I’m so happy to welcome Jason Jenkins to the Family Freedom Project. This story is inspiring and exciting, especially if you have any sort of sense of adventure or wanderlust.
I’ll let Jason tell us about his family.
My name is Jason and I have a son (13) and a daughter (10). I was a school teacher in Atlanta, Georgia until 1997, when I left for a year teaching English in Taiwan and never came back.
I started a family in Tokyo in 2002. Fast forward to September 2013, and my wife and I were working all the time and rarely having time together or with our kids. So, we left our desk jobs, pulled our kids out of local schools and started slow-traveling around Southeast Asia. We have lived in Taiwan, Thailand and Malaysia while exploring the region and working as we go.
Now we are in Valencia, Spain, and after two years of homeschooling, the kids are now going to local schools here in eastern Spain.
From my experience moving to a new place has a ‘fairy tale’ quality on arrival. Has that been the case for you and your family?
Well, yes and no.
As a family, our first place to move together was Taiwan, as it was our first destination when we left Japan. But for my wife and I, it was more like a reunion, since we had lived there in the late 90’s. We still had a lot of old friends living there — both locals and expat drinking buddies, mostly — but it was fairly magical to return.
The island was cleaner and more sophisticated — all without compromising its amazing food, culture, and historical sites. All of our old friends were now responsible adults,some with kids of their own now. It was exhilarating to see all the cool projects they were working on, and to introduce our kids to this amazing island and its people.
We’ve moved several times since then — to Malaysia, then Thailand, then back to Malaysia and now Spain. Each time we have a period of adjustment, and it can be a little stressful as we adjust and work out new routines. By the second month, we find it feels like home, and we start exploring each place further.
Do you feel like you stay where you are now?
My wife and I like Spain, and the kids absolutely love Valencia, so we certainly think about staying. But we have itchy feet, and the world is large. My wife, Keiko, and I also want our kids to have strong ties to our own cultures, so we have considered spending more time in Japan and the United States somewhere down the line. Our kids have never lived in North America, but they’ve spent summers with my parents since my youngest turned five.
Now they are a teen and a tween, and they are building strong friendships at their schools and don’t want to leave. Valencia really is a fantastic place, so we’ll play it by ear. Our present visa can be extended up to five years — that would take us to about the time my son graduates from high school.
Can you explain how you handle residency and/or working where you are now?
I have what is called a non-lucrative residency visa, which essentially means that my family and I can live in Spain, but we can’t work here (can’t take jobs or earn money that locals could get). But I still work remotely for my old company and a variety of freelance clients. The visa was a long, arduous process, made more difficult because we started applying in Malaysia (where we lived before Spain), then had to go through the Japanese embassy in Tokyo because that was the only place my wife could apply (the kids and I could apply in the U.S. or Japan).
It gets even more complicated after that, but I’ll spare you the details and instead fast-forward six months to the visa stamped in our passports, and then another three months to when we had the residency cards in our hands. Some people have little trouble getting this paperwork finalized. We were not those people, but it was worth it.
Can you compare family life in your home country to family life where you live now?
If I’ve learned anything it’s that kids can and will adapt. To be clear, every country, city and school is different and I can’t speak for all of them, but we’ve lived in four countries since 2013 (and travelled to half a dozen more) and our kids made friends in all of them. Now that my son has hit his teens, however, he wants to stay in one place.
Here in Spain, our kids attend a concertado school, which is a semi-private school partially funded by the government. All their classes aside from two are in Spanish or Valenciano, the local language. None of us knew more than 20 words in Spanish when we arrived. My wife and I still know very little six months in, but our kids are well on their way to fluency. I thought it would have been a much more stressful transition, but I’m pleased (and somewhat shocked) at how well they’re doing.
My wife and I are still getting used to Valencia’s siesta culture. The kids come home for about 2.5 hours in the afternoon for lunch and a rest, then return to school for another two hours. That means that we have to fix three meals a day (and the Spanish eat HUGE lunches), and drop off/pick up our daughter twice. This cuts into my work time and my work rhythm, and I’m still adjusting.
What do you wish you did differently in planning?
Ideally, I wish that we had planned to arrive earlier so that we could have enjoyed the country a bit more before school started. As it was, we arrived, searched for an apartment for a month and then school started two days after we signed a lease. When they were homeschooling, we could take off and explore almost any time. Now, not so much.
Is there anything you wish you brought with you from home, or another stop along the way, that you don’t have?
Not really. In fact, I wish we had left with a lot less! We have lightened our load year by year, and it would have been much easier to have just started out with less.
8. How are your language skills? Does that make a difference to your life?
I’m embarrassed to say that I am fluent only in English. I have a working level of Chinese and Japanese that continues to plummet from lack of use. We’ve been in Spain for six months and my speaking/comprehension level is still extremely low. I could make excuses because I work a lot, but the fact is that I just haven’t yet made the time (and effort) to study or to make local friends.
On the other hand, our kids are really advancing. They have been in local schools for just over five months now. When we first arrived, they knew only a few phrases from using the DuoLingo language app, but now they have local friends and study/take tests in Spanish, and navigate confidently through the city. When my parents visited over Christmas, my son was the go-to guy around town — any local we encountered (waiters, hotel staff, etc.) knew that he was the guy to talk to. It made me extremely proud, as we have not paid for any extra Spanish lessons. He has done it all with the on his own, and with the support of his school, of course.
Want to learn more from Jason and other family travelers or families living abroad? Check out his podcast, Epic Education Radio. You can find at iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher and AnEpicEducation.com.
The post Expat Profile: Dad Left to Teach English Abroad and Never Looked Back appeared first on Family Freedom Project.