Are you considering trips anywhere else? How is your Spanish after spending a year in Mexico? What was your relative standard of living like when making money from these projects? Did you go into it with a reasonable "war chest" of savings to live off of while acclimating to the environment? Was it ever a deterrent to potential hirers that you were abroad? What was the coolest part of your experience?
I might have a couple more depending on your answers.
At the moment I'm not planning any more trips. I took a job with a startup in Seattle, and so I'll be here for a few more years. After that, who knows :)
You don't need much of a war chest if you go to the right places & have a decent amount of work. In guadalajara (a big city), $1k / month will get you full-time spanish lessons plus room and board. Hostels are about $12/night if you want to go that route.
My standard of living was very good. I had a 2 bedroom house in the trendy part of the city. Ate out whenever I wanted. etc. I imagine I was spending 20k a year (not including state-side expenses such as student loans).
My spanish is pretty good. You learn survival spanish pretty quickly. After a year I'm able to hold conversations, understand song lyrics, etc...more or less :)
I don't think I lost any clients from being in mexico. It was win-win. They got a good developer at a slight discount. I got my mobility. Actually, about 1/2 of my existing clients never knew I was in mexico. I didn't hide it from them, but it never came up.
Coolest part: making a lot of friends from around the world.
I imagine if you stayed in a country for a while it'd be easier to get mobile broadband but hopping around a continent makes it pretty difficult since you can't (in my experience) get sim cards with data plans and use them in several countries.
