I guess the first thing so far is that we are feeling drawn to do this. For that reason for sure I do not know. But we have prayed and prayed about it and it feels like it is something that God wants us to do.
Family bonding. It will be a year without the distractions of school functions, friends houses and just the busyness of life. I know we are just removing ourselves from one location to another but we will be taking a lot more time to invest in our relationships with each other Homeschooling the kids, taking time to explore new places and learn new languages and make new friends. We are not bringing our TV just want to spend time with the kids and each other.
Experiencing a new culture!! Personally I think we are blind to a lot of things living here. We complain that our houses are too small (me included). We ignore our neighbors, communities because we are too busy and it is not our problem (in the research I have done this is mainly a US thing, I read about when it is time to harvest Olives in Italy everybody stops what they are doing and they go help the farmers and they have fun doing it! They make little competitions out of it, eat meals together while doing it! Fun!!). I think it would be a great thing for us to see the way other people do it. What is important to them, what do they value, what are their traditions?
Living out of a suitcase!! Scary, yet I am very excited to do this! I am excited to sell most of our belongings and live off the minimum amount of things we can for a year!! Hopefully it will help rid us of some of our greediness :)
Sightseeing! I LOVE traveling and seeing new places!! I am very excited to see things that are OLD! We have building that are a hundred or a few hundred years old and think it is amazing!! We will see things made a thousand years ago!! I love photography and am super excited to get to photograph so many cool locations!! I want my kids to know that there is more to life than what is just outside there front door. They don't have to spend their whole existence in the same place, they can go anywhere! Someone has told me that once you start traveling you can never get enough of it. And I can say that from the few places we have been I am hooked! I want to see everything! There is so much beauty, so many things God has put here for us to experience and see.
Am I scared? YUP! Overwhelmed? YUP! Excited? YUP! There is so much to plan and figure out. Banking, Health insurance (How do you go to the DR. in another country?), passports, Visa's plane tickets, international drivers licenses budgeting, saving, grocery shopping, schooling. Things are different and I am comfortable and an introvert. Where will we live? How will we find a place to live? What do we pack? I plan on updating this as we get things planned and through out our trip. Did you know there are almost no books on how to do something like this? Makes planning hard :(
We'd also love to hear from anyone who may of done something like this or maybe someone who might live or know of someone who lives in the areas we are interested it. The plan right now is to live in Italy for 3 months ( the maximum amount of time we can stay there without a visa ) then the UK for 6 months ( again, the maximum amount of time we can stay there without a visa ) and back to Italy. We haven't picked specific locations yet so again, if you have some spots you could suggest, we'd love to hear about it and why you suggest it. We want to experience life in another country instead of the tourist themes. We'll visit those as well but we would really like a native experience. Thanks for putting this together Ness. Because of the lack of information available on doing this type of thing, hopefully this will server as a source of information for you if you're planning on doing something similar!
ReplyDeleteHow exciting! I wish you the very best!
ReplyDeleteI like that you're excited to see "new" things because you love "old" things :) It's a fun little play on words.
ReplyDeleteThis is such an open-ended plan. It'll be a great exercise at rolling with the punches, being flexible, and (hopefully) working as a team :)
:)yeah it will be interesting that is for sure
ReplyDeleteI so admire those who follow after God, even when He asks them to do extraordinary things! What do your kids think about this? Not sure where you plan to land in the UK, but Dan and I know a youth pastor in the London area. He's a great guy, and I'm sure he would be happy to show you around. Let me know if you want to get connected.
ReplyDeleteThat would be awesome Lisa, would love to have some connections there :-)
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