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Saying Goodbye to Spain

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Living in Spain during the COVID-19 lockdown was not easy. For six weeks, our daughters could not leave the apartment for any reason. As the weeks passed and the state of alarm continued to be extended, it became clear that plans for our last couple of months in Spain would dramatically change. We would no longer be able to take the ferry across the Straits of Gibraltar for a long weekend in Morocco. My parents-in-law, brother in-law, and brother all had to cancel trips to visit us in Spain. As the dominoes continued to fall, we held onto the hope that we would be able to have positive closure during our last few weeks along the Costa del Sol. I have written about two final adventures that we were able to take within the province of Malaga. As enjoyable as those travel experiences were, we are most grateful that the COVID-19 restrictions in Spain were lifted enough during our final month to allow us to properly say goodbye to friends that we had made throughout the year. The govern
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El Acebuchal: A Final Hurrah

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This is the first blog entry that I have written after returning from our adventure in Spain, but there are a few loose ends to tie up to finalize this blog. With less than one week remaining in Spain, we made one final side trip within Malaga province. As I explained in the last post, Spain’s de-escalation plan allowed us to travel within our home province, but we could not leave the province until Spain exited the state of alarm. Since so many other trips had been canceled and we had decided to return directly to the United States instead of traveling further in Europe, we figured we should take advantage of the opportunity to visit some of the small, whitewashed pueblos in Malaga province. We started the journey by riding the train to the Malaga airport, where I thought I had found a great deal on a rental car, which cost only $8 per day (more on that later). As we exited the train, it was like entering a ghost town. The airport was completely disserted, except for a few taxis
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Montajaque: A Pearl in the Mountains

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I recognize that many people have lost far more than I have in the past couple months and am thankful for all the blessings that we have in our life. Nonetheless, our sabbatical experience has been heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. By the time we leave Spain in a few weeks, we will have had to cancel trips to the Netherlands, Germany, Morocco, Italy, Denmark and Norway; three different sets of family members had to cancel trips to visit us in Spain; our daughters have missed out on the special opportunity of attending school in a foreign country and did not enjoy the closure of saying goodbye to classmates and teachers; and we missed out on about two months of enjoying normal daily life in Spain. While we have tried to make the best of the situation, it is impossible to not feel some sense of loss. So, it was nice to enjoy an experience that wouldn't have happened if terms like "social distancing" and "new normal" had never entered our vocabulary.
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A Strange Weekend in Seville

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Yes, we did. Our family traveled hundreds of kilometers to Seville as life ground to a halt in Spain due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Before detailing our bizarre weekend, I want to describe our thinking heading into the trip. I do so, not to defend our decision to travel, but to record for my own memory and to communicate to others how we were processing these unprecedented times. I am writing this post in late April, but we left for Seville on March 13. To understand our perspective at the time, one has to travel back to the days before the world shut down and daily life changed at a drastic rate. The overall attitude in Southern Spain seemed to be that, while the situation was escalating in Madrid, daily life should be able to mostly continue as normal. Conversations were about whether Spaniards would be able to continue their customary warm greetings, with kisses on both cheeks, not about whether we were on the brink of a worldwide lockdown. On Friday morning, I went to the school
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Tour de Spain

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We have been living in Spain for almost six months now, but until a few weeks ago we hadn't yet traveled to some of the most notable cities in the country. Luckily, we were able to enjoy this journey a few weeks before the coronavirus chaos really hit the country. We had a break in the girl's school schedule and my volunteer responsibilities thanks to Semana Blanca, which is an annual week-off in late February. I am very envious of the Spanish school calendar: a week off in late October, two and a half weeks of at Christmas, a week off in late February, a week off at Easter, and a few other random holidays sprinkled in here and there. Becky and the girls actually started the journey without me as I finished up my last day of volunteer duties. They met up with our good friends, the Loftus family, in Madrid. If you are interested in reading more about their experiences in the capital, check out Becky's blog at akukskitchen.com. A few days later, I took a bus up to Madrid an
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What do I do to learn Spanish?

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When we made plans to come to Spain, I think that I underestimated the amount of effort that it would take to learn a second language. It is not that I thought I would pick Spanish up by osmosis, but I thought just living in Spain would be enough to learn the language in nine months. I quickly came to realize that it would require consistent effort and an intentional plan to reach my learning goals. In this post, I want to share some of the things I have been doing to learn Spanish. 1)       Intentionally seeking opportunities to interact with Spanish speakers Although there is an English speaking church near us, we intentionally decided to attend a Spanish speaking church. This has been a great opportunity to meet and interact with Spanish speakers (I say Spanish speakers instead of Spaniards because there are a lot of people who have immigrated from South America). The sermons are in Spanish, but translated to English, which provides a great opportunity to check if
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