Complete Freedom with Kim Melia

Growing up in Canada, Kim Melia moved every few years so was used to meeting new people and making new friends. As a young woman she moved alone to the United States with one suitcase.  Her mom was a gypsy snowbird, trying out living in new countries fro six months to locate a future retirement location.  Kim visited her in many countries over the years.  Her mom settled in Lake Chapala, Mexico so once again Kim went for a visit.  She loved it so much that 60 days later she'd sold everything that wouldn't fit in her small SUV and left San Diego, CA to live in Ajijic, Mexico.  Her passion is Work Play Love, a non-profit organization that supports an orphanage in Guatemala.  It's a very worth cause that has changed many lives www.workplaylove.org.

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Transcript

Welcome. You are listening to the Overseas Life Redesign podcast where you'll hear fine, relaxed and inspirational interviews with people who are really living the dream. I'm Dawn Fleming and attorney turned alchemist and your host for the show coming to you from the tropical island paradise of Isla Mujeres, Mexico. Listen to conversations with courageous souls who step out of their comfort zone and designed a new way of life. They'll share their experiences, wisdom, and offer practical steps you can take to redesign your life overseas. Listen, and you'll believe if you can dream it. You can achieve it.

Dawn Fleming

  00:43 - 01:13

So today I am with a dear longtime friend, Kim Melia. we worked together, gosh, a couple of decades ago, I guess we first met. And, I just found out recently that she's been living in Mexico and I said, Oh my gosh, I have to interview her. And I know that she's Canadian and this was not her first overseas move. So I wanted to delve into that, but thank you, Kim, for taking some time to talk to me today. I really appreciate it.

Kim Melia

  01:13 - 01:25

You're welcome. It's always exciting to talk about living abroad or living elsewhere and, and is, I would say having complete freedom. That's what it's all about to me. Complete freedom.

Dawn Fleming

  01:25 - 01:35

Amen sister, I couldn't have said it better. So, I was kind of like to start at the beginning and we talked a little bit, about it, before we started the interview.

Dawn Fleming

  01:35 - 01:50

But it sounds like you come by your travels, I guess, relocation, honestly, with your mom, you said she had traveled a lot. And is that kind of what you attribute to your bravery to your,

Kim Melia

  01:50 - 02:26

You know, the funny thing is I've really been, I probably lived up to the age of 18 in one spot, like in one house for maybe two to three years. So I have completely moved my entire life and that doesn't mean I moved countries. I'm in Canada, we moved all over the place. Right. but yes, my mom, you know, she is just a gypsy, she's a free bird. And, and I love that about her. And so she's been living abroad for many, many years and every time she did that, so she would do six months as an esthetician in Canada at six months and try to figure out where she wanted to retire smart woman.

Kim Melia

  02:26 - 03:05

I would follow her. So on my vacations, I would go to Costa Rica and Nicaragua and Billy's and Guatemala and Mexico. So when she finally picked this spot in Mexico, she just fell in love with it, and she had researched research. It never found her home yet. She always found great places. I mean, I think you can always find great places, but there's a difference when you find a home. And when she really wanted to find her home, she found her home here and we came to visit her just literally because she actually wasn't doing too well with her health. I had, one of her friends email me and say, Hey, listen, your mom's not doing so well. She probably won't tell you. So we decided just to hop on a plane from San Diego, come here, see her and my boyfriend at the time.

Kim Melia

  03:05 - 03:48

Who's now my fiance was living in Florida. He moved to San Diego with me. And, and when my mom, you know, basically said, come and help me. And then we moved, we came here. He said, just so you know, I would live there. And I'm like, you would live in Mexico. Like he had a hard time moving from Florida to San Diego, just because he had lived there for over 30 years of his life. So moving to Mexico, I was like, what It actually took me extra time to say yes, more than him. And it was obviously because my mom, I would say yes, no matter what, but it was a, it's a, it's a movie. You know what I mean It wasn't like, Hey, we're moving for a week. it's not like we're moving, we're going on vacation either. When you make a decision like this, for me, it's, it's a decision.

Kim Melia

  03:48 - 04:34

It's, it's a, it's a couple of year commitment at least, you know what I mean And, and plus I got rid of everything, Don, you know what that's like I mean, literally I was single, just, I recently had been divorced. And so I went to San Diego and breathe it everything, right. My apartment was full of all just Kim stuff. And so when we decided to move to Mexico for him, it's easy to get rid of my stuff. But for me, I was like, but this is like just me stuff. And I think you learn a lot of lessons and you could be asking me more questions about this, but you learn a lot of lessons about detachment, about how attached you are to material things. And I think even as hard as that was or challenging as that was, it proves the reason why I needed to do it was because I was so attached to things that really didn't matter.

Kim Melia

  04:34 - 05:17

and, and I, and, and I think that's the beauty of it all. And when I, when I said true freedom, what I mean by true freedom is, is, you know, we don't have a lot. I mean, I have a television, right. But I don't have a lot of either social media or television coming into me. I don't have, you know, all these other places or I've got one fast food place where I live. I don't have a lot of outside influences that really influenced me. I get to influence myself and I get to be in my community more. I get to, to, you know, be with my family. I moved my dad out of here with his wife, just before COVID. so that was nice. So there's just to me, it just it's freedom because I didn't know how attached I was to just BS stuff.

Dawn Fleming

  05:19 - 06:28

Wow. That's that, that's a great observation. I mean, it's something that, that people deal with obviously on a regular basis when, like you said, when you are contemplating a movie like this, but I don't think until you actually start going through it, you really get that part of it. Right. I mean, it's all theory until you are starting through that process. And it's funny. I mean, it's, I'm thinking about, you know, some of the folks that I work within the Academy, you know, they're like, Oh yeah, this is, this is all good. And, you know, having the plan and now, you know, this one, a couple I'm thinking of, in particular, going from five years to 18 months, and I asked her, I said, you know, how's the fear. And she's like, man, she goes, even though it's all planned out and it's all strategic and you know, I know this is what I want, like if the stuff comes up. Right. And so I think that is a good point. That's probably one of the hardest parts about the whole movie, the logistics, the, you know, the actual pulling it off is not as hard as that inner conversation. Right

Kim Melia

  06:29 - 07:24

Yeah. It's just little things too. I mean, I actually still have a storage unit that I'm trying to get out of now because I don't even know what's in it. Right. I got a little one. but it's like some clothes that I couldn't bring. Cause it could literally, we packed our little SUV, not the big SUV and if it didn't fit in the SUV or on top of it, it wasn't coming with us. So we have a little storage unit because you know, there was a couple of things like baby things. And I thought, I might still want memories and pitchers, but the clothes and the shoes and the crap that I kept in there, I'm like, girl, I'm telling my girlfriend, listen, I don't want to spend money on that storage unit. Because first of all, I don't even know what's in it. Second of all, there are a couple of things, but I can get rid of that stuff or I can give it away to somebody else who's in need of it. And, but there were emotional things. I mean, I'll tell you, I have my wedding dress still. And like talk about weirdness, dealing with getting rid of your wedding, dress, talking to your boyfriend. And he's like, why do you want your wedding dress I'm like, I don't know, like, why do I want it

Kim Melia

  07:27 - 08:37

Like really weird things that you're just like, I don't know why I still have this. I mean, you know, and I watched Oprah a couple of times that you've probably watched some of the other folks do this, where they talk about getting rid of your clutter, getting rid of your stuff, getting rid of your pitchers. Well, it was the same thing. I mean, these are memories, but nowadays we can take a picture of it and it's on our phone and we have it in a file. We don't need these books. We don't need all this stuff. So the biggest lesson was for me is, is to release and let go and be in the present moment. I think the most thing that I've learned, the biggest moving, is to be in the present moment, moment, more than anything. I know that sounds kind of cheesy because we say that, but when you don't have all this other stuff in the way of you, and I mean, like, I like people, how do you live with on Amazon What do you mean living on Amazon I thought the same thing at first, because I was a prime queen, but guess what You start to use the mom and pop stores. Again, you start to find better products for cheaper prices that are more natural. Like you just get out of that environment. And, and I'm not saying it's all bad. It's just for me, I got caught up in it, especially with being in Southern California.

Dawn Flemimg

  08:39 - 08:58

Absolutely realism capital of the world. Right. Yeah. And it's funny. I mean, I do, and we have Amazon Mexico, and I've only really started using them because of COVID I think the last year, but it's amazing. I mean, we had cases of wine delivered and when the alcohol ban was on

Kim Melia

  09:00 - 09:20

Myself, I literally started using prime Amazon probably two months ago just to test it because I was like, because everybody, I have a couple of friends that still use it a lot. And I was like, well, I need some laundry detergent. I need a couple of those things that I don't find in one place here. and so I can find it on Amazon Mexico. Sure enough. In two days I had everything shipped. I was like,

Dawn Fleming

  09:21 - 10:43

I know absolutely. Yeah. I think it's, it's only 99 pesos a month, so it's even less than the state, but, yeah. And then we have friends visit in December and she actually programmed her, Amazon primes us into our TV. So I get that. and you know, we don't watch very much TV, but, it's kind of funny. You can have those things if you want them, but I agree with you, I think when you get away from it and you, you kind of unplug from that hole by the consumerism and materialism, it is freeing. I mean, you, you know, you hit the nail on the head and it's, yeah. It's like a weight gets lifted from your shoulders. I mean, really, if you just do feel lighter, by not having all of those attachments. So, so let me ask, I know you had lived moved from Canada to the United States and lived there for a long time. And then to Mexico, obviously Canada in U S culturally is more similar than moved down here, but, was that that initial transaction, transition pretty easy for you

Kim Melia

  10:43 - 11:30

I would say that was probably Listen because I've moved my whole life. I'm used to making new friends I'm used to doing, like, not that I like to. Okay. So like I like moving, but, but, so it was difficult. I mean, it was difficult because I brought a suitcase at that time. I didn't have anything with me and, and I had a whole business to transition, so it was difficult in the sense of just not, I really didn't know anybody. And so I think it's different. Cause I moved here with, you know, my, my mom was here, my fiance. And so that's a little different, I think it was a little bit maybe more intimidating, but at the same time, I was moving to San Diego. all I could look at was the ocean and be happy with it. But that transition, I think it was more fear-based just because I was by myself, right.

Kim Melia

  11:30 - 12:09

More just like me by myself here. it was definitely more exciting and, and, and also it was, you know, we have our own car, so you, you, if you really, really hated it or something happened, I mean, I could obviously leave on a plane or anything too, but I just felt like, I was totally fine and, and I was never fearing Mexico either where people think, you know, do you fear living somewhere else The other thing I did do too, is I live Guatemala every three months. I would go for one whole month. So I did that a few years before I moved to Mexico. again, my mom was living in Guatemala because I have an orphanage there. So I asked my mom, do you mind living there Because I would like to live there, but I don't want to move there by myself.

Kim Melia

  12:09 - 13:10

And I couldn't really because of my business at the time, at least I didn't think I could. So I would go every month. So every three months I would live there for months. So let's just say in a year I lived there four months of the year. So being doing that made me just really want to do this big move. I wasn't, I didn't know I was going to do it. I mean, we literally came here and within 60 days we moved. So we had no plan as you have with the Academy. I would have gone through that plan because ours was like yours. You just learn and figure it out. I have my business partner who just moves to Panama. So when he told me he was moving, of course, I wanted to give him my own course. And I told them a bunch of things, but I don't know if he listens, but because there are some banking things that you need to pay attention to and you know, all those things like that, that I'm sure Don you help out with. But, but in general, honestly, it's, I, I would say it was the best decision I have like maybe top three decisions in my life where it was one of the best decisions I've ever made.

Dawn Fleming

  13:11 - 13:52

That's so great to hear. yeah. And I can't help, but think that, you know, obviously that experience moving from Canada to the US and then of course, to Guatemala that really kind of gave you that, confidence, right Say that, yeah, I can do this. And, yeah, 60 days. Wow. That's lightning-fast. I mean, you know, even when we moved from California to Florida, I mean, that was like a year-long plan. Right. And I guess it depends on how complicated your life is, you know, how much real estate you've got to deal with, how much, you know, what's your business entanglement, you know, all of that. So the more complicated your life is, I think the longer need time you need to,

Kim Melia

  13:53 - 14:53

I think I'd try to least less least complicate less complicate after my marriage and divorce. Cause I had a house and I had this and that. And I was like, okay, I was already trying to minimalize my life. Right. So I think when you start to do those things and you have that philosophy, I think other things start to fall into place, and it just kind of happens organically. So that really was, you know, an easier transition because I was continuously men minimizing, minimizing, don't need this, don't need this, you know, buying something, giving something away. just recently, you know, you move somewhere and all of a sudden we're here two and a half years. You're like crap, I've got stuff I don't need again. So we did every day for 30 days, get rid of something plus one. So it was the first day, one thing, second thing, second day, two things every day you had to get rid of something more and you know, there's, and I'm sure just like you, and just like in the United States, in Canada, you don't go down the street. There's somebody who's hungry. Somebody who's needs an extra shirt needs. and, and so it just feels good.

Dawn Fleming

  14:54 - 15:03

Yes, absolutely. Yeah. And you know, we never really throw anything away. Like we just set it outside the door. Exactly.

Kim Melia

  15:04 - 15:31

We had, we had leftovers from this weekend. And so I just went in and I took all the leftovers over to our friends and, you know, there's 10 kids that come out, they know that we're coming and we give them our pizzas or our leftover Chinese or whatever we had that we're like, okay, we're done. And I don't mean leftovers like it's bad. Cause I hate when I get suffered the orphanage, sometimes people said, Hey, you need some clothes for the kids that we have leftover and they've got holes in them. I don't mean like that. They still had some good food to eat. Right.

Dawn Fleming

  15:34 - 16:44

Yeah. I don't know how it was there, but I know one of the things that were so heartwarming here, you know, they, they didn't hand out, you know, $2,000 checks or $600 checks or anything here in Mexico. And it was really heartwarming to see the community come together. And I mean, whether it be soup kitchens that the restaurant owners put together or ex-pats that started out just going to buy, some diapers and wipes and ended up going every single day and receiving donations and making that like a full-time job, really. one of my friends from Minnesota put a plugin there for Midwesterners, but, it was just, it was just amazing to see, really, I mean, I, it was kind of like that when I was growing up in the Midwest, like in the wintertime, if your car broke down like you always stopped to help someone because, you know, so it was, it was a different mentality, but it almost kind of reminded me of that sort of a community vibe that I didn't really see too much in Southern California. I mean, not that there weren't nice people, but you just didn't have that same sort of,

Kim Melia

  16:45 - 17:09

I lived in my complex for two years and I didn't know my neighbors now. It's just as much as my fault as it is theirs. I did go around and try to be cookies when I first moved there, but nobody's really home. Right. Everybody's working. And, and, and that's, I think the thing about living abroad is the sense of community. I mean, you still see horses walk by, you still see donkeys, you still see kids outside. You still, you know, there's a lot of old

Dawn Fleming

  17:09 - 17:11

Things that, you know,

Kim Melia

  17:11 - 17:28

That just brings back community. I think so I I'm with you. There were so many different projects and still today, I mean, you know, we're still not out of this COVID thing. I mean, some, some places it feels like in some places, it doesn't in Mexico, but I mean, the reality is, is the business owners are suffering. A lot of, a lot of people,

Dawn Fleming

  17:28 - 17:30

A lot of people here are still suffering. So,

Kim Melia

  17:30 - 17:45

Anything that we can do to help, we always do, whether it's, you know, taking a family, we take a family out to dinner, we went and took dinner to them. We try to have intimate time with certain people to, we just 30 minutes from, from our place here. Unfortunately

Kim Melia

  17:45 - 17:50

There's no clean water. There's no drinking water, 30 minutes from where I live. And

Kim Melia

  17:50 - 18:22

When we found that out, we were like, we have to be involved in this water project. So we're just, we're, we're continuing to educate ourselves and, to serve the community. Because listen, when you live abroad, I believe that you should serve the community as best as you can try to speak the language. I think trying is better than nothing. I don't think you have to be fluent, but Hey, if you want to. And I, and that to me is that that's the beautiful thing is that when you do try and you just be part of the community, you are part of the family. Yes. Yeah. And there, they're very forgiving. We'll be back in a moment.

Speaker 4

  18:25 - 19:16

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Speaker 1

  19:21 - 20:07

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Dawn Fleming

  20:14 - 20:23

Welcome back to the overseas life redesigned podcast. Thank you so much for being here. And we invite you to subscribe. If you like, what you hear,

Kim Melia

  20:22 - 21:12

it's really unique here. It's just, it reminds me of the interior of British Columbia, which is really where I'm from. It's the Colona. Oakenoggen like, if you're Canadian and you've been there, that's what this is for 75 to 85 every day. No humidity, no dryness, no rain. So it's literally national geographics that it's the second-best place to retire in the world. I'm like, first of all, I'm not retiring. Right. but we only came here because my mom she's, she's lived in Belize, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and she's been, she, she for 10 years as a seasonal worker. She would do esthetician work for six months at a resort in the interior, British Columbia, and then leave and try to figure out where she wants to retire.

Kim Melia

  21:13 - 21:56

So she moved to all these communities in different countries. And she kept on hearing about like [inaudible], [inaudible], [inaudible], and we're big. Like I'm big on the weather. So mom and I are, we don't like humidity. We don't like dryness. So it's almost impossible. San Diego to me was having the right, right where it was still cool. I was like, I know I was always called in California, still a little chilly. And that's why I said, if anything was five degrees warmer, five to seven, it'd be perfect. So long story short, she would, she got into retirement. She's 69 now. And I said, she's like, I gotta get out of here. She was in Canada, just finishing up some stuff. And I said, mom, go to that frickin Lake Rapala place. That's the last, like one of the places you keep on telling me you're not there.

Kim Melia

  21:56 - 22:32

So she literally got on a plane two days later and she's been here four years. Wow. Community probably. And whether the two things, there's 30,000, ex-pats that live here and it's only 10 miles, right. One little town to another. And, and so people just love it. It is more of retirement, but there are so many more youth moving here since I moved here. Like we have tons of friends that are in their thirties and forties, but I don't really care. I like people who are in their sixties, seventies, like to me, it's like, whatever. Right, right. Yeah. Well,

Dawn Fleming

  22:32 - 22:48

I, I would be remiss if we didn't really talk about your orphanage. I know that's been a project passion project of yours for a long time. And, I would love for you to share, you know, kind of how that came about and what's happened through the years. what you've been working on there,

Kim Melia

  22:49 - 23:32

We believe, but you know, you should always give back. And when I say we, my, my business partners and I, but it's really gone from my parents. I mean, I, I don't know. I've been volunteering since I was really young. I did child find where you used to do fingerprints for kids. And little kids was probably when I was 14, 15, I started to do volunteer work. So I've constantly just been doing that. So when I have a sales organization, I've always wanted to get them involved with community or service. And so we did the boys, boys, and girls club, the Make-A-Wish foundation, awesome organizations. But unfortunately when you're trying to collect from the same people and you're not getting the reward to see what they're doing, and sometimes they would show us. But the reality is too is a lot of percentage of that money.

Kim Melia

  23:32 - 24:14

Didn't go to them, to the kids. And it bugged us in a sense. I mean, I don't mind helping somebody's salary, but it's still bugged me. And I've always wanted to help kids be my partners, to kids in trouble in youth, in trouble, abandoned, whatever that might look like. And so we, we said, you know what, let's find something out there that a hundred percent of the money will go to the kids and whatever that looks like. And my partner ended up being, this is part of end up being on an airplane on a Southwest airplane, or was it so out It doesn't matter what it was. It was actually a Legion or something like that. Not a very nice one. And, and this gentleman was wearing a bunch of Paul Sarah's bracelets, flight attendant, and my business partner, Mike said, what is this for

Kim Melia

  24:14 - 24:54

Why are you wearing 50 of them on your arm He said, I supported orphanages. Mala, would you like one And Mike said, tell me more. We're looking for a project. And so Mike stroke, a check for a thousand bucks right there, just listen to a story. And it just gives me the goosebumps thinking about it now because it's been 10 years. And so Mike ended up getting pictures back with kids, little, little Brown kids with all these cute little, you know, new, new shoes, new this and my, partner and my other business partners. So the two brothers that we said, okay, well, anybody can send us pictures, but why don't we just forget Let's go to Guatemala. Let's go see if this is real. What if it is What if this is something that we really want to do So it was a boys' orphanage.

Kim Melia

  24:55 - 25:35

So we flew out there with our niece and nephew. And my niece, Danny at the time was going to, the NYU film school. So she brought her equipment with her and she filmed the whole entire thing, made a documentary out of it. I mean a five-minute little video out of it. But the long story is, is they're real. We're like family now. we were able to bless them with an orphanage because that's what they wanted because the boys and girls would get separated. And, it's been seven years in may that we've been open and 10 years we've been involved, I guess, 11 years now in May. And it's just, again, you know, Donna, it's one of those things that I then know, I knew that I wanted to give, I knew I wanted to serve. I knew we want to be part of something bigger.

Kim Melia

  25:35 - 26:28

And, we now have our own nonprofit called work, play love. And you know, maybe five to 10% at the most goes to administrative costs. What I did realize is when you own a nonprofit, you have to fund things. So hundred percent, you know, went to everything at first, but then we're like, okay, we need to diversify a tiny bit of this funds a little bit. But, we basically paid for the girl's orphanage to run on a monthly basis. We pay for all the salaries of the teachers and we pay for the water and the electricity. So we have a program called the Hogar heroes. Hogar meaning home and hero. So you pay 10 to a hundred dollars a month, whatever you can afford. And that goes to that. So we pay that monthly. So we have that. And then any excessive we'll renovate the boys' orphanage, we helped build a hope Academy, a girls school we're helping with another nonprofit to a trade school and a transition house.

Kim Melia

  26:29 - 27:18

So we're continuously growing with the kids because the kids grow. And like, what do you do with them when they're 18 We've already had some transitions that have not been so good. And some that have been very good. So now we realize that our girls, because we got them, you know, seven, they're starting to transition the next couple of years. So it's very important that we educate them. maybe not through the traditional sense because they might not have come to us until eight years old. And they don't, they're not even in grade one yet. So by the time that they're 18, they're not even in grade nine. So, you know, we have to do some stuff. So anyway, long story short, it's a blessing in disguise. You know, my business is very important to me, but my business brought me here. So if it wasn't for that, you know, like my business really found my purpose, which I didn't know my purpose in life, you know, passion, purpose in life.

Kim Melia

  27:18 - 28:06

It's been amazing. And I do trips there every four months, not during COVID. but I've been doing trips there every four months for 10 years and I bring a group of people. So whoever wants to come on this podcast, whoever's listening, feel free to get hold of me. And if you ever want to just come and check out a cool orphanage or get involved, we're, you know, we really just try to invite everybody and anybody that wants to come and serve, and we do lots of stuff, work beings, we work a little, play a lot and love it even more because I think some people don't realize that the kids just sometimes need you to play Barbies. Like we don't need this painted room. We need you to love these kids. And I believe that that's just not as important, if not more important than painting a room is to hang out with these kids, braid their hair, you know, play soccer with the boys, whatever it is. And, so we have a really good time, but it is, is a, is a huge passion of mine.

Dawn Fleming

  28:07 - 28:27

Oh, that's so great. Exciting to hear how it's grown through the years, because I know I remember the infancy, of this project and, I suppose, wonderful to hear. so is it mostly, so individual sustaining donors that, that monthly, corporate,

Kim Melia

  28:27 - 29:34

We try, we try and get in there. I've gotten a master team that we developed actually more during COVID, but we, have something called the super bowl pool. And we've been running that now for about six years. So during the super bowl, I knew nothing about football, I knew nothing about the super bowl. I couldn't give a crap, but of course, now I love it, but we run for a month and a half. my business partner, Steve and I, run this and we generated this year $80,000. So 40,000 to the kids and 40,000 goes out to the winners. So yeah, people love the super bowl. So we also have the Hogar hero program. Now we have this, so this is why we can help out with hope Academy, the girls' school, the transition school. but no corporate, if there are people here that are corporate, we're looking, I mean, corporate needs, write-offs obviously they want to be part of projects. so we have a couple of different, corporations that are looking into different things that we're doing. Cause we're diversifying to doing a project here in Mexico, not just Guatemala for the water, for the kids in San Pedro. So a lot of different things, but, yeah, if I, if I can get it out there and put it out there, we're looking, we're always looking for sponsorship too

Dawn Fleming

  29:35 - 30:00

Well. And I know, when I was in, California actually partly in, in Florida as I was part of rotary international and they had been involved with some pretty large water projects in credit though. So I don't know if you, affiliated with them or checked out your local rotary clubs, but, that was an amazing organization. I was just blown away by the projects that they would do.

Kim Melia

  30:01 - 30:39

They are, they're very strict. I've, I've gone through a couple. it's always good to know somebody in the rotary who can get you in, I've gotten talked to them and everything. so I've done a lot of different presentations, but it's just, it's just, it's a luck of the draw to you got to get them at the right time. And, you know, we actually had somebody that I met at a wine cause it's very social here. We went to a wine club here and through that, going to something social came about, actually wasn't really a corporate donation, but family donations through a foundation. And it was literally just because we met them and they heard our story. So, so there are so many avenues out there to go to and I just keep on telling this story over and over

Dawn Fleming

  30:40 - 31:28

Well, and that's it. And it seems like there's, you know, in recent years there's been a much larger push for social issues, on the corporate side as well. And so if they've got the budgets yeah. Then they're looking for, you know, good, good programs to spend it on. So, yeah, that's, that's awesome. well, you'll definitely have to give me the link so I can put the, put that in the show notes and be able to get the word out about that because, that's a great, program and there's such a need down in South America as we know from the news and so forth. So well, cool. Well, is there anything I did not ask you about this cam that you want to share and the final competencies

Kim Melia

  31:28 - 32:31

So really, you know, I just say there are choices. I think what people don't realize is that there are choices. And now I, okay. I, I was a single woman. I don't have children, but I did have a very successful business that I was able to transition here and work from anywhere. But I think that people use their kids, their schooling, their gotta be near my mom, got it as an excuse, not to adventure out to maybe something they really want to do. So I would say, live your life. You know, like I, that doesn't mean ignore your family or ignore whatever it just means. Seriously, live your life. You've got one that we know of and, and live it like there are choices. So when people say you're so lucky, no, I'm not lucky. I made the choice. And you know, there were challenging times and there are different ways of, you know, there's always different, challenging things, but I would just say, please like, live your dream, you know, do your thing, do it your way. because you've probably done it many other people's way for, for many years. And so do you, that's my

Dawn Fleming

  32:34 - 32:40

Couldn't agree more. Well, thank you so much for your time. Ms. Kim, it's really great to reconnect with you.

Kim Melia

  32:40 - 32:47

And it's funny that we both moved to Mexico. Now. I said we have to, like, we have to go to each other's place and visit now.

Dawn Fleming

  32:47 - 32:55

Absolutely. I can't wait to travel. So get past this COVID nightmare and be able to do that. Look forward to it.

Speaker 1

  32:59 - 33:33

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