On the Road Again – 2019 Edition

The boys just finished their second school year in Spain, where they completed 1st, 3rd and 5th grade at the local elementary school.

The school goes through 6th grade, and after primary school, kids move on to secondary/high school where work gets a bit more intense, and admission to the secondary school of choice is also a little bit trickier.  We aren’t sure how long we will stay in Spain (probably a little more time, and probably not forever – beyond that we aren’t too sure), but we knew that from a Spanish-schooling standpoint, if we wanted to take a little time off, this was our best opportunity.

Last day of 3rd, 1st and 5th grade in Spain (also known as Fiesta del Agua at school, where they played water games all day, hence the reason the boys were holding water guns).

So what does that mean? We have decided to go traveling for 6 months, returning to Spain in time for the boys to start the 2nd trimester of the school year in Jan 2020, where they will be back at their same school, with the same class and same teacher (the kids stay with the same teacher for 2 years, and just finished the first year with their current teacher).

Now the details:

Here is our planned route.

Two days after school got out (just enough time to attend the end of the year party and finish all our packing), we flew to Scotland for a week with family.

From Scotland, we will fly to Western Canada, where we will tour the Canadian National Parks of Banff and Jasper.  Then,we will fly to Atlanta for a quick stop to eat Mexican food, shop at Target, order stuff from Amazon that will be delivered the next day, get a real milkshake, and go grocery shopping on a Sunday.  Oh yeah, and visit family and work and go (once again) through our storage unit in an attempt to purge more of our stuff.Then – after our time in the US, we will head down to South America for 4.5 months! We have our first month more or less planned in Ecuador, including time in the Amazon Rain forest and Galapagos Islands, then we will make our way down the continent, with no firm plans quite yet, but we anticipate visiting Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina and Uruguay.  We will fly out of Buenos Aires in mid-December, head back to Scotland for a few weeks, before finally heading back to Spain in time to start school in January. Whew!

It is going to be a busy ride!  We will post on our blog as often as we can, so keep an eye out for posts about our adventures. Also, for less words, more pictures and instant gratification, you can follow us on Instagram.

¡Hasta la proxima!