Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country. Anais Nin The desire to create a meaningful, cultural experience for our family inspired us to make a seemingly unusual plan: to pull up our roots … More Living your dream and inspiring others
It sounded like a grand and impossible idea: moving to Spain for a year. Strangely and luckily, it wasn’t as hard as we imagined it would be, and since pulling off our great dream, we’ve become evangelical in our enthusiasm to help others take the leap and live their own Spanish adventure. I have learned … More So you want to live in Spain! What next?
For years I have listened to stories of people displaced from their homelands for various reasons. I listened with interest without fully understanding what it would be like to constantly wonder about a life, land and culture elsewhere. Now I have finally come to understand, in my own ‘lite’ version, the concept of living between two … More Caught between two worlds – repatriation
We have been back in Australia for just over six weeks and we are beginning to wonder whether Our Year in Spain actually occurred or if it was just a long and fantastic dream. The experience will always live on inside each of us somewhere and as we reintegrate to life in Australia, there are indications that we have … More The history that makes us
It’s surreal to think that just a few short weeks ago we were toasting the arrival of summer and the end of the school year with our Spanish community in Granada. There were school concerts, end of year parties and dinners that went into the wee hours, especially as the sun didn’t set until 10.30pm. … More The Return…Week 1
What happens when you travel the world during the “World Cup”? It means you see how each country celebrates or mourns their teams’ wins and losses. It also involves witnessing the varying degrees of football madness in each country with outdoor screens, crowded bars, terraces and colour-coordinated patriotic paraphernalia of flags, banners and more…. Our … More World Cup Fever
365 days ago we untethered ourselves from life in Australia and took a leap of faith into the unknown. We boarded a plane that carried the four of us across continents and oceans. The only known was that we would spend a year living in Granada, Spain. The remaining pieces of the journey were a … More 365 days…
The organisation of time in Spain is a fascinating topic and one that for historical, geographic and political reasons puts Spain on its own unique schedule compared to the rest of the world. We knew before we came to live here that Spaniards had a unique relationship with time. We have since come to adapt … More Living on Spanish time
It was late on Friday night when we arrived at our apartment in the medieval Tuscan town of Lucca after a full day of travel. My son asked: “How come every place we visit, there’s a big wall around it? We live inside the walls of the Albaicin in Granada and every city we’ve stayed … More Living within the walls of history
When we embarked on our year in Spain, it was always implicit that we would use this opportunity to travel as much as possible around the region. Australia is so far away that it seemed imperative to make the most of our time in the northern hemisphere. Hence when the Spanish Easter holidays coincided with our … More Unwitting pilgrims in an ancient land
Our Year In Spain 