The family enjoyed their experience in Central America so much that 18 months after they returned home to Alexandria, they moved to Mexico, permanently. “After experiencing what we did — the freedom with time and energy — the life we were trying to re-engage in just didn’t really seem to fit anymore,” Carlino explains.
“We had returned to a gilded cage,” Eichler says. “We realized that the really good life that I thought we had — it’s still great, but once we got out of that cage and saw all the other things that it could be, it was hard to get back into that cage.”
And the transition was rather seamless. With rental of their Alexandria home as their new main source of income, Carlino and Eichler were free to pursue other endeavors.
Eichler started a company called Language Adventure Pros that provides courses for lawyers from the U.S. who want to learn the lingo related to immigration law practice in Spanish. In 2018, she spearheaded legal aid response to the Central American caravans that traveled from Honduras toward the Mexico-U.S. border. Because of that work, Eichler is a subject of the upcoming documentary film “Las Abogadas: Attorneys on the Front Lines of the Migrant Crisis” — scheduled to debut at film festivals this fall — and she served as the consulting immigration law expert for the production team.
Carlino, with a background working for the IRS, has taken up doing tax returns for the expat population in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, their new home.
“We decided that our skills are portable,” Carlino explains.
“There are multiple ways to live life,” Eichler adds. “We didn’t meet a lot of people that were on a traditional path when we were on this trip, but they were successful in what they were doing and they were happy, and we decided we wanted that, too.”
Their daughter, Maya, wrote her college essay about the trip and will be headed back to the States in the fall to study art history at Bryn Mawr College. They expect their son, Jonah, to follow in her footsteps in a few years, after which Carlino and Eichler envision another trip, the details of which are still uncertain, but that doesn’t scare them at all. In fact, it’s what they’re looking forward to most.
For William & Mary students inspired by their story, the couple has a few pieces of advice:
“Travel as much as you can. It’s the best education you can get. Second to William & Mary, of course,” Eichler adds with a wink.
To hear more about their trip across North America, you can read the book Carlino wrote about their adventure: “The Year We Ruined Our Lives: A Family Road Trip Through Mexico and Central America.”
by Julia DeKorte ’23, University Marketing
Source link : https://news.wm.edu/2022/05/10/for-wm-law-grads-crossing-north-america-in-a-camper-van-opens-new-career-vistas/
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Publish date : 2022-05-10 03:00:00
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