care, 7 are children of other professors at the university. So I like that they are with children of people who value education. The facility is a daycare-preschool, in Mexico pre-school goes through the US equivelent of kindergarden. To tell the truth the most attractive feature of the place is I don't have to pay.

Once my husband is finished, we may or may not be staying in this city. He's studying in Morelia, Michoacan and there are some great private primary schools there with views of education very similar to my own. If we stay in the city where we live now, his hometown, there is one private school that seems to be pretty good, and he will probably be earning a lot more than I am now, so in the future, I would look to work part time, possibly private lessons and free lance work. I'll be a Mexican citizen by then, which will free me from needing a school to sponsor me. Mexican schools run 8 to 1 and I would probably homeschool (unschool actually) in the afternoons, in English. We've also considered enrolling them in the school in my mother-in-law's hometown, it is a bilingual school, but not English-Spanish, it's a Mixteco-Spanish school. The problem is its a two hour drive from here so that's really too far to commute. If the road were to be paved in the next couple of years, that might cut the driving time down to just over an hour, but the road has been unpaved since the 1500's so the chances of it happening in the next couple of years are pretty slim. Wink

JZer · Joined: 16 Jan 2005 Posts: 3898 Location: Pittsburgh

Vanica wrote:

DainaJ · Joined: 26 Jul 2006 Posts: 62

Yavannah,

Sorry to have your thread going in a million directions! It's an interesting issue. Yesterday I googled around a bit and found very little information on single mom expats. Maybe you could try the already mentioned www.mothering.com forums - they have a single mom forum that may be of help. Maybe you could also post your question on the Long Haul, Traveling with Kids and Women Travelers sections of Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree boards?

Melee, PM'd you!

Vanica · Joined: 31 Aug 2006 Posts: 368 Location: North Carolina

jsteventon · Joined: 08 Jul 2007 Posts: 191

I have taught in Brunei for ten years as a single parent. It is a great place to bring up children and many teaching parents are bringing up their kids here. CfBT Brunei recruit single parents and there is a lot of full-time housekeeping/babysitting help available . Any single parent with qualified teacher status should check out the CfBT Brunei website - or send me a pm.

william wallace · Joined: 14 May 2003 Posts: 2869 Location: in between

Asthma ? Less stress ? I'd exclude Asia.
sorry.

jsteventon · Joined: 08 Jul 2007 Posts: 191

Brunei is very far removed from other parts of Asia, where asthma and stress would be a concern. There is no pollution and life is virtually stress-free. Highly recommended as a great place for families!

Vanica · Joined: 31 Aug 2006 Posts: 368 Location: North Carolina

Thanks for the advice. I had contacted CfBT Brunei last year, and was told that even as a Canadian citizen, I would not be accepted into Brunei because my degree is from the US. Is this still true?

jsteventon · Joined: 08 Jul 2007 Posts: 191

I didn't realise that would be a problem. Maybe if you enquire again - things do change. There are quite a few Canadians teaching in Brunei - I would definitely re-apply - nothing lost by doing so...

Good luck!

Serious_Fun · Joined: 28 Jun 2005 Posts: 1171 Location: terra incognita

I just skimmed through this thread and was surprised to see that the "Kids To Go" forum on Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree was not suggested as a source for parents working overseas:

http://thorntree.lonelyplanet.com/categories.cfm?catid=37

...perhaps that helps someone.

Vanica · Joined: 31 Aug 2006 Posts: 368 Location: North Carolina

The Thorn Tree threads were fun reading, but seemed to be about flying with children, or a week at a beach. Were you thinking of some other forum?

Makes me want to be Australian and able to pop over with my daughter to Bali for the weekend. She loved the gamelan concert at the Montreal Jazz Festival, by the way.

notamiss · Posted: Tue Aug 28, 2007 4:51 pm Post subject:

Maybe you shouldn't rule out Mexico City altogether; some food for thought:

Unlike most of the rest of Mexico, there are acceptable public schools here where I am (south part of Mexico City). My kids went to public school for grades 7 and up, and the youngest one also did Kindergarten at a public school. (There were 45 kids in the class, and the teacher was top-notch. A great experience for all of us.) The private school they went to for grades 1 to 6 cost about as much as their half-hour weekly piano lessons used to cost in Canada. (I mean the cost per month for full-time schooling was similar to the cost per month for a half an hour per week of music lessons.)

As for asthma, our air here in the south is better than the more central and industrialized parts of Mexico City. I have known some people with asthma who have done all right here, even one friend who moved here from the Caribbean coast (Villahermosa) because the humidity there was so bad for her little son's asthma ?!