Kellie and Brit arrive in Spain.

The fourth of July in Spain is not quite the same experience as it is the US….however because there were several American students, our Spanish school decided that we should try to have a regular 4^th of July Barbeque.  An apartment complex with a swimming pool and an outdoor grill was secured and then they asked if we Americans would do the cooking.  Of course, we will!

After being told that the Spanish staff would probably not eat much in the way of hamburgers it was decided to include some chicken skewers, marinated the way they would like them.  We kept things very basic, cheese burgers, hot dogs, chips and the regular array of condiments including fresh lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, onions, mustard and ketchup.  As a nod to healthy lifestyle choices we added a big bowl of fresh cut fruit.  We tried for homemade lemonade but as nobody really wanted to bother making it, soda and beer, lots of beer were substituted with no complaints.

The day was hot and sunny, all you could ask for on the 4^th of July.  We had asked the staff to purchase 4 kilos of ground beef.  In Spain they use a combination of ground pork and beef (called “carne”) for most things including their version of hamburgers but we were insistent on 100% beef.   The staff decided that since not everyone would eat burgers, and beef is expensive they would just get 3 kilos.   We scrambled after classes were over for the day to get everything prepped and fired up the grill, which is of course not anything at all like a grill back in the states, more like an unused fireplace, but worked well enough with plenty of time and care.

We ended up with about 35 folks to feed over the course of the evening and everyone, Spanish folks included, did eat burgers in fact, some more than one as soon as they found out how truly great all beef American style burgers are!  It was loads of fun with American music playing and everyone enjoying the beautiful evening, we ran out of food, which is always a great outcome.

The following weekend was our most anticipated weekend of the summer.  Kellie, our youngest daughter and her best friend of many years Brittani were coming to Granada to take the TEFL course, and, if they could find jobs, to stay and teach for a year.  I went to the bus station in the hopes of catching them as they arrived in Granada from Madrid.  They had spent a week in London seeing the sights, then flew on to Madrid and then taken the bus to Granada.  Of course, I missed them at the station, still not sure how, but definitely missed them.

They found their way to the residencia while I walked back up the hill and met Mike at Puerta de las Pesas.  We had a drink and chatted with Fernando and Jose for a bit but I was so anxious to see the kids and worried that they had missed the bus, etc., etc., etc. (Mommy worries, but in my defense I knew they did not have cell phones that would work in Spain) that I just could not wait.  Mike and I walked over to the residencia and I was delighted and relieved to find them there. 

  Another one of those learning moments when you realize that your youngest child, traveling in a foreign country for the first time, where she doesn’t speak a word of the language, gets along just fine without her mother. 

The girls looked great and had wonderful stories to tell about the sights of London.  We took them back up to the restaurant to meet the family there and had a lovely evening catching up and talking about the TEFL course that was to begin for them the next day.  The girls headed in early so they could be ready in the morning and we spent the rest of the evening reminiscing about the other life we had lived in the states with both our girls close to home and seeing them all the time.  

Interestingly enough we found ourselves not missing the states and the time we had there but rather wishing that all of our friends and family could share this new life we are living now.   We knew that being able to share at least a portion of it with Kellie and Brit was going to be a fabulous and probably unique opportunity.  We were beginning to love Spain and had made some wonderful friends but we also know that Spain is not the only stop on this journey we have chosen.

Earning money while living abroad.

Once we decided to just start living abroad several things immediately became more relevant.  We are not rich and in any case, fifty is a relatively young age for complete retirement.  What if we were incorrect in our budget expectations?  What if our savings did not last?  What if the economy continues to do things no one seems to expect?

To add to the issue is the fact that it is complicated at best, almost impossible in other countries to obtain a work visa.  General rule: start the visa process at the embassy or consulate nearest you while in the US.  Retirement residency is available many places but generally requires an investment within a country or that you have a certain amount of proven income, the calculation of which varies from country to country and from bureaucrat to bureaucrat.  In some cases, this amount is expected to grow annually by a given percentage.  You can’t just go plop yourself down in another country and do as you wish; well like everything else that isn’t totally true either but it’s best to be legal.

It turns out that you can earn money while on any type of visa in most countries; you just can’t hold a job in that country that could be filled by a citizen.  Confused?  Don’t be.  One way to do this is to contract your services on the internet and be paid into your account in the US.  This way you are not taking jobs from the local population which is the main concern anyway.  There are many ways to earn money on the internet even if you aren’t an expert Ebay trader or specialize in computer programming.

Another way to earn money abroad is to teach English.  There is a seemingly endless market for English teachers all over the world and teaching English is a skill that travels well.  We had already taken the first steps towards having this internationally marketable skill set by becoming certified TEFL teachers.  A work visa to teach English is fairly easy to obtain in many countries except in the EU which is where we wish to spend quite a bit of time.  EU regulations state that if an EU citizen can perform the job, no work visa will be granted to a non-EU citizen and the EU includes those damned Brits who speak a language tolerably close enough to English that they can obtain employment as teachers.  So we needed something else.

One day, while reading International Living, we came across an article from a man who calls himself and his company “The Barefoot Consultant” and who claims to be able to teach anybody how to find ways to earn money by contracting services over the internet.  We were intrigued and signed one of us up.  Winton Churchill (that is really his name) really did provide a lot of information and recommendations, geared directly at people who have never operated in this type of environment before.  If you stay with his program he will walk you through the entire process although you can work at your own speed if you wish.  

Through this process we became aware of the multitude of internet based contract work websites beginning with the largest, multi-purpose site; Elance.  The work available is incredible in volume if not in reimbursement but there is a trick to all of this.  Once you are established, usually by working cheaply, you will generate demand for your quality services and many times, the employer will not wish to return to the Elance auction process and pay a commission which will allow you to gradually raise your prices over time.  The sheer volume and types of projects out for bid astounded us and in addition, we discovered quite a number of additional websites, some of which specialize in certain work categories like creative writing, copy writing, computer programming and translation.

One word of caution, we found that when we started to look at work that could be obtained and managed over the internet we got tons of email advertising “Work from home and make $$$$ per hour on your computer”.  The vast majority of this is scam stuff offering for you to take surveys for a penny a piece or solicit all your friends and acquaintances for pyramid type schemes.  Being new to the whole concept of working on-line we actually read through a lot of it, and even tried a few things that were offered.  In every case it was absolute garbage.

You can make money through a large number of legitimate websites by writing articles, short stories or books, proofreading or editing books and academic papers, selling your photographs, blogging, designing web sites, providing artwork; you get the idea.  It’s endless.  Better yet, for us, we have a modest budget and any money we make simply makes our savings last that much longer.  We have watched our daughter, in her spare time; take this concept to some of the more specialized websites and starting with ghost writing work herself into an ebook deal.  She now can support herself wherever she is in the world as long as she has access to the internet periodically.  Neat huh?

As for us, we are just beginning to fully explore the processes so stay tuned.  A short list of sites that we have researched and are very reputable is provided below to get you started if you are interested.  The rest is up to you.

Elance.com

Freelancer.com

Odesk.com

Buying into our wild idea completely.

Late summer turned out to be a time of momentous decisions for us.  The Peace Corps contacted us and asked if we would be willing to delay our service for a full year, to which we agreed.  With Marilyn’s accident it was going to be difficult to obtain medical clearance in time to serve earlier.  I was informed that since I had turned 50 I would need to have a colonoscopy in order to clear medical.  Oh joy!  At this point however, we were beginning to wonder if serving in the Peace Corps was actually going to be in our future given the delays in our medical clearance process.

As Marilyn continued to improve from her hand surgery and whiplash we began discussing what we would do if we were unable to serve in the Peace Corps or if our service was again delayed.  Trying to time the sale of our home and ridding ourselves of all the things we used every day was going to take time and it would be a process that once started, could not be stopped.  After much discussion, we came to the conclusion that we still wanted to live abroad, see the world and experience new cultures.  Our friends were beginning to think we were crazy at this point and some of them wondering why we would want to live abroad or spend so much time together.

What followed was a series of life changing decisions as we now bought into our wild idea completely.  We decided not to replace Marilyn’s car and instead try to share one vehicle.  This was going to require some serious coordination which we figured would be good practice for us.

We also decided to go ahead and put our house on the market and try to get it sold by the end of the year.  This would give us a time frame in which we could organize all of the other things we needed to do.  Most importantly, we made the decision that we were going to just go, rather than wait for the Peace Corps bureaucracy to drive our actions.

From our reading and research we had developed the thought process that we might be able to “follow the sun” by living in Europe during the summer and then in South America in, well, the summer.  We really hate to fly however but we had discovered this really interesting fact; cruise lines relocate ships from the Caribbean and South America to the Mediterranean in the spring and reverse this process in the fall.  There were some fantastic deals available that made a 3 week cruise cost the same as flying.  Since we would be in no particular hurry and the cruise provided the added benefit of covering 3 weeks of living expenses; this became one of our preferred travel strategies.

We then took a lovely 3 day break during which our friends from the TEFL course, Nathan and Frannie, visited us.  I’m not sure we got out of the pool other than to eat or sleep for those roasting hot late summer Arizona days.

 Both Nathan and Frannie were freshly returned from several months in Granada and we were able to catch up on the news of our other friends there.  We really missed Granada!

Back to work, put the house on the market and immediately we found we needed to make several more important decisions.  Where were we going to go?  When were we going to go?  How were we going to get there?  What were we going to do when we got there?  It may sound like we really had no plan at all but that wasn’t true; it was the details and advanced planning required that we really needed to address and all of these details dovetailed with each other.

By early fall and after hours of discussion we decided to begin this adventure with a return to Granada, Spain and take Spanish language classes.  It made sense to us to try to acquire another language and Spanish is spoken in a lot of places in the world that we wanted to experience.  Now began the research on language schools in Granada (there are over 40).  We were familiar with Castila because they provided space for our TEFL program and we knew they were a quality program.  While they weren’t the cheapest program there was the benefit of familiarity for us and they would be able to arrange housing for us until we were able to find a place.

Now we had to decide when.  That would be determined to a large extent by our travel schedule because Castila initiated beginner level classes every other week.  We had put this largest of decisions off as long as we could.  It was time to commit…. so we signed up for classes beginning in early May and committed to an intensive course for 12 weeks.  We found a 2 week cruise that left San Juan, Puerto Rico (a place we wanted to visit) in mid-April and traveled to Malaga, Spain which is only an hour and a half from Granada by bus.  We wanted to spend a few days in Old San Juan and by working backwards like this our departure date was identified.  Our departure would be on April 11^th; my birthday.

We put the house on the market and decided to join a very interesting group called InterNations that was forming a new Phoenix chapter.  InterNations is a networking group for people who are either living abroad or simply interested in traveling abroad.  It is a group of widely diverse people of many different nationalities and they are a friendly group of people.  In fact, not long after we joined we were contacted by an American who had been living in Granada for 3 years offering whatever assistance or guidance she could.  Amazingly, it turned out she worked for Castila and her assistance was both invaluable and appreciated.  Gracias Allison.  Te echamos de menos.

We felt were definitely on the right track, and the train was now running at full speed.

The learning process and new decisions....

With the prospect of Mike going blind now firmly behind us and both of us working hard to get back into decent physical shape to minimize any future health issues, it was time for some hard evaluation.

We had learned that we did like being on the ground in another place and a different culture.  We had learned that the Charles Schwab checking account worked exactly as advertised and was perfect for us.  We had learned how to use Gmail and Facebook in ways that suited us.  We had learned that we absolutely hated flying long distances and we had realized we would now never be content without some significant exposure to other people and cultures in our lives.

The Peace Corps seemed like a perfect way to begin that process of living at least part of our lives outside the United States.  We continued to work on all the medical forms, made appointments for doctors, dentists, lab-work, diagnostic procedures and continued to move that process forward.  We had made the decision when we went to Spain for the TEFL course that we would live in the residencia, a far different environment than we had ever used for vacations (we had been of the 4 and 5 star resort and golf course mentality).  While it was a new experience for us it was also a rewarding one the we thoroughly enjoyed.

Our new perspective was that the Peace Corps would really take us back to our roots and help us learn to live very simply and frugally.  We started to realize that our perspective on the entire world and how we would live in it had changed.  Gone was the desire for more stuff or to recreate our American lifestyle and in its place was an insatiable curiosity about other people, places and cultures and a desire to not only see them but to live and experience life with them.

Suddenly it was time to seriously start getting rid of stuff.  We did not know exactly what the future would look like but we knew that we had some significant changes to make.  The house had to go, being a long distance land lord just did not have any appeal to us.  Getting it on the market became a priority for the summer.

First and most important we had taken the time over the holidays to explain to our two daughters what we were thinking.  They actually both thought the Peace Corps was a really cool idea and they were very happy for us.  They had mixed emotions when we told them we had decided to sell the house and that these could be the last holidays we celebrated in this house we had lived in for 17 years.  Then the really big thing….here are your sticky notes, go through the house, pretend we died, and mark anything you want to keep:  books, furniture, artwork, kitchen supplies, everything.  Difficult for them, easy for us!

We actually figured that we would need some kind of small storage unit for the things we would want to keep, thinking that we would need some furniture and maybe a few boxes of things to get restarted with when we came back to the States.  Assuming that we would leave for the Peace Corps sometime in the next 18 months as planned, we would be getting through sometime in 2014, and who knew what we would want to do at that point.

Then the real work began, with more learning, like how to use Ebay and Craig’s list, how to figure out what you should try to get for stuff you haven’t seen for 10 years,  and what charities you want to give things to that you either can’t or don’t want to sell. 

We also had to learn how to manage what we were calling our “leave behind” budget.  A storage unit, life insurance policies, property taxes, and all the other little things that we would still need to pay for even if we were living somewhere else. 

Learning new ways of dealing with each other was no small task either.  Never, in our entire married life had we spent so much time together.  We needed to work as hard on making our relationship work for both of us as we did on all the other stuff.   Two very strong personalities making tough decisions in the midst of very high stress can take a toll on any relationship and yet for us in many ways it seemed to help bring us together.  We began to see that even if we came to the answers from very different perspectives, we kept coming to the same answers.  

The idea now was to get the house on the market so hopefully it would sell by the end of the year.  Once the house sold we would become apartment dwellers, renting until time to leave for the Peace Corps assignment, whatever and whenever that might be. 

The idea of continuing to travel after our assignment just kept getting stronger.

The TEFL Experience

We have both been away from a structured educational system for many, many years.  Starting formal classes Monday morning was a mixed bag of emotions: some excitement, tempered by some apprehension and a lot of curiosity.  Being naturally early risers, we had plenty of time to kill.  We discovered that the one coffee shop that we were aware of near the school did not open its doors ‘til after the owner dropped his daughter off at school, sometime between nine and nine thirty, too late for a quick cup before class.  We were stuck with Nescafe.

On day one of the TEFL course we were given course books with detailed narrative about the requirements and expectations, essentially a book length syllabus.  If you are in a university program this course is worth 6 hours of graduate level credit.  Can you imagine 6 hours of graduate level classes, homework, projects and exams, plus student teaching in just 4 weeks?  The schedule was grueling to say the least, and by the end of the first day we knew it was going to be a challenge.

Our schedule essentially went from nine in the morning until 9 in the evening with one coffee break and two meal breaks.  Each individual had different times for teaching and class prep but if you were not teaching in the evening you would be evaluating the other students or prepping for your next class, so there really was almost no “down time”.  We had four instructors and they all made it clear that they were there to teach but that we had to do the work and be very self-directed, there would be no hand holding on this course!  Furthermore, you could not expect to pass just because you had paid a lot of money to be there.  You either passed based solely upon your own merit, or you didn’t.

The first week started out with a full schedule of classes during the day and with our evenings spent practicing our evaluation techniques while our instructors taught English classes to native Spanish speaking students.   Our DOS (Dorector of Studies) Dylan had many years of experience and is one of the best teachers we have had the pleasure of observing. The TEFL program is designed to put you in front of students, teaching, as soon as possible and to have you teach at each of five levels of classes offered from Beginners to Upper Intermediate.   Each class had two “trainee” teachers assigned, one for the first hour and one for the second.  The lessons were dovetailed to fit together and the two teachers were expected to work on the lesson prep together.  Because they put you in front of students so quickly, at times you will not yet have had all the classes that you need in order to know how to prepare a particular lesson or the classroom management tools you will use as a teacher, but ready or not, you teach.

The instructors are aware of this and so in your first teaching prep they are much more involved and give lots of assistance and advice, then they purposefully give less and less assistance with each subsequent lesson.  During the day when we were not teaching or prepping to teach, our days were filled with classes on teaching methodology, linguistics, phonology, classroom management, student assessment and a myriad of other related topics.  We were expected to complete three individual term projects simultaneously as well. 

The first project was a Foreign Language Journal.  During that first week we had three classes in the Hungarian language taught by a professor who never used a single word of English.  We had to evaluate how he taught and how we learned.  Evaluation sheets and a project paper were due the second week of class.  Our second project was to create at least two sets of materials for classes that we taught that could be scaled up or down depending on the level of the class being taught and used to illustrate at least two different possible lesson points.  The materials themselves and the papers written about each set describing the lesson points and scalebility were due in week three. 

The most difficult project was referred to as the ISP or Individual Student Project.  This consisted of securing a student from one of the classes and setting three outside of class times to meet with them.  We were required to find or design testing materials to test their reading, writing, listening and speaking skill sets; evaluate the results of each test and identify problem areas that could be facilitated with a private lesson.  We then had to design the lesson plan and all materials to be used, teach the lesson as a one-on-one tutoring session and write up an evaluation of the entire process, including a critique of our student’s performance and our own in all areas and suggest a future study program for the student.  The expectation was that this project would require around sixty pages to complete including all materials used, and would be turned in no later than the beginning of week four.

Needless to say, the very first weekend of the course was the only one we had any significant time away from homework and projects.  We took a day and went to visit the Alhambra, the most visited historic site in Spain, because we could not imagine being in Granada and not being able to see it.  So much for thinking that we could get to know the city!  The course was extremely demanding and our time was very focused on completing projects, teaching classes, and preparing for the final exams in Phonology, Grammar and Teaching Methodology. 

Many nights were spent with several students gathered in the salon or around the dining table as we worked on our projects, prepared for class or studied for exams.  This program should really be taught in a five week course and the instructors all agreed that four weeks is just too short a time to be able to accomplish everything required.  The issue is: people can find a way to take four weeks to do an international course but the threshold stops at that point; they just can’t sell a five week course, so they work with what they have. 

The fourth and final week began with exams and ended with course evaluations and reviews of our work with grades on Thursday.  There was time scheduled for a chance to retake of any test that was not passed on the original try.  Fortunately for us, we both passed them the first time through so it gave us a small window of time to see a bit more of the city for a couple of hours.

We spent Thursday night with our entire group going to dinner and a Flamenco show.  It was a wonderful evening in the Albaizyn at the restaurant Zoraya, and we all ended up at Hannigans of course.  There was good food, good Flamenco, lots of drinking and great company.

Friday morning there were scheduled a few follow up sessions and then a graduation ceremony with homemade Paella and Sangria.  We decided to skip the ceremony in order to take advantage of our last chance to visit the Nazrid Palaces at the Alhambra.  This was a justified trade-off in our opinion (sorry fellow trainees!). 

Friday evening we picked up our diplomas, had our “room check” to be sure that we were leaving our room in the same condition that we found it in, and then went out with all our fellow students to catch a few final drinks together.    We had lived, worked, studied and played with these people for a month and we knew we were going to miss all of them. 

Dylan has since written a great e-book, A Short Guide to TEFL if you are really interested in understanding the TEFL world. (Shameless plug for a good friend!)