October 2021 Update My favorite season is Fall. The leaves are gorgeous and the temperatures are cooler. We squeeze in some family camping trips, especially on weekdays when campgrounds aren’t mostly vacant and the only other families are either retirees or homeschoolers like us. Camping in New York and Ohio Our big camping trip this… Continue reading October 2021 Update
Exactly one year ago, we arrived in Spain on our 81-day, do-it-yourself, family study abroad in Spain. It’s hard to believe it’s been a year since we left. Following a gentle nudge, I put down some thoughts on the lessons we learned from our journey. Lessons We Learned It wasn’t as expensive as we thought… Continue reading What I Learned Spending 81-days In Spain
Each month, I find that there’s a bunch of small topics that don’t warrant their own post but that I want to share nonetheless. Here are some from August. Beach House In North Carolina In the eight years that we’ve lived in Virginia, we’ve rented houses near the beach on the southern coast of North… Continue reading August 2020 Update
Last week I achieved a 600-day streak on Duolingo. I started the Spanish course almost a year before our trip to Spain to help me prepare for the experience. With that milestone fading into the rear-view window, I thought I’d put together a post about my experience trying to learn Spanish. First, my experience with… Continue reading Learning a New Language
We’re nearing the end of week 11 of our family’s 12-week study abroad in Spain. One of the challenges we worked through was the logistics of getting a family of eight from city to city, all without renting a car. As I planned and bought each segment of our travel, I felt like I was… Continue reading Ticket to Ride: Spain!
During our family’s study abroad in Spain, one logistic I took on was getting cash for minor purchases that couldn’t be done via credit card. My goal was to avoid paying excessive foreign exchange or ATM fees. P2P Exchange Rates – 0% The first stop on the road to cash was a little unexpected. After… Continue reading Avoid Foreign ATM Fees Using Fidelity’s Cash Management Account
During our 12-week trip to Spain, we’ll be staying in a variety of locations and a variety of Airbnb stays. In fact, it will be a total of nine Airbnb stays. Why Airbnb? Our primary goal on our trip is to embed ourselves into the Spanish culture. Airbnb stays are often operated by local individuals… Continue reading Experiencing Airbnb Stays
In a previous post, I mentioned that we leveraged credit card signup bonuses to lower the cost of getting to Spain. So, how did we do it? Planning Ahead My first step was to give ourselves plenty of time to get signup bonuses that we leverage into airline tickets. I started with the plan of… Continue reading Cheap Travel Using Credit Card Signup Bonuses
Finding and buying cheap airline tickets for a large family to Spain was a thrill ride: nerve wracking at times followed by an exhilarating rush once the tickets were secured. With tickets in hand, it was super fun to ask people to guess how much we paid. No one guessed the answer: $600 for a… Continue reading Round trip tickets to Spain for only $75!
We’re on day 25 of our 81 day trip to Spain, a 12-week family study abroad. When I tell people that all eight of us–me, my wife, and The Six–are going to Spain for almost twelve weeks–a family “study abroad”, if you will–after getting over the initial shock, they ask a myriad of questions: What… Continue reading A 12-Week Family Study Abroad
