The Adventure Begins

The time has come! After a year of planning, weeks of packing up, and days full of details, it is time for us to head out on our adventure. We are so excited! Early Saturday morning we will cart our luggage (one a piece) and head to distant lands for hopefully a year. Our first destination of course is Madrid, Spain where we will reside for two months. We will be living in the heart of Madrid, in an area called Puerto Del Sol. Our sojourn there will begin with intensive Spanish classes that will hopefully refresh our somewhat meager Spanish skills. Upon completion of our classes, we each begin internships in Spanish non-profit organizations. We will update all the details on the organizations and our responsibilities when we learn more. After our two months in Spain are up……… well then begins the next part of our adventure. We have many ideas about where we want to go next, so stay tuned!
So what did it take to get to this point? It began a year ago with Trisha bravely acting on a lifetime dream to spend a year abroad with her husband. She began with relentless research on living overseas for long periods of time from websites and library books. Trisha specifically wanted to pursue living and working in Italy for a year. Amidst countless hours of comprehending the complexities of making her dream a reality, she worked on convincing me of pursing this dream too. It took awhile. The idea of dropping everything (family, friends, jobs, residence, cars, stuff) for a year sounds fun and romantic, but the details cause a major headache. After convincing myself that this was indeed a grand idea, we pursued Italy. Living and working in Italy for a year actually sounded like a manageable endeavor at the time. We soon discovered the opposite. We found it virtually impossible for Americans to obtain a work visa and stay in a European Union country for a year. The only possibility was to go to Italy, get a job offer, return to the U.S. to fill out paperwork, and then return with a visa. On to plan number two.
Around April we made the decision to abandon the live in one country for year dream, to lets travel to many countries and work and volunteer dream. Yeah! Trisha found a great company to begin this process called Adelante. Adelante was a wise choice because it would arrange housing, provide language courses, and place us in part-time employment to begin our trip. We loved the idea of being established for the initial part of our adventure, and the opportunity to work rather than just being a tourist. The only drawback was no Adelante programs in Italy. Oh well, Spain didn’t seem to be too shabby a substitution. We will still make it to Italy eventually during our year, since our return flight departs from Rome.
Now the messy details. Simply leaving for a year is not so simple. We first had to leave our jobs. When you have worked at the same place for nine years saying goodbye is a bit daunting. Fortunately Trisha and I were both in ideal places to leave our work. Trisha was ready to pursue new career goals and I was ready for a change of scene. After we cleared the job hurdle, it was onto selling the cars, finding storage for all of our stuff, making sure finances were in place, and making countless phone calls to wrap up loose ends. Our final week led us to the fruition of these actions as we moved all our possessions into self-storage in Pomona. Surreal and backbreaking best sum up that day. From there it was countdown time as we spent the remaining few days in living in my parents temporarily vacated loft. They are off blazing their own trails in Italy and England. And in the end, it was time to leave. More to come once we land in Spain!
-Travis