Moving forward...

Okay, now what?   We had been told that the Peace Corps application process could take 18 months to 2 years for a couple that wished to serve together.  Seems like plenty of time but there was a lot we needed to do.

First, there was the house; sell it or rent it out?  Then there was the issue of our personal property, our stuff.  Storing it all for two or three years just didn’t seem to be a good solution.  On top of this there were the endless little things we started to realize we needed to do to prepare ourselves; banking, communication, acquiring additional skills and more.

We decided we had time to figure out what we were going to do with the house.  We determined that travel abroad, for any length of time, was going to require us to make a significant improvement in our technological capability.  Complete conversion to electronic methods would be a necessity.  Our laptops were going to become more important to us, MP3 players which were unnecessary to us in our current lifestyle needed to be acquired and most importantly, we were going to need e-readers of some kind since it would be impractical to travel with a lot of books.

We also wanted to spend some time, perhaps as much as 5 or 6 weeks, immersed in another culture; just to see how we adapted or in other words, how uncomfortable we might be.  It seemed rational for us to schedule a working vacation, abroad, acquiring our Teaching English as a Foreign Language, or TEFL certificates.  This is generally a one month course and they are taught all over the world.

We chose Granada, Spain for a combination of reasons.  Our research showed that the programs offered there were some of the most rigorous in the international TEFL society.  Granada was also the home of a major university and over 40 language schools.  We didn’t want to be in a large urban environment and programs in Sardinia or one of the Greek islands seemed a little too much like a vacation rather than a serious learning experience.  We also wanted to spend time in a place with a rich history we could explore in our free time.  Granada fit the picture so we signed up.

Now we were on a schedule.  It was late July and our class started the first week of October.  We had never tried to get away for more than two or three weeks before plus we needed to implement elements of our long range plan.  We had to work out coverage for our clients and figure out how to stay in touch.  Keeping the long term plan going meant we had to start getting rid of our stuff, the books had to go.

We are voracious readers, reading several hundred books per year.  Needless to say, we had built up quite an extensive library (in excess of 4,000 books).  We took the time to list them on EBay and Half.com and started to sell them.  We almost cried when we sold the first one.  After quite a bit of research we bought Kindles, and vowed not to buy another “real” book.  With so much free and inexpensive content available for our kindles we knew we could keep our reading habit alive at a significantly lower cost.

We also bought MP3 players and started to burn our existing music to them.  We upgraded one laptop and purchased another high end but very light weight model.  At the risk of sounding Bohemian we decided that backpacks were the way to carry them and our other electronics while we traveled.   Another month of research to figure out which type and size to buy (we bought Northface but there are lots of options), then trying it out at home to be sure everything would work and we were set.

By early September we were very busy with travel and business arrangements, selling books, buying e-books and burning music.  We set up Skype accounts in order to communicate with our clients, family and friends.  Later, we were glad we had set up our Facebook page so that we could easily share our international experiences. 

There was also a major change in our banking arrangements.  While most banks (but not all) have electronic bill pay capabilities, we were facing issues like currency exchange rates and using ATMs outside of the country.  The fees and other costs could become enormous.  The solution came with Charles Schwab HighYield Investor checking.  Here we get bank exchange rates, no foreign transaction fees, all of the electronic services we needed and they refund all ATM fees charged to your account from anywhere in the world.  Wonderful!

The next thing we knew we were on an airplane.  Our short stops in Philadelphia and Madrid flew by and we found ourselves in Barcelona, Spain.