Spain for a Month, Part 1

Like most things, it started as a question, a little tiny idea. Could we do a Spanish immersion experience for our toddler? Actually, wait, back up. There were questions and little tiny ideas before that one.

Could we find a way to live abroad?
Would we want to live abroad?
How long could we go for?
What would the logistics of work look like?
Where would we go?
What would we do while we were there?
Would we go to one place or many?

Clearly we had an interest in time abroad that lasted longer than a typical vacation.

Nine years ago we planned a month-long hiking trip in northern Spain. We completed almost half of our planned hiking before an injury caused us to re-work the logistics and use trains instead of our hiking boots. We’ve also spent a decent amount of time in Ecuador, and my husband speaks to the kids in Spanish about 50% of the time. Spanish has long been an interest for him and exposure to the language and culture has always been a parenting priority for us. While I don’t speak Spanish, I think the language is beautiful and I believe there are many benefits to being bilingual, so I share this priority.

As we considered spending time abroad with the kids, it seemed obvious to us that Spanish immersion would be part of the experience.

While we love South America and have a strong interest in traveling to countries beyond Ecuador, the reality is that the countries and the continent are large and travel there is quite time consuming. It’s not an area that boasts transportation speed in the way Europe’s trains do. Additionally, there’s an ease to the social structures in Europe and similarities to America that aren’t quite paralleled in South America. There’s a certain reliability in transportation and easier access to quality medical care. With kids the ages of ours at the time we were planning to travel (3.5 years and 6 months), Europe felt more predictable and manageable.

After weighing a variety of options for both destination and duration, we settled on one month away from home. During that time we would spend three weeks in Salamanca, Spain - a small city that’s a reasonable train ride from Madrid and boasts a fairly neutral accent among its native Spanish speakers. The final week would be spent exploring a couple other European cities with the kids’ grandparents, who would join us just for that last week.

My husband was able to coordinate his work such that he would be accessible for some remote work but mostly be on vacation. We chose to travel for the month of November, as Thanksgiving resulted in a few extra automatic holiday days for his company and an increased attitude of flexibility among his colleagues.

For all the big logistics (finding a preschool that would enroll our daughter for a few weeks, selecting an Airbnb, booking the flights, understanding and planning train and bus schedules, etc), my husband took responsibility. He loves flying (both the airplanes as well as the points he earns and uses); he’s crazy about tracking options and plans in his spreadsheets; and he could communicate in Spanish with various schools. He wanted to be the planner, and he managed all the details so well.

This was a big trip we were imagining with two rather tiny humans. To say that I was calm and excited throughout October would be a misrepresentation. The baby was still nursing during the night and fighting any sort of nap schedule, so I was tired. We were juggling three days of preschool, Friday morning gymnastics, and swimming lessons that fall. Additionally, my husband had multiple overnight and even week-long work trips in the two months leading up to our departure. My job was really to keep the kids alive and ensure we were packed to leave on Halloween.

It felt like a lot for my tired brain, and there were plenty of days when I wondered if we should cancel the whole thing. I kept telling myself (and everyone else) that I’d be excited once I was sitting on the airplane. That sentiment turned out to be true. It’s always amazing to me the relief I feel once I’m at the airport or on the airplane and simply can’t do anything else. There’s no time or opportunity left to dream up a problem and find a solution, so you make do with whatever you’ve prepared beforehand.

As the October days ticked by, I did manage to order a few clothes and supplies that would ease our travel experience, pack the bags, prepare snacks for the plane, ready our technology with shows and books and cords and charged batteries, say goodbye to friends. In many ways, I had built the preparations up to be harder and more time consuming in my mind than they were in practice. In other ways, I had the nagging feeling that I was forgetting something significant. Are there people who travel with small children and don’t have that feeling?

And so on Halloween 2019 in the thick of an early midwestern snowstorm, we were off.
Kind of.