Our Spanish Year Abroad 2022-2023

toddvandy
Sep 19, 2022
2 min read

Updated: Feb 8, 2023

What? We’ve decided to take a year off from our normal lives and spend a year in different Spanish speaking countries (Spain, Costa Rica, and Mexico) with our 2 boys. Who? Our family! Todd (47), Amber (44), Parker (10), and Drion (6) When? Aug 2022 to July 2023. We are committed to 11 months but are open minded and flexible to an organic change in our timeline. Probably not shorter. Possibly more. Most likely just 11-12 months. Why? Amber and Todd have lived in different countries both separately and together in the past. The joy of traveling, experiencing and immersing ourselves into another culture and language is part of what brought us together. After 10 straight years in Seattle raising our boys, teaching, settling into a house, and enjoying the great northwest with friends, we’ve decided to get back to those international experiences–but this time as a family of 4.

How?

For many years we have been financially tied in different ways. Some of that changed in the fall of ’21 and allowed us the freedom to wonder about life abroad again since our last adventure in Japan from 2011-2012. We’ve always had the idea of living with our boys in a Spanish speaking country but weren’t sure when. Taking into account their schooling, and being 4 years apart, we decided that now was probably the most ideal time for them before getting too established in school with friends and becoming more independent. We decided to start with Spain because we missed Europe after 18 years. But after a few months we could not find a job or even any school to respond to our inquiries or applications. As teachers we are allowed 1 year of leave every 5 years and so we decided to take our leave (sabbatical) for this school year. We had some money saved up, small investments to fall back on, and a small home equity loan to use for the year. We researched where to live, rented out our house, sold our cars, and bought our tickets!

Leaving Seattle

So many loads to the storage unit, the dump, and goodwill! After weeks of purging and packing we pared it down to 3 suitcases and a couple of carry-ons for the year.

Istanbul Layover

After a nice long visit with Papa and Memere in Cape Cod, we continued from Boston to Istanbul for a 22 hour layover. What a neat place to visit! We'd all like to go back for more time someday.