Well, I´m about to leave the country. For good. Yes, I am going to Spain to be a teacher’s assistant in an elementary school in a small town called Albatera. For what do you say? To teach English to elementary children.  Age 6-12  which by the way I´ve never had any so I´m clueless about what to do with them. Im a Geriatric nurse by trade, not a pediatric one. OMG that is all I can say.

The town of Abatera has a population of about 8000
people and is about 5 hours south of Barcelona and some 15 miles southeast of Alicante in the Valencia region. It’s hot dry and looks like Lubbock Texas. Not the vision one has to move to the sunny aisles of Spain. The idea of the romantic antique stone buildings with ornate iron terraces and cobblestone streets with Spaniards strolling about eating tapas in local taverns is not like Lubbock. It has no taxis no buses and no Uber. The nearest train is in the middle of nowhere four miles outside the town. Oh, boy time to buy a bicycle seat.

Now I´ve been to Spain many times and found myself meandering the old city streets of Madrid on those cobblestone streets just like the photos on those travel brochures everyone sees.  I´ve eaten many a tapas in taverns and watched the Spaniards openly kiss their novias as if every encounter may be their last one. Yes, it’s romantic, it’s beautiful, and it’s mesmerizing to imagine living the life of siestas tapas, and romance….

So I dreamed of this life too and made a plan to do it as Nike would say.

Yup, I hatched this idea over a year ago when traveling. I had met a Spaniard on one of my trips and that led to more traveling to well, Spain.  But some things are meant to go unsaid on that front for now. However, I decided to take a break and went to Madrid at the tail end of  2018 for 2 months as a sabbatical after my divorce. While there I met a friend who was the god dtr of a friend in the US who was teaching me Spanish albeit with little success as I seem to have a learning deficiency for languages. However, if there were points for having a trigger finger to travel I´de be a millionaire.  But I digress.

Anyway while there my friend brought over some friends to my apartment two of which were language Axillaries, or English language assistants in schools in Madrid. They were helping teachers teach English by being the “native speaker” for the kids to learn and listen to. Hence I found out the details and went into investigating how to do this once I was home. Turns out it paid $1000 Euros a month and you get free health insurance minus medications. You pay for your own expenses and lodging etc. that’s it. No teacher’s certificate needed, no experience, nada.  It is through the education department of Spain and everything is done online through an intermediary who manages the applications.  I won’t say it was easy. Many things were in Spanish and I spent thousands of hours getting the information from others online in many Facebook groups on how to complete the application. All I knew was I qualified as I was a native English speaker and had a bachelor’s degree and I was under age 60.

Hence the time limit here. Im too young to retire and have no pension till 65. I looked at my money, my job, and my life and made the pros and cons of it all. I knew leaving would be a challenge especially with my multitude of health problems. How do I support myself? How do I get my nine meds a month? how do I go without the many doctors I have been with for over 20 years that have saved my life when I had cancer, kept me seeing despite my glaucoma, controlled my arthritis and managed my hormones so I won’t have hot flashes and want to kill someone?

But all that being said I also knew as a cancer survivor who was given two years at diagnosis, life can end or change in a millisecond. I was out 8 years and so far so good. But, but but…..

So I applied in January of 2021 and by March, I was approved and accepted to the program.

Then I had to apply for my visa which is a permission slip as they say to go in under the title of a student and once there will allow me to be there to teach for a year and if I like it I can renew.

The visa process was a bit crazy as well since one has to have an FBI background check then have it Apostilled (authenticated) from Washington DC.  Then everything had to be translated to Spanish. And that was only part of it as everything has a time stamp on it which meant I was up many nights wondering if I would get it all in time to mail to the Houston Spanish consulate. Despite my lack of detail to many things I forced myself to have excel sheets on every step every date every document needed and when. I was like an animal marking my calendar with every due date, mail out date, and obtaining Fed exes for everything even when I wasn’t ready to mail yet. I had a checklist for my checklists for my checklist. I was paranoid about every detail as this was so important I would screw this up like so many other things in my life, so I made sure I would not be the cause of my own shortcomings. I would succeed or die trying.

So I made up my mind I was leaving and I would live on that $1000 month and Ide use my savings to buy medications and whatever else I had. I was changing my life for good. I also chose to say nothing to anyone but family in case it did not happen no one would know. I chose not to tell my work either and since we are in the covid era anything could happen and again I didn’t want to announce something then have to change it.

As for the rest of my life, I had to reconcile leaving a well-paying job, and great health insurance. But on the other hand, I had no house, no kids, no spouse, and no one to answer to but me. Does that make it easier? yes and no. Having no partner to share expenses and to help keep you sane when the stress gets high make shit harder. Having no commitments is great, but I also have no one to catch me when I fall or add to my retirement plan. I have to live and survive and budget on my own. All while not speaking hardly a word of Spanish. I have no family there and so the only thing connecting me will be the school as a place to land, make friends, learn Spanish.

Some say it’s crazy and reckless, but when people all say life is short, do they really do something they always wanted to do before they die because of that? Not many.  I am a nurse. I’ve seen the other side and also was given my own pink slip on life 8 years ago, so the scare is real.

So when I call my friends at 3 am frustrated and homesick and feeling poor, I only ask that they answer this question: who’s fucking idea was this? and make sure to remind me, it was mine. All mine.

So if you have a year to plan as it will take that long, make a change, whatever it is, make an excel sheet and stick to the time schedule…. because as stupid as it sounds, time waits for no one, once it’s gone, it’s gone…

As a side note,  make sure to stay healthy as yall know I climb stairs and still have my team Tower of Power. If I didn’t eat well and exercise this adventure may never have gotten this far. (and my great medical care)  so take care of your body, you will need it when you change your life.

Adios until next time

For details of life once I´m there,  I started a blog of my new life ‘Whos f**ing idea was this?

Stay tuned for more