The idea of Spain.

¡Hola!  Welcome to el blog (that’s Spanish for ‘the blog’) documenting our time in Spain.  If you're reading this, we really appreciate your interest in our journey and we will try our hardest to make it mildly entertaining, possibly even humorous, we just don’t want to set your expectations too high, yet.

Over our next year abroad, we want to make sure that we are taking the time to collect all of our own thoughts and experiences (in between siestas, cervezas, and paella, of course). Through this blog we hope we can share our 305-day adventure with all of our friends and family while we live out one of our dreams.  Please comment on our posts (so we know there is at least a somewhat interested audience) and continue to keep up with us via e-mail/Facebook.

Our journey actually began 14 months ago when we started researching opportunities that would allow us to fulfill one of our shared dreams – to live abroad.  In July 2010, Todd connected with a friend that was participating in a teaching English program in a different country, and after we learned that the same program also existed in Spain.  Getting paid while living in Spain (oh, we would have to work ... for 12 hours a week) -- our interest was peaked!

After printing out a 60 page ‘brochure’ we quickly realized our Spanish skills were a little rusty.  Nevertheless, we made quite a large investment in time in order to translate all of the requirements, timelines, etc.  Once we decided we wanted to move forward with the application process, we wanted to apply right away as the program was based on a ‘first come, first serve’ basis.   We were disappointed to learn that the application process didn’t open for three more months, but we were finally able to submit our applications in November 2010.  From this point, it was a waiting game.  We quickly learned about the pace of ‘la vida Española’ – we were forced to wait since there was not a single person to contact to confirm or update the status of our application.  The brochure said that we should hear back by July 2011 – about eight months after we applied!  This obviously created some uncertainty, since we were also planning our wedding and new life together.

As excited as we were, we tried not to be too excited with our friends, in case something didn’t work out.  It was very difficult to constantly downplay our excitement, even to our friends.  Worse, with strangers, sometimes we wouldn't even bring it up.  We knew there was a realistic chance that something might not work out for us to take a one-year adventure abroad and a year off from “real life”. (*Todd won’t admit it’s a part of our honeymoon because he has to work, even if it’s only 12 hours a week.)  It became more and more difficult to downplay our excitement as the months dragged on and more and more people wanted to know what we were going to do after we got married.

We finally received an acceptance to the program in April.  However, the letter only stated that we would be placed in the same region (Andalucia), but that we would have to wait another few months to find out if we were going to be placed in the same city!   It became stressful when we had to make career decisions based on the possibility of being placed together in the same city, not to mention the stress of planning our wedding at the same time… (if it sounds like we are redundant, we probably are, but it was very difficult!).  When we finally received our acceptance letters the WEEK of our wedding, explaining that we would be teaching in the same town, it was the best wedding present we didn't register for!

Where's Waldo?  See if you can find Linares, Spain.