Two Years Later: Real Life Sets In…But We Still Love Living in Spain

This week marks the official two-year anniversary of our arrival in Spain. It’s been two years since we packed up our lives in the United States and hit reset. It’s hard to believe it has been two whole years, because it still feels like we just arrived yesterday, and yet, I can honestly say that living in Spain feels like home.

After the Honeymoon, Real Life Sets In

Although I still feel like I am living in paradise – Malaga is, after all, a part of the Costa del Sol – that shiny, newly-arrived feeling that accompanied me almost everywhere during our first year here in Spain has dissipated. Our second year has been a grounding year where we started to focus on settling in, in every sense of the word. We bought a dining room table and throw pillows for the couch. We finally hung our pictures that we’d brought from the USA, and a hot water heater. Mundane things that signified to our landlord and ourselves that we planned to stay in our apartment -and Spain –  for more than a minute.

Work Life vs Dream Life

Grounding for me personally also meant figuring out what my life was going to look like in Spain. I’ve written about it before, but it took me more than a year to allow myself to do what I said I was going to do here in Spain. That is, pursue a life centered around creative writing. For so many reasons, I avoided and ignored my true calling and passion to write and teach creative writing. Instead, I tried to create a life and a business that I thought felt more serious and respectable. I guess I didn’t trust that my “work” could bring me so much joy. I mean, could I really justify living in paradise and pursuing a career that makes me divinely happy? Dear readers, it took me a good, long while to give myself permission to fully inhabit my dreams and I launched the Read, Write and Create platform in November of 2022, and I am absolutely thrilled that today my professional work reflects my greatest loves, reading and writing. (Side note: I listened to every episode of the Flourish in the Foreign podcast to hear how other Black women built a life they loved abroad for inspiration.)

The Kids

Many people want to know how my children are faring, two years in as well. As a reminder, I have three kids but only two of them made the move. My eldest was 21 at the time of our departure, and he decided to stay in Philadelphia. So, that meant we arrived on the Iberian peninsula with a nine-year-old who was about to turn 10, and a 17-year-old who was about to turn 18. (Both of them have summer birthdays.) I am happy to say that both children are doing remarkably well and I live in awe at their resilience and ability to adjust to this new life, as well as new schools in a new language. And the language part was/is hard.

Babygirl

All three of my children speak Spanish because they only speak Spanish with their father who has kept his promise to never speak English to his kids. But speaking Spanish with your father isn’t enough of a preparation to handle school in Spanish, especially high school. We ended up enrolling my daughter in a local public elementary school that is a 15-minute walk from our house. It’s a small school that uses a lot of project-based learning. My daughter is in a class with only 11 other students. It was a perfect fit. She entered in fifth grade, which was the grade she would have entered in the United States and this year she will be graduating from sixth grade and moving on to middle / high school next year.

For my daughter, because the stakes were rather low – no tests, no homework, super friendly teachers – she felt comfortable at school and was unafraid to talk to the other kids or her teachers. Therefore her Spanish improved tremendously from year one to year two. She speaks better than I do and better than her older brother. She speaks Spanish fluently, and struggles only with grammar lessons. Although she loves her little school, she is excited to move on to middle/high school with her friends and will attend our local public school.

Second Son

Fo my son, school has been far from easy. We had him repeat 11th grade because we knew he’d need an extra year to catch up with his Spanish, but also, he spent 11th grade in the United States in his bedroom on a Zoom screen. We made the right decision putting him back a year, but it has been a struggle for him. My son attends a private school, and it is a school that prides itself on their academic rigor. He failed every single test his first trimester so, we hired tutors and el esposo worked with him everyday as well. We were all so thrilled when he finished his first year and actually passed to 12th grade.

As I write these words, I’m trying to decide what to wear to my son’s high school graduation this weekend. He still has to take a massive nation-wide exam that all seniors have to take to graduate, and it is notoriously difficult, even for native Spaniards. Luckily, students have two chances to pass, so we are hopeful he’ll be able to handle it. His goal is to attend college in the Netherlands, where he plans to major in sports studies and the language of instruction is English.

I am so proud of my son because he was always the child in the United States who could breeze through school without doing much studying. Here in Spain, where rote memorization is still a highly prized skill, he had to really change his habits. And even though it was like climbing an endless mountain, he never gave up. I don’t ever think my son would say that he enjoys school in Spain, but I am happy to report that he has no regrets about moving to Spain. He misses his friends, but he’s made new friends here. He loves the weather, and somehow my child found an American style football team here to join. The team ended up disbanding after the first year, but it was a great way to make friends and learn more of the city. And speaking of sports, my son who tops out at 6’3″ through some genetic accident, has  lost over 20 pounds over these last two years. He was really heavy when we he left the States, owing mostly to the fact that he sat in his room during the pandemic and didn’t move much, and he took up baking when he was bored. Now, he walks to school every day, which sits atop a mountain, and eats healthier food and feels so much better in his body.

First Son

As I mentioned above, when we moved to Spain my eldest son did not come with us. He decided to stay in Philadelphia because he didn’t think he had a purpose in Spain. Instead, he came to visit a couple of times and gradually he found himself liking it more and more. This past March, my eldest son moved to Spain to enroll in an intensive Music Production program at a school that is mere minutes from our apartment. He discovered the school by chance on his last visit here. The curriculum and the program was almost identical to a program he was looking at in the United States, but it literally cost less than a quarter of the price. If there’s one thing I have taught my children, it’s to take advantage of a bargain. So, at the two year mark, I am happy to say that I have all of my children with me in Spain.

Travel

On my personal list of reasons why I wanted to move to Spain, travel was 0n the top of the list. I reasoned that even if I didn’t love living in Spain, at least I would be able to travel to other countries in Europe and Africa with greater ease than when we lived in the United States. Sure enough, since we’ve moved, we’ve visited at least a dozen new cities in Spain, including Barcelona. We have also traveled to The Netherlands twice, and Marrakesh, Morocco. Now that the world has mostly opened up after the pandemic, I hope we can do even more traveling in the future. The next destination on my travel list though, is a return home to the United States. I haven’t been back since we left, so it is time to head back.

What I Miss While Living in Spain

To be honest, I don’t live in a state of lack or longing. I am truly content with my life here in Spain. There’s nothing of significance that I miss in the Untied States, except being close to my friends and family. But technology allows me to feel close to those I love. I am grateful that the Spanish government and the Spanish citizens in my city, and in my neighborhood, and in my new village, have allowed us to create such a beautiful life here. I feel very lucky. But I can allow myself to admit that there are a few material things that I miss. In no particular order, I miss having a clothes dryer in my apartment. I miss washcloths. I miss Black hair salons and English-language bookstores that stock a variety of books by BIPOC authors. I miss my dog Baldwin.  And I really miss good Mexican, Chinese, and Jamaican food.

But even with the lack of a good Jamaican meat pie and a cold bottle of Ting, I have zero regrets about moving to Spain. I have zero regrets about pulling my kids out of school and away from their friends and their familiar, so that they could experience a different type of existence. Even if they eventually decide to make a life in the United States, they will always have this experience that helped mold them.

Gratitude for My Life in Spain

I am so grateful that el esposo and I made this bold move to Spain, and I think overall it has made us grow closer as a couple and as a family.  Moving forward, my goals are to improve my Spanish reading and overall speaking ability so that I can do a better job immersing myself in my community. I don’t want to be living in Spain like an expat, I really want to be a good citizen. I am also eager to travel more around Spain and see the northern part of the country, as well as the Canary Islands. Stay tuned to the blog here, where I will continue to post my Spanish and multicultural adventures. If you’re looking for any literary content, please find me on Read, Write and Create.com.

Thank you anyone who is still reading here. If you have any questions about living in Spain with a family, or as a Black person, drop them in the comments and I’ll be sure to answer.