After nearly a year of active researching, planning and preparations, we finally have arrived in Torre Del Mar, Spain for an adventure year. Many people have asked, why Spain? Why for a year? What are you going to do for a year?
Years ago, before Todd and I got married we dreamed of taking our yet to be born children to live abroad for a year. We’ve both loved traveling and learning languages. Todd had the amazing opportunity to spend three years of his childhood living in Holland and wanted to replicate the experience for his children. We thought that spending a year immersed in another language and culture would be an incredible gift that we could give to our children. Given that the children have been studying in a Spanish Immersion program since kindergarten and are used to speaking and learning in Spanish, we wanted to go to a Spanish speaking country. Originally, I was drawn to South America, but Todd really wanted to also be centrally located to visit the many countries of Europe. So, Spain seemed to fit the bill.
We thought that middle school would be the best time for the kids to go. They would be old enough to remember and appreciate the experience. And, we thought high school was an important time to stay home. Plus, middle school just sucks for everyone, so why not just go somewhere else? We tucked this thought in the back of our minds. Time passed, we got married, we had 2 beautiful children and learned to be parents. Then all of the sudden, our oldest started middle school. And that little thought in the back of our minds started to sound a little alarm; we needed to go in one of the next two years!
For many reasons, the following year seemed like a good time to go, but we had to get busy!
Deciding where to go turned out to be difficult. Todd and I are taking a sabbatical year (sadly without pay). There is no job or school to tell us where to go, so the whole country of Spain was open to us. So where to go?
To help focus our search we started with two requirements: on a coast (Todd’s requirement) be in an area that doesn’t have an additional regional language (to keep things be a little more simplified for the kids).
This led us to either Northern Spain or Southern Spain. That is a large area! We then spent a lot of time on the internet trying decide where’s to go. Then I had the realization, I can’t do this by internet! So we planned a last minute exploratory trip to Spain over Christmas break. Long story short, we started near Málaga, travelled up through Sevilla and north to Gijon and left from Bilbao. And still, we did not know where to go.
We returned home and resumed our search. Through much searching (both internet and soul), we decided to head to Southern Spain. Northern Spain’s climate is much like our home in the Pacific Northwest. We thought that if we are going to spend a year somewhere else, why not escape the rain? Plus, since we will not be working, we will have time for lots of outdoor activities (which we love), so why not be in a place with weather that you want to go out in? Also, since we plan to use long weekends and school breaks to travel around Europe, we needed to be close to an international airport. Northern Spain is 2-3 hours from an international airport.
We decided on the Málaga region of Andalucía. Unfortunately, we are not the first foreigners to discover the treasures of this region, so we tried to find a town without too many foreigners, especially English speaking one. Torre Del Mar is the one.
This will be a blog to share our experiences. It should be a family effort. I know Todd and I are excited to contribute. We hope the kids will also!
Adrift in Andalucía 