Earlier this summer, a friend and I met for coffee and a light brunch at a café in our neighborhood. We both placed our orders, and—to my surprise—we were asked to pay before the order arrived. At the end of the credit card transaction, the machine asked me to leave a tip.

My flabbers were gasted because that particular brand of audacity hadn’t appeared in any transaction I’ve had in Spain since moving here two years ago.

Two things struck me about this transaction. First, generally speaking, in Spain, you won’t be asked for payment before you’ve even received your order. Second, I’ve never—not once—been asked to add a tip onto the payment when using a credit card here.

As an American, I am well acquainted with tipping culture. I waited tables one summer in college, and I like to think of myself as a good tipper because I know how hard that job is—all while making a grand $2.13/hour + tips.

But that’s not how Spain works.

In Spain, servers are paid a “living wage” (what’s considered “livable” is debatable, but I digress). Tips are not expected, but if you liked the service, you’re more than welcome to leave a tip, usually not more than 10% of the total bill. This is the standard throughout Europe, and if an additional tip is added, your bill will clearly state as much.

Which brings me back to the café in my neighborhood.

I go out of my way to avoid most of the touristy spots in Valencia. The food is never as good as the local favorites, prices are high, and, while service can be iffy in Spain, at those spots, it’s often outright awful.

This café has clearly decided tourists are their bread and butter. Maybe they’ve had one too many not pay their bill at the end, so they grab payment upfront now. Maybe the owners spent some time in the U.S., where it’s pretty common to place your order at the counter, pay, and then pick it up a few minutes later. I really don’t know, but I didn’t like it, and I liked it even less when I was presented with the tip option.

I have lots of opinions on the U.S. tipping system, especially post-COVID, when tipping seems to be a disease running rampant everywhere, from takeout restaurants to automatic car washes. Americans have been conditioned to tip generously, and—as an adult—I’ve watched it shift from a standard 15% of the bill to 20% and now creeping toward 25%. Meanwhile, that archaic $2.13/hour in Tennessee hasn’t changed in decades.

I still don’t believe it’s up to the customer to pay the server. That’s the business’s job, and it should be reflected in prices. If I buy a steak dinner and the other customer buys a salad, and we presumably received the same level of service, why am I expected to leave more money than the salad customer?

It makes little sense to me, and if you dig into the history of tipping, it gets worse.

Tipping in the U.S. became prevalent following the Civil War as a way to avoid paying emancipated Black workers a direct wage, forcing them instead to rely on the generosity of customers.

The system here feels far fairer than the one where I wait on a table for an hour, work hard to make sure they’re happy, and at the end, they can decide to leave me no tip, very little, or—worse—a gospel tract. (This was particularly bad on Sunday afternoons following church services in the Bible Belt.) The server gets paid no matter what, and all that fawning servers do in the U.S.? It’s not a thing because their wages aren’t dependent on the level of ass-kissing they do.

I write about building a life in Spain—slowly, imperfectly, and with a lot of trial and error. If you’re not already subscribed, I’d love to have you.

Subscribe now

If you’re already here, gracias. Hitting the ❤️ button below helps others find poco a poco.

Buy Me a Coffee

More from poco a poco:

It isn’t unusual for me to see a lot of these. After all, The Algorithm knows me quite well.

What was striking was the pattern.

“The cost of living in Spain is 40% less than the U.S.”

“Spain’s cost of living is 30% less than life in the U.S.”

And while both statements have some kernels of truth in them, they also aren’t entirely fair.

How you choose to live in Spain will determine whether or not it’s more affordable to live here. What do I mean by that?

Income

If you’re moving to Spain and will be earning a Spanish salary, you may be in for a shock. The cost of living in Spain is less, mostly because the average Spanish salary is much lower than the average U.S. salary. In addition, Spanish salaries aren’t rising nearly fast enough in relation to the increasing cost of living in Spain, which means many families struggle to make ends meet even with two incomes.

Moving to Spain with a foreign salary or income source is a unique privilege for American immigrants in large part because of the salary differential between the U.S. and Spain.

Housing

Housing prices are rising here just like they are everywhere else in the world. And it goes without saying, the nicer the place, the higher the price. Want city center? Expect to pay a premium. Larger space? The price goes up. Recently renovated? Not cheap.

There is less competition for housing at the higher price ranges, which can make finding an apartment or house easier for a foreign resident, but it also means you’re laying out more cash than the average Spanish resident.

And let’s not forget the fees that real estate agencies often charge to the tenant in addition to the deposits and rent.

By the time it’s all said and done, to move into your long-term rental in Spain, you could be out €10,000+ before you’ve even received the keys.

Schools

Deciding where and what type of school your kids will attend in Spain is one of the biggest decisions you’ll make. It can also have a heavy financial impact on your new life here.

Public schools in Spain are free to attend, and all children are guaranteed a spot, but that doesn’t look the same as it does in the U.S. Your child’s spot at a public school may be across town, requiring you to get them there via public transit or your own vehicle. And not everything is free at school, just like a U.S. public school. You’ll probably be covering school lunches at a minimum.

Concertados are a hybrid school type, similar to charter schools in the U.S., partially funded by the Spanish government. Some are bilingual. Nearly all of them are Catholic and include religious instruction. (It is possible to opt out of the religious instruction.) For a much smaller monthly fee than a private school, children can receive an education somewhat comparable to a private school. But you’re still paying a monthly fee, and you may be on the hook for uniforms or other fees.

Private and international schools are fully funded by parents—and their fees reflect that reality. Like U.S. private schools, they’re pricey. However, if you’re moving with older kids, this might be the best option, depending on whether or not your children speak Spanish.

Healthcare

Healthcare is a bright spot in the Spanish budget compared to the U.S. budget. Private health insurance is generally very affordable, but if you have pre-existing conditions, you could be on the hook for any treatment of those conditions. Understand what those costs could be before you need that treatment. Our private insurance policy is a fraction of what we paid for an employer-subsidized family policy in the U.S.

Food

It’s no secret that groceries in the U.S. are kind of out of control. When we left the U.S. in August 2024, I was regularly spending $1,500+ per month to feed my family of four. Because my kids are older, I was essentially feeding four adults who were home for the entire summer. And restaurants? It was $50 for a fast food meal at McDonald’s.

Those costs haven’t gone down, and I’m sure if we still lived there, we’d be spending a ridiculous amount of money every month.

In Spain, our grocery bill is reduced, but maybe not as much as you’d expect. Food is the one area we splurge on quite a bit, so while our monthly budget could be lower, I don’t really want it to be. Even though groceries generally cost less in Spain, it still isn’t cheap, and if we were dependent upon Spanish incomes, it could be a struggle.

Taxes

Without a doubt, taxes are high in Spain—on paper. But those taxes also include public healthcare access at no cost and heavily subsidized prescriptions. They include well-maintained infrastructure. And I could go on, but taxes are higher here for a reason, and that should be accounted for in whatever budget you decide you need here.

Location

Just like the U.S., a small city or town will have lower daily living costs than a major city or swanky village. Madrid will never be as affordable as Logroño, nor should it be. Madrid is a major global hub, just like New York City. You can’t move to Madrid from Omaha and expect that those costs will be on par with one another.

The thesis that Spain is 30-40% cheaper than the U.S. is likely based on rent and mortgage numbers. What it doesn’t do is account for the variables that can either make that an accurate number or way off base. If I ran my own numbers against that 30-40% number, it wouldn’t be true, but what is true is that we have a somewhat nicer lifestyle in Spain while spending a similar amount of money.

Source

Forbes: The Best Places to Retire Abroad in 2026

I write about building a life in Spain—slowly, imperfectly, and with a lot of trial and error. If you’re not already subscribed, I’d love to have you.

Subscribe now

If you’re already here, gracias. Hitting the ❤️ button below helps others find poco a poco.

More from poco a poco:

One of the reasons I wanted to move to Spain was its proximity to the rest of Europe. What I didn’t expect was how much I would enjoy traveling Spain, which is why it took almost two years for my family to travel outside of the country we now live in, not counting our U.S. visit in April of this year.

Last week, we were in Paris—just a two-hour direct flight from Valencia. The last time I was in Paris, Will and I took an eight-hour flight from Chicago. Two hours and no time zone change is, well, luxurious by comparison.

Travel is a huge motivator for me. There are reels on Instagram that joke about planning “a once-in-a-lifetime trip every four months.” It’s funny but also kinda true.

We have five school years left before our son graduates high school, and our daughter has seven. It sounds like a lot of time, but the older I get, the more I recognize how quickly it all goes and that time is finite.

So I’m packing in the trips, budget be damned (not really, but also yes).

My kids had never been to Paris, and the last time Will and I visited, we were 26 years old. I wanted to revisit some of the places we’d been and appreciate them as a grown-ass adult. I also wanted to show the kids some of the most famous sites in the world and introduce them to yet another language and culture so very different from ours.

In short, I wanted to see Paris through their eyes.

I planned this excursion for months. Disneyland Paris was a must since my son had been asking when we would go since moving to Spain in August 2024. There was never any question that if we made it to Paris, Disneyland would be waiting.

There were some must-sees on my list:

• Eiffel Tower

• Arc de Triomphe

• Louvre

• Catacombs

You get the idea. All the highlights of a great Paris trip.

We had a week, and I wanted to fit in more than we could do. My TripIt app had a running list of places to see, stores to wander, and restaurants we just had to try.

In reality, it was too much for a week, and it gives me a good excuse to return for yet another dose of Paris.

The thing is, as a twenty-something visiting Paris for the first time—and taking my first trip overseas—I had a checklist of places I needed to hit, pulled from guidebooks and travel magazine articles. I had no idea how to travel or how to not pack in too much and spend time just sitting at a café with a cup of coffee while watching the world go by. It was a whirlwind trip by any standard, with other cities and activities tacked onto it, leaving little time to just enjoy Paris for the unique city that it is.

At 45, with a lot more years of travel under my belt, I’ve learned one big thing that made this vacation more enjoyable than the last.

If you’re going to put in the time, effort, and logistics to go somewhere, really go. Stop checking boxes.

A long-standing regret was not taking the time to savor Sainte-Chapelle, a gothic church full of soaring stained glass windows. I fully intended to see it again and show my kids this special place.

Dear reader, we spent almost an hour in that church this time around, taking in the colorful glass that depicts more than 1,100 stories from the Bible.

And that was just one place.

Paris still wasn’t what I’d call a slow trip, and I want to point out that we definitely hit all the major highlights, in addition to a Montmartre food tour and a haunted Paris walking tour. We also saw the famous Galeries Lafayette, which was stunning and well worth the trek on the metro.

By the time we finished with all the Paris “must-dos,” we were all kind of ready to go home. But Disneyland still awaited us. And it was, after all, the biggest reason for the trip.

In 2022, we visited Disney World in Orlando. I was almost 42 years old before I finally set foot on Disney soil. As a kid, we didn’t have the resources to go, and Will’s family didn’t either. Quite honestly, it wasn’t a place I was dying to visit anyway. I’m not really a theme park kinda gal, and if it weren’t for wanting to take our own kids, I doubt Will and I would have ever put it on a list of places we needed to visit.

Despite all of that, Disney does a great job of putting you in “the bubble,” and once you’re in it, I can’t deny that it’s a bit magical. It’s enticing—that place where you can leave all your worries behind, ride fun rides, eat theme park food, and disappear into a fantasy world for just a little while.

And like all kids, ours loved it.

So when we first started talking about moving to Spain, Disneyland Paris was a carrot—a way to get the kids on board with the idea of another Disney park in a different part of the world. It worked so well that my son continuously asked when we were going until I booked the trip.

We spent two days at the Disneyland Paris parks. One more day would’ve been better, but two was sufficient, especially with older kids who want to do the “big” rides rather than the rides focused more on small children. And one big benefit of Disneyland Paris was its size. It’s a lot smaller than the Orlando campus, making it much easier to navigate and taking less time to take it all in.

Did Disney live up to our kids’ expectations?

I think so. While there were certainly moments of frustration (what family hasn’t experienced that on vacation?), I saw bright smiles, excitement, and, perhaps best of all, joy.

And for my part, I loved hearing the characters and announcements in French with some English sprinkled in.

We returned to Valencia last Friday exhausted, happy, and ready to settle in back home. I’m done with Disneyland Paris (for now anyway), but Paris?

While I didn’t intend this to be a “checklist trip”—and in many ways avoided it—it was still a jam-packed itinerary. If I’m honest, I didn’t mind and have no regrets, but the next trip to Paris will be all about gardens, slow museum walks, Versailles, and people watching. With Paris so close now, this trip’s checklist doesn’t have to look like next time’s checklist.

Our Paris itinerary

• Accommodation: Courtyard Marriott Gare de Lyon

• Montmartre food tour

• Sacre-Cœur

• Arc de Triomphe

• Sainte-Chapelle

• Shakespeare & Co.

• Haunted Paris Tour - Ghosts, Legends, True Crime

• Louvre

• Eiffel Tower (top floor with lift)

• Galeries Lafayette

• Notre-Dame

• Catacombs

• Disneyland Paris

A couple of notes:

The Catacombs and Eiffel Tower top floor are two of the hardest tickets to get in Paris. There really isn’t a trick to getting either of them. You just have to be online at the time they’re released, put your patient pants on, and fight the good fight. That’s it. I was up until 1:00 a.m. the night I purchased the Eiffel Tower tickets because the website crashed several times in the process of purchasing and navigating to the tickets. The Catacombs tickets went much more smoothly, but the timing still had to be right.

The Courtyard Marriott Gare de Lyon isn’t in the city center, but I strategically placed us there for easy metro and RER access, knowing we would be at Disney the last couple of days. It is an easy ride on the metro to almost anywhere you want to go.

Not much in Paris can be done spontaneously these days, so if you’re planning a trip, buy as many of your tickets early as you can. If not, you’re risking not being able to get in.

I write about building a life in Spain—slowly, imperfectly, and with a lot of trial and error. If you’re not already subscribed, I’d love to have you.

Subscribe now

If you’re already here, gracias. Hitting the ❤️ button below helps others find poco a poco.

More from poco a poco:

“It doesn’t taste quite right,” I complained to Will. “It’s missing something.”

I was making my first attempt at sausage gravy and biscuits, and it wasn’t going well. It was a craving.

My mom made sausage gravy a lot when I was a kid. As a single mom without a lot of money to go around, it was a cheap, filling meal on weekend mornings: sausage, flour, milk, and—more often than not—canned Pillsbury-style biscuits from the grocery store refrigerated section rather than the homemade version.

Like the pinto beans and cornbread I expected for Saturday lunches, sausage gravy was a childhood staple, but unlike the pinto beans, this one felt luxurious.

As an adult, I learned to make my own version, playing with spices and various sausage brands, adding or reducing milk and flour to change the viscosity of the gravy. It became a staple in my own home on weekends and sometimes as our “breakfast for dinner” weeknight meal.

And then Spain happened.

Subscribe now

Breakfast is a different event in Spain—smaller, less dense, and it could be as little as a cup of espresso. In the Southern United States where I grew up, breakfast is often a marathon. Scrambled eggs, hash browns, sausage patties or links, biscuits, pancakes, eggs over easy, poached eggs, eggs Benedict, corned beef hash, cinnamon rolls, bagels, oatmeal, yogurt, cereal, fruit … It’s a smorgasbord. One of my favorite memories as a kid is rolling up to the Shoney’s breakfast buffet and taking a little taste of nearly everything.

Not every breakfast looks like that, of course, but the point is an American breakfast—especially on a weekend—is often heavy and more than filling.

The first time I tried to recreate sausage biscuits and gravy here in Spain when I had a craving, it fell very short. The biscuits were flat, the sausage didn’t taste right, and the gravy was bland.

I gave up for a while, but the more I learned to cook with different ingredients in Spain, the more I wanted biscuits and gravy.

Eventually, I turned to AI—specifically, ChatGPT. I gave it my parameters: buttermilk-style biscuits, Jimmy Dean flavor, and a hint of spice that I seemed to be missing.

While not perfect, it gave me a pretty close replica to the flavor I was used to, although the biscuits left much to be desired. (They came from a mix I found at our local Taste of America store.) But the gravy? It did manage to satisfy some of that craving.

This experiment led me down a rabbit trail. What else could AI help me with in my kitchen?

Read more

The question, “Was it worth it?” comes up a lot in conversations with new friends about moving to Spain.

Honestly?

Don’t ask me when I’m frustrated with yet another piece of bureaucracy I have to untangle or when it’s summer, and everyone in my house is home and on top of one another 24/7.

Because we sold nearly everything we owned, we’re a bit of a curiosity. Yes, we stored some things for a while, but ultimately, most of it was sold. The remaining items traveled back to Spain with us for safekeeping.

Working on building your own life abroad, dreaming about it, or already there? Don’t miss the Home Abroad Housewarming and find others just like you.

Join the housewarming at Home Abroad

Most U.S. families have a lot of stuff. It’s a reality that comes with living in larger homes with attached garages, sometimes detached garages, and—especially in rural areas—land. Maybe you don’t mean to accumulate as much as you do, but over time, before you know it, you have a house full of stuff. Nothing made that more apparent than clearing out my mom’s house after she died or our own home before our move.

My mom kept everything: old catalogues, every report card my siblings and I ever received, clothing from her teaching days, her grandparents’ glasses … This list could go on forever. Sorting that all out piece by piece was sheer torture.

Our homes are our castles.

Will and I dug so deeply into this process that I sold houseplants. Pyrex storage containers. Gave away beloved books. Donated holiday decor. Sold tools.

In a way, it was easy. I wanted to move to Spain so much that I barreled ahead, not really stopping to think about what I was doing. All I could think about was my why. I never grieved the loss of most of our belongings.

A suburban life also often leads to a bit of keeping up with the Joneses, whether it’s what you want or not.

“Did you see Chelsea’s new car? I love that.”

“James got one of those robot mowers. Did you see it?”

“They’re putting in an In-N-Out, and I heard the neighbors at the pool say it was great. Should we go?”

You get the idea.

It’s low-grade competition. Before you know it, you could be thousands of dollars in debt and resenting your new car payment every month. But hey, you have a great car that fits in with your neighbors!

It felt freeing to break free from the shackles of that life—a life that demanded much from us but offered little in return except the stress of maintaining it.

The problem is you often can’t completely escape this ingrained instinct.

I still feel these little pangs of envy sometimes. A good example in my case is travel. I’ve done my fair share, visiting several countries, living abroad now, and exploring all kinds of places in Spain. As a family, we take two or three trips a year—often to brand new places for all of us. And still, when someone pops up in my Facebook or Instagram feed with a vacation that wasn’t on my radar but should be, there it is. That little twinge of, “I wish I was there.”

The restlessness still bubbles beneath the surface—just less prominently.

This couple asked the same question we're asking. Was it worth it? Their answer has a different perspective than mine, but the conversation winds up in almost exactly the same place.

I write about building a life in Spain—slowly, imperfectly, and with a lot of trial and error. If you’re not already subscribed, I’d love to have you.

Subscribe now

If you’re already here, gracias. Hitting the ❤️ button below helps others find poco a poco.

More from poco a poco:

This week, we paid our first Spanish tax bill.

In Spain, June 30th is the equivalent of the U.S.’s April 15th Tax Day. But just because you’re paying taxes in Spain does not mean you escape the U.S.’s tax system. The United States is one of two countries in the world that requires its citizens to file taxes even when they live abroad. (Eritrea is the other one.)

So right after I completed our Spanish tax return (using a local gestoría), I had to turn right around and figure out the U.S. return.

As soon as the Spanish taxes were done, I started on our U.S. taxes, using Expatfile. I looked at several options, including TurboTax, Greenback Expat Tax Services, and MyExpatTaxes, but Expatfile had the most similar setup to TurboTax, which I was quite familiar with, and it included forms I needed as someone living abroad.

I’ve been doing our U.S. taxes for years and years. Before tax software became the prevalent method, I filed using paper and pencil. Taxes and me? We have a long history. Still, when you move abroad, it’s a whole different ballgame.

As a United States citizen, you’re granted an automatic two-month extension to file, so instead of an April 15th deadline, you have until June 15th. Sometimes, that’s plenty, but when Spanish taxes are due June 30th and your tax pro needs a little more time, you can file an extension, which is what Will and I did. That gave us until autumn to get our U.S. taxes in order and filed.

I learned a lot during this process, and one of the things I learned was that you should really get that physical Spanish bank account set up sooner rather than later. We’ve been using Revolut since we arrived in Spain, and it works perfectly for our daily needs, but they aren’t a partner of Agencia Tributaria, the Spanish tax agency. Our gestoría advised us to make sure we had a resident account set up with an Agencia Tributaria partner bank to ensure we could take advantage of the direct debit option for payment.

Just a month before taxes were due, I got that account set up, but if anything had gone wrong, we were cutting just a little too close for comfort.

Some visas require you to pay quarterly taxes, and then you “settle up” at the end of the year with your tax filing. In our situation, you calculate what you owe and pay the full sum all at once. Spain does allow you to split the bill, with 60% due on June 30th and the other 40% due November 5th when you do the direct debit option.

Spain has heavier taxes, without a doubt, but it’s a tradeoff. Will has a bit of a harder time accepting the tax numbers than I do, and that’s fair. We’re accustomed to a system that taxes you less and allows a ton of write-offs, pre-tax deductions, business structures, and ways to defer taxes. Spain has much, much less of that. Essentially, you pay what the calculations say you’ll pay. The end.

Before you freak out about the tax numbers, there are some things I personally think you should consider first.

Private healthcare is incredibly affordable here compared to the American system. We pay roughly $3,600/year for our family of four’s health insurance. With an employer-sponsored plan in the U.S., we were paying about $1,400/month. As self-employed individuals in Tennessee, we'd be paying a minimum of $2,000/month. (It’s likely much more expensive now than when we left in 2024.) Tennessee has less than five insurance companies that sell plans on the healthcare marketplace.

When you think about health insurance as a tax rather than an “option” (medical bankruptcy, anyone?), the differential between Spanish tax burdens and U.S. tax burdens lessens considerably.

Tax dollars also fund the things you notice every day once you’re here: high-speed rail (one of my favorite ways to travel, and something that barely exists in the U.S.), smooth roads, walkable sidewalks, and prescription drugs that cost about what a U.S. co-pay would.

Everyone has access to healthcare, whether it’s in the public or private systems. Those who aren’t on a working visa can opt into the public system by paying a monthly fee. No one here is going bankrupt because they got cancer and are drowning in medical bills. For visa holders who aren’t paying into public healthcare, they’re required to carry private health insurance without co-pays or deductibles.

I waited for the number to hit my inbox for over a month before it finally landed. I opened it, read it once, and told Will. We reviewed the forms, approved them, and that was it—done in under ten minutes, after a month of waiting for it. Next year, at least, we'll know what's coming.

I write about building a life in Spain—slowly, imperfectly, and with a lot of trial and error. If you’re not already subscribed, I’d love to have you.

Subscribe now

If you’re already here, gracias. Hitting the ❤️ button below helps others find poco a poco.

More from poco a poco:

When we left Tennessee in 2024, I had rising 4th and 6th graders. We were about to move to Spain, and we were saying goodbye to an elementary school I genuinely loved. I spent a lot of time at the school in my kids’ classrooms, volunteering for their teachers, attending events, and hovering in the car line every morning and afternoon. It was almost a second home.

Our future in Spain was uncertain, but at least we had secured spots at a school for the upcoming school year.

I don’t know that I ever planned to be in Spain indefinitely. It was an experiment, which is why we couldn’t bring ourselves to sell everything before we left, including our house.

At first, my son frequently asked how long we planned to stay in Spain. Our answer was always two or three years because we thought that might be the target. He talked about what he missed in the U.S. with longing, especially food. And after the school year began, I watched as he struggled to acclimate and find a new peer group. He would’ve faced these same challenges during the transition to middle school in the U.S., but figuring it out in a new country and a new language was doubly difficult.

My daughter withdrew. Normally a bubbly girl with an effervescent personality, shyness took hold. She made one friend and clung to her for dear life, nearly refusing to try to socialize with anyone else. She held her complicated feelings about this move in, not sharing as much about what she didn’t like as her brother.

Food played a large role in grounding all of us. I figured out how to make familiar foods at home, and we occasionally ordered food from American restaurants like Five Guys, Wingstop, McDonald’s, and Domino’s. We popped in at American Twizz and Taste of America for familiar snacks like Goldfish and Cheez-Its and Skippy peanut butter.

Bringing preteens to a new country nearly broke me more than once. I wanted to swoop in and fix it, but at their ages, swooping in meant big embarrassment.

And oh, the hormones.

This would have been an emotional roller coaster with younger kids, but with preteens? Jesus, take the wheel. During the first school year, we went through a litany of teen angst: crushes, broken hearts, peer drama, and some bullying.

In the midst of all the preteen issues, the IB grading system was completely different than the system we were accustomed to in Tennessee. School academic expectations were higher.

As the “new kids,” my kids had to learn how to advocate and stand up for themselves. A bright spot was when we had a parent-teacher meeting with one of the middle school counselors, who pointed out how well our son recognized his needs and advocated for what he needed all on his own. He was just 12, but he had learned to speak up instead of quietly collapsing.

By the end of that first school year, we were all relieved it was over. My daughter had just begun to come out of her shell—babbling on about lunchroom drama with other girls. Now we knew what to expect going into the next school year.

This past school year was smoother, but it wasn’t without its hiccups. We’re talking about a 7th grader and a 5th grader, after all. But it had begun to feel more like a familiar environment rather than something we were surviving. No longer the “new kids,” my kids knew how things worked at their school. And when my son had some run-ins with a group of kids I call the “hyenas,” he stood up for himself, with the school supporting him all the way. My daughter learned to speak up when the “mean girls” tried to get under her skin.

Will and I have asked a lot of our kids since moving to Valencia. We asked them to change schools, give up our big house in suburban Nashville, learn new languages, find new friends—all in the middle of blooming adolescence.

It's also why we can't bring ourselves to move them again. For go-with-the-flow kids, changing countries probably isn't a big deal. But my kids aren't those kids. They thrive when they have stability and familiarity. Valencia is finally becoming that for them, and so we're here now. Settled.

I write about building a life in Spain—slowly, imperfectly, and with a lot of trial and error. If you’re not already subscribed, I’d love to have you.

Subscribe now

If you’re already here, gracias. Hitting the ❤️ button below helps others find poco a poco.

More from poco a poco:

The last few weeks have been ridiculously busy, but if I wait for life to slow down, I’m never going to get back to writing.

Alas, here we are, so …

In the past month, I’ve had two cataract surgeries, moved apartments, allllllmost survived the end of the school year, and filed our Spanish taxes for the first time.

I can see the finish line, and it looks a lot like a lazy, easy summer.

Summer is still going to be busy. One kid is getting braces, we have an upcoming vacation, an old friend is coming to town, and probably a million other things I’m not thinking about right now.

Actually, this busy season hasn’t been all that different from the busy periods we’ve had in the U.S. Wrapping up the school year, health issues, and taxes are universal problems no matter where you live. My Tuesday might look like a trip to Mercat Central in the morning, and by afternoon, I’m at the dining room table writing a new Substack piece.

The dichotomy is a little difficult to wrap my head around sometimes.

I have a lot to say about cataract surgery, the move to our new apartment in Ruzafa, and I have all kinds of thoughts on my youngest child leaving her elementary years behind.

Let’s get started.

I write about building a life in Spain—slowly, imperfectly, and with a lot of trial and error. If you’re not already subscribed, I’d love to have you.

Subscribe now

If you’re already here, gracias. Hitting the ❤️ button below helps others find poco a poco.

More from poco a poco:

We are well into Maycember here in Valencia, and I’m more than ready for the school year to come to a close. But before it ends, life decided to throw one more curveball at me on top of our upcoming move.

Next week, I’m having cataract surgery on my right eye. The following week, I’ll have surgery on the left eye.

I know what you’re probably thinking. “You’re not old enough for cataracts!”

I’ve learned I have the perfect setup for early cataracts, including severe myopia. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg for my eye issues. In other words, I won the genetic lottery for eye problems. Yay, me.

Over the next few weeks, things are gonna be a little slow around here. Between kids’ end-of-school-year activities, surgery recovery, and a move, I’m at capacity.

I could have put off surgery until mid-June or even this fall, but given our upcoming summer travel, I wanted plenty of time to heal and enjoy our trips with the best vision possible. Mid-June would be cutting it close when we factored in recovery time. It became a choice between doing the surgeries in the middle of our move and the end of the school year or maybe cancelling our upcoming trip if things went south.

This is the non-glamorous part of life abroad—the part that is still “life” even when you’re living in a beautiful part of the world you’ve always dreamed about.

It’s all going to be okay. Yet, as a mom, it’s tough to let go of some of the control. I’m used to handling household logistics and running the home like a well-oiled machine. Relinquishing it to Will—at least in part—is hard for me, but make no mistake. The man is fully capable and has taken over several times before.

When you move abroad, it can be hard to look beyond the “let’s just get there” feelings to think about what might be on the road ahead, e.g. cataract surgery in another language. Fortunately for me, my doctor speaks fluent English, but that may not always be the case, especially if you’re in the public healthcare system versus the private one my family uses. And even in the private system, you may run into communication issues.

This is where I’ll reemphasize putting time in to learn the language. Last summer, a doctor at the hospital we use regularly completely refused to speak in English (even though he spoke enough to tell me he wouldn’t speak to me in English). Maybe those were the few words he knew. Maybe he was having a bad day. Maybe he doesn’t like Americans. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. The point is, if I’d had more Spanish, he might have helped me, and I would’ve been on my way.

Learning the language of your host country is sort of like unlocking a door. Once you have the key, the whole world opens up. Lately, I’m leaning hard on Dreaming Spanish to learn new vocabulary, sentence structure, and pronunciation. In my opinion, nothing can replace practicing with real live humans (like a class), but I just don’t currently have capacity to add anything else in. Another class is likely in my future, hopefully this autumn.

If I’m less present on Substack over the next few weeks, I don’t want to leave anyone hanging. I’ll still be checking in with Notes, writing a post here and there, but my cadence will be interrupted while I recuperate from eye surgery.

Hasta pronto …

Jen

I write about building a life in Spain—slowly, imperfectly, and with a lot of trial and error. If you’re not already subscribed, I’d love to have you.

Subscribe now

If you’re already here, gracias. Hitting the ❤️ button below helps others find poco a poco.

More from poco a poco:

I stood at the DHL counter, speaking halting Spanish to the clerk as I slipped each passport and its accompanying documents into the prepaid envelope.

“You do a lot of these?” I asked.

“Muchísimos,” he said, not even requiring the address for the U.S. embassy in Madrid.

We’d just gotten back from our visit to the U.S. I planned to renew our passports when we returned to Spain, knowing we had a couple of upcoming trips in Europe and that they were set to expire in February 2027. Many airlines—and some countries—require at least six months’ remaining validity on a passport, and I didn’t want to take any chances on missing that deadline.

Having never done this before, I had no idea how to renew a passport from overseas. Instead, I kept hearing from other people how easy and fast the new online renewals are, which didn’t help me one bit because you can’t use that method from abroad.

So I sat down to figure it out.

Passport photos

The first step in renewing a passport is, of course, a passport photo.

U.S. passports use 5 x 5 cm photos. Spain’s standard passport photo size is 32 mm x 26 mm. You can see how this could become a problem.

I used a cheat code. Will and I went to Walgreens in the U.S. to get our passport photos taken, but any photo shop in Spain can adjust the photo size to fit 5 x 5 cm. The El Corte Inglés at the Colón metro stop here in Valencia has a photo shop inside called Wonder Photo Shop that can take them for you if you’re looking for an easy-to-get-into place (but not the cheapest).

You don’t have to pay for a passport photo. It just has to meet U.S. passport specifications. There are apps that can help you do this, or you can attempt to do it yourself. I prefer to pay for it to ensure the photo is accepted the first time around.

If this saved you a Google spiral, there's more where that came from.

Requirements

The U.S. embassy in Madrid lays out these guidelines pretty clearly for an adult passport renewal.

• Fill out the DS-82 form.

• Send one U.S. passport-sized photo with your application.

• Include your current passport. (This is the item that made me twitchy.)

• Make an online payment using pay.gov for your passport fee. They do not accept any other form of payment.

• A DHL Express return label must be included with all of the above so that the embassy can return your old passport and your new one to you.

The waiting game

Once you’ve gathered all of these pieces of the process together, it’s time to send the passport off.

I sent both passports via DHL to the Madrid embassy, but you do have the option to place them in drop boxes in Barcelona or Madrid. But since this entire process can be completed with DHL and I don’t live near Madrid or Barcelona, I chose to use DHL to send them as well.

Occasionally, the embassy sends out information about passport waiting times. Just after I sent our passports to Madrid, the embassy posted an update that with summer travel season approaching, if you need a renewal, go ahead and submit because the wait is currently 4-5 weeks.

Ours were sent on April 19th. By May 12th, I had them both back in my hands.

This all sounds rather simple, and it is. But what made me nervous wasn’t the process itself.

Living abroad means you’re entirely reliant on a passport to get you where you need to go. If there’s an emergency in the U.S.—a relative dies, a parent is sick, or a sibling is having a baby weeks before it was supposed to happen—and you don’t have your passport, you’re not going anywhere until it’s back in your hands.

Things to remember

If you’re living abroad, there’s a good chance you’re doing at least a moderate amount of travel, often outside your country of residence. If that’s the case, consider opting for the U.S. passport with extra pages rather than the standard size. It doesn’t cost extra, and if a country decides they want an entire page for an entry stamp, you have the pages to cover it for quite a while.

It’s worth noting that the European Union is moving toward a digital entry and exit system, which means you will no longer receive a passport stamp. However, when we took our U.S. trip in April, all four of our passports were stamped both leaving and reentering the EU. I’m not sure if that’s because we’re residents of Spain or the system hasn’t yet been fully implemented. But as residents of the EU, even though we do not hold EU citizenship, we will not be required to register for EES.

While this process was intimidating to me, it really wasn’t bad at all. It was quick, simple, and relatively painless (despite my anxiety about having no passports for a few weeks). Kids’ passports work differently, but those don’t expire until 2028. Watch this space for that process.

I write about building a life in Spain—slowly, imperfectly, and with a lot of trial and error. If you’re not already subscribed, I’d love to have you.

Subscribe now

If you’re already here, gracias. Hitting the ❤️ button below helps others find poco a poco.

More from poco a poco:

It’s coming.

Another cita and another bureaucratic maze to navigate. But this time? I’ve sort of done it to myself.

For months, Will and I have been discussing a move from our quiet, residential Valencian neighborhood to the busier, livelier city center. While we like this area of the city, it’s lacking some specific things we want: restaurants, a bit more English community, and even more walkability.

The list could continue. This neighborhood served us well for settling in, acclimating ourselves to the city, and providing plenty of opportunities to practice our bumbling Spanish. And the views from this apartment? Killer.

Honestly, I was terrified of trying to find a new place because it’s an understatement of the year to say the Valencia real estate market is tight—especially for rentals. And we have a dog, which makes things even more difficult.

So I put it off. “We’ll just stay here for a while longer,” I said. “We know our landlord. We know the area. We have Leo. It’s going to be too hard to look for something else.”

In March, the property manager who manages our rental reached out and wanted to know if we’d be extending our lease beyond September. Now we had to make a decision.

“What’s the latest we can let you know?” I asked.

“Mid-May would be good just so that we have time to market the property.”

With a hard deadline, it was time to figure this out. And I resisted. I was comfortable. In stasis. But as Will and I began to explore what our options might be via Idealista, leaving our current apartment began to look less and less like an impossibility.

Our first Valencia apartment, the one we're currently leaving, was relatively easy to square away. Through Valencia Facebook groups, I heard about Stepping Stone, a rental agency specializing in mid-term rentals and associated with Valencia Property. I did a little digging and quickly decided they could help. Will and I browsed the listings, landed on this place, and contacted the agency. Within a few days, we had a signed lease and a soft place to land once we made our way to Valencia.

This time around, we were looking for a long-term lease—not short- or mid-term, which is an entirely different game. The reality of the Valencia rental market is this: If you’re looking at properties listed for €1,600 or less, competition is fierce. You’re competing mostly with Spanish people earning Spanish salaries. This means they likely have work contracts, meaning the landlords can take out insurance on these tenants to protect themselves from nonpayment of rent. As a foreigner without a Spanish work contract, this immediately puts you at a disadvantage.

So how do you overcome your obvious disadvantages to win the apartment?

This is the kind of thing I wish someone had told me before my big move. Get more of it, every week, in your inbox.

If you’re fortunate enough to have the ability to go above €1,600 in rent, start there. In our case, we needed at least three bedrooms and two bathrooms, which meant most apartments were going to be above that range anyway. Now add in the need for air conditioning, an elevator, and pet-friendly, and the list gets short fast.

One option to give yourself an advantage over other foreigners competing for the same apartments is to sign up for Finaer. Finaer guarantees your monthly income and acts as a guarantor for the landlord, much like the insurance landlords can take out on tenants who have Spanish work contracts. Both owners and tenants can purchase this insurance, and while we didn’t end up using it, our agent indicated it could be a big plus in our favor if it came to that.

You can shop for apartments on your own. In fact, many, many people do and are successful. How? Sign up for an account on Idealista, where nearly all properties are listed, create a profile complete with income and family members, and start sending messages. The caveat? Using a U.S.-based phone number or sending messages in English instead of Spanish may not receive a response. And even if you are sending messages in Spanish with a Spanish phone number, you still may not receive a response.

Listing agents and landlords are bombarded with messages about their properties, especially in a hot market like Valencia’s, so you can imagine how difficult it is to respond to every single one. To work our way around this and hopefully gain more insights into how this market works, Will and I chose to hire an agent, once again through Valencia Property. It isn’t free, and while I balked at the cost at first, what we were paying for was knowledge, strategy, and relationships—not to mention her fluent Spanish.

This is where I began to realize that moving was not going to be an inexpensive venture, and it dawned on me why Spanish people don’t tend to move around a lot.

During our first conversation, our agent said, “If you find something you like, you’re going to want to act quickly. Rentals don’t stay on the market long, and if you wait too long, it’ll be gone.”

The search began with that nugget in mind. Will and I collaborated with our agent via WhatsApp and an Idealista list, working quickly to cull the listings we weren’t interested in. Then our agent set up showings, which she attended with us, helping us get answers to our questions, translating, and explaining rental terms for each apartment.

At each showing, we toured the apartment, with the listing agent pointing out neighborhood features, amenities of the building and apartment, and explaining availability timeframes. Some apartments had great features (a laundry room! a kitchen island!) but didn’t have the neighborhood vibe we were looking for. Some had a great location but were far too small. Some checked every box but required more euros than we were willing to shell out every month.

You get the idea.

Apartment shopping was a balance between affordability, size, and neighborhood. You can have affordable, spacious, or well-located but rarely all three.

In the end, the apartment we chose was in Ruzafa, a vibrant city-center neighborhood with an international flavor we really like. While not the size we were dreaming of, it's slightly larger than our current place and is within walking distance of so many restaurants and activities. Instead of a 20-minute metro ride to get anywhere, we’ll be able to walk to almost everything we want to do. And what we can’t walk to, we can take a bus, metro, or tram.

Our new landlord required a three-month deposit instead of two months to account for Leo, and our old landlord is letting us out of our lease without 60 days’ notice. Instead, he’s asked us to pay for half a month of rent even though we’re moving sooner, which we think is very fair. He’s been an amazing landlord, and we are truly sorry to leave him.

If you don’t have a Spanish work contract, prepare to present a flurry of paperwork, mostly to prove your financial standing. We showed bank statements for the past three months from two U.S. banks we use in addition to proof of our monthly passive income. Finaer might have prevented that, but it was also yet another fee we’d need to pay, and our agent advised against it unless totally necessary. That turned out to be sage advice.

One other thing to keep in mind: To land an apartment in Valencia, you will very likely end up paying an additional fee to the agency listing the apartment. It’s often coined an “administrative fee” or something else, and while this is technically illegal in Spain since a 2023 law was passed, the reality is not paying it means you’ll likely lose the rental. You can attempt to get the fee back once you’ve secured the rental, but honestly? Good luck.

This process was a beast, but having someone with our interests in mind made a big difference. Our agent is still answering our questions as we prep for the move and helping us navigate the rest of this process. Once moved, we’ll still have to deal with registering on the padrón, changing the addresses on our TIEs, setting up WiFi, and all the other admin tasks that come with moving—only we now have to figure it out in Spanish.

Right now, I'm sitting in my current apartment surrounded by totes, boxes, Christmas decor, bubble wrap, and a blanket of anxiety. In the end? Definitely worth it.

I write about building a life in Spain—slowly, imperfectly, and with a lot of trial and error. If you’re not already subscribed, I’d love to have you.

Subscribe now

If you’re already here, gracias. Hitting the ❤️ button below helps others find poco a poco.

More from poco a poco:

I sat in the car, waiting for my husband to finish his lunch with his friends, and I flashed back to my car line days. I used to arrive at school a whole 45 minutes early. While I waited for school to dismiss, I’d read, listen to podcasts, or simply enjoy the silence.

There are certainly some things I miss about the U.S.—convenience being high on that list—but this car culture?

That’s not one.

In my last post, I told you what I’d missed about the U.S., and now we’re going to flip it.

Getting Around

How little I miss driving everywhere. Seriously.

Need a drink from the gas station? Hop in the car.

Meeting a friend at the park? Grab your car keys.

Want something from a restaurant a couple of blocks away? You’re taking the car because, without reliable sidewalks and pedestrian lights, arriving by foot is taking your life into your own hands.

Cars have their uses. At times, I miss having one a lot, depending on what I want to do. I especially miss having a car for getting out of the city and driving until I find a town I want to explore. But for my day-to-day life?

I can quite happily live without one. Honestly? Spending so much time in the car made me grateful for every step I take in Spain.

I’ll tell you a secret: The first time I got behind the wheel in the U.S. after not driving for a year and a half, a little thrill of power rushed through me. I like driving. I just don’t like the hold it has on me when I’m there.

Space Usage

In Valencia, buildings tend to go up instead of out. Commercial use on the bottom, and residential use on the top. It works well. The layout makes sense in a way American sprawl never did. Nearly everything you need or want can either be reached via public transit or your own two feet. Even the centros comerciales (alive and well!) go up instead of out.

In the U.S., with the exception of a few cities, everything is spread out. Strip malls, giant parking lots, warehouse stores, and big-box retailers abound. The ones still standing sprawl across hundreds of acres of land, surrounded by endless concrete parking lots—some indoor, some outdoor.

We went to a mall in Franklin, Tennessee, for a few hours one evening. The place was practically dead with the exception of a few stores. (Apple, I’m looking at you.) Just wide corridors and the echo of our own footsteps.

Food

U.S. food made me sick.

Nearly two years of eating Spanish food had recalibrated my stomach. Our first full day in Middle Tennessee, we had a lot of fast food because, unfortunately, that’s what the kids missed most. So we gave them that—and paid for it with an upset stomach for two days.

Once upon a time, I had a terrible addiction to Mtn. Dew Zero. (There is no world in which this isn’t horrible for your body.) I’m not proud of it, but my favorite treat in the world was a 20-ounce Mtn. Dew Zero with a package of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

Today, I can’t even eat the candy because it tastes like chemicals. I had exactly two Mtn. Dew Zeroes in the U.S. before I decided I was done with them.

Time Management

Murfreesboro, Tennessee, is a time suck.

Seriously.

It takes me 15 minutes just to cross traffic to the nearest Walmart.

We wasted so much time in traffic in Murfreesboro. Every place we needed to go was a minimum of 10 minutes away by car—and we stayed in a central area “near” everything we were doing. I-24 was its own special brand of punishment.

Listen, I know you can listen to a book, podcast, music, whatever. But sitting in a car feels a lot like losing valuable minutes of your life for … nothing. I’d much rather sit on the metro here in Valencia scrolling my phone, reading, or chitchatting with my family than staring at license plates and taillights.

Drive-thru culture just isn’t a thing in Spain. You sit and enjoy your meal for as long as you need—not scarfing it down as quickly as possible in the car before moving on to the next errand.

Kids’ Freedom

My kids have a lot of freedom in Valencia, but in the U.S.? I still feel a need to hover. And they can’t get anywhere alone because they can’t drive. Everything has to be planned and chauffeured.

The kids stayed at my brother’s house in Kentucky for a couple of nights, and that was as close as they got to the freedom they have in Spain. My brother lives rurally, on a mini-farm, and they were free to run around and be kids with their cousins and aunt and uncle. They rode in a side-by-side, climbed into the treehouse, and played with the family pets.

Kids in Spain tend to be more mature, and I will forever be convinced it’s because they’re allowed to get away from their parents and independently explore the world. My son regularly rides the metro alone here, and he is perfectly safe to do so. Lots of kids do, and if he needed help, an adult would be ready and willing if he asked.

In suburban Nashville, I’d feel the need to watch over them, especially my daughter, who isn’t yet 12. And God forbid I send them to a park by themselves even if it was within walking distance because some nosy neighbor would feel the need to post it in the neighborhood Facebook group or report me to CPS for letting them have some independence.

As we packed up our U.S. loot and prepared to travel back to Valencia, it struck me that I was going home. And as the plane landed in Madrid, the sounds of Castellano floated in the air, reminding me that this place is becoming as familiar as the place I just left.

I write about building a life in Spain—slowly, imperfectly, and with a lot of trial and error. If you’re not already subscribed, I’d love to have you.

Subscribe now

If you’re already here, gracias. Hitting the ❤️ button below helps others find poco a poco.

More from poco a poco:

“Maycember” is in full swing here at my house. It’s the end of the school year, and we’re apartment shopping—amongst other things going on.

I recently sat down for a podcast interview with a friend, Mama Knows Nada, and the full interview is out today! Our conversation centered around moving and living abroad, raising kids in a new country, and why this isn’t a fairytale.

Give it a listen wherever you find podcasts (links below).

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

I write about building a life in Spain—slowly, imperfectly, and with a lot of trial and error. If you’re not already subscribed, I’d love to have you.

Subscribe now

If you’re already here, gracias. Hitting the ❤️ button below helps others find poco a poco.

More from poco a poco:

It’s Friday, and since people continue to ask, “Is there anything you miss about the U.S.?” this is a great time to answer that question.

If you’ve been around here for any length of time, you know there isn’t a lot I miss, but fresh off my trip to the U.S., I realized there are a few things.

Food

Incoming unpopular opinion: In general, I prefer American food.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Spanish food. Nothing beats a good paella by the sea. But finding some of my favorites has been difficult, and as someone living abroad, I find a taste of the familiar sometimes necessary. The short list goes like this:

1. Sausage gravy and biscuits. I’m a Kentuckian born and bred, lived most of my life in the Southern U.S., and this is a dish I’ll never tire of.

2. Tex-Mex restaurants. Based on my eating preferences at home and in U.S. restaurants, I’m pretty sure I might have been Mexican in another life. Seriously, I love this particular brand of food, and it’s hard to come by in Spain. Traditional Mexican food? Yes. Tex-Mex? No.

3. Coffee creamers. The Spanish tend to do milk and sugar rather than a flavored creamer, and since I don’t like black coffee or espresso, I need something to cut the bitterness. I prefer coffee creamers, and I missed them so much that I even learned to make my own. It’s not the same, but they work in a pinch.

4. Fast food. Our entire family is healthier since moving to Spain, and less fast food played no small part in that journey. But when I want Zaxby’s or Wendy’s, I want it, and there’s simply no replacing those flavors.

5. Hot spices and sauces. Spanish people don’t do a lot of spicy dishes, and finding something like Cajun seasoning for your pantry can be a challenge. My son loves anything spicy, from Buffalo sauce to cayenne pepper, and I often end up paying far more than I should to keep those flavors in our house.

Shopping

1. Big-box retail stores. Spain has these (Carrefour, anyone?), but it’s a little bit different than your typical Walmart or Target. And to be clear, I don’t miss these stores often, but sometimes, I do miss the convenience of popping in, getting everything in one big shopping trip, and then heading back home to do whatever else I had on my agenda that day.

2. Varied clothing sizes. I’ve never been a super petite woman. But because I’m not a typical Spanish woman’s size, I’ve had some difficulty finding clothing that fits and makes me feel good about it. I do miss shopping at stores like Old Navy, where I can try on a couple of sizes and know that one of them will fit. (If you have tips on Spanish stores, feel free to drop them in the comments.)

Road Trips

When we flew back to the U.S. our route was Madrid to Chicago. From Chicago, we rented a minivan and drove south toward our destination in Tennessee. The trip took roughly eight hours, with some stops in between. Will and I really missed those road trips, where we spend hours talking, listening to music or audiobooks, and taking in some new scenery. In Tennessee, on weekends, we’d often round the kids up, hop in the car, and we’d take off in any direction for a couple of hours just to see what we saw. Without a car here in Spain, our exploration is limited to where the bus or train can take us.

Language

I’ve been working hard to learn Spanish, and I’ve come a long way. But it will never be my native language, and I may never be fluent. It was, admittedly, a relief to speak English everywhere. I didn’t have to question what anyone was saying to me or translate anything in my head. It was just … easy. I hope to reach a point of ease with Spanish, but I think I’m still a long way from getting there.

The list of things I didn't miss is longer—and honestly more interesting. Coming soon.

Have a great weekend!

I write about building a life in Spain—slowly, imperfectly, and with a lot of trial and error. If you’re not already subscribed, I’d love to have you.

Subscribe now

If you’re already here, gracias. Hitting the ❤️ button below helps others find poco a poco.

More from poco a poco:

I stood in the aisle, looking at the case full of makeup wipes. “Will, look at this. They lock up the Neutrogena wipes now.”

We were standing in a Walmart Supercenter in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, stocking up on U.S. products. The last time I’d been in a Walmart, lots of unexpected products—like pregnancy tests—were locked up, but makeup wipes?

I hit the button to call over an associate to open the case. He arrived quickly, and I watched as he took out a phone, punched some buttons, and the case popped open.

“You can open the locked cases digitally now?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s supposed to be so that more people can open them, but they don’t always work right.”

He handed me my makeup wipes, and then he was off to help another customer.

It wasn’t the first time I realized something had changed in an unexpected way since moving out of the U.S., but it was the one that stood out most clearly. I’ve written about the ways in which life moves on without us, but here I was witnessing it in real time.

The small city we'd called home for nearly a decade had kept busy while we were gone. Medical Center Parkway, once a stretch of big-box stores and chain restaurants, now had an In-N-Out where a field used to be, new apartment buildings as far as we could see, and a shiny new Trader Joe’s on the other side of the street.

We drove through our old neighborhood, where dozens of new houses had been built in our absence and streets had been paved and readied for traffic. Across the road from the neighborhood, homes were being demolished to make way for new shops and residences. It all looked so familiar but foreign.

Just up the road from our neighborhood was a gas station we used to frequent for snacks, drinks, and the occasional breakfast biscuit. The owners also owned a building across the street that sat empty for years. Everyone speculated about what it could be—an ice cream shop, burger joint, market. To our dismay, it was gone. The road had been widened, and a new traffic light had taken its place.

As I looked around at all the changes in this town I’d called home for so long, I realized I’d also changed. I no longer fit quite so smoothly into this puzzle, and even if I could, would I want to?

It was shiny suburbia, with everything I could ever want or need at my disposal. Yet what it required of me were tradeoffs I didn’t want: car life, much less physical activity, food that made me ill the first couple of days in the U.S., and buildings built for function rather than beauty. Everything felt like … too much. Too much food, too much car, too much traffic, too many choices, too much sitting in a car, too many people.

Two years ago, Madrid would’ve felt like one of the most foreign places I’d ever been, but when we landed to make our way home to Valencia, I exhaled. The familiar sounds of Spanish floated in the air around me, and my body immediately relaxed—like it was okay to walk to baggage claim rather than pushing, shoving, and walk-running to the carousel.

“Home,” I thought.

I write here about building a life abroad—slowly, imperfectly, and with a lot of trial and error.

You can subscribe to receive new posts by email, or support this work with a paid subscription, one-time contribution, or just hit the ❤️ button below to help others find poco a poco.

If you’d like to reach out directly, you can find me at jen@jeninspain.com.

Check out more pieces like this one:

On April 2nd, after months of dreading, planning, and gnashing of teeth, I headed back to Nashville for my first visit since 2024.

There were things I looked forward to, like visiting my brother, reconnecting with longtime friends, watching my kids sample foods they haven’t had in nearly two years, and speaking English all day every day.

But the part of the trip that loomed—the 10x5 storage unit sucking $140 away from our bank account every month—had to be reckoned with.

About a year ago, I looked at Will, my husband, and said, “I don’t think we’re going to move back. And if we do, it’s going to be a long time from now, so we need to empty the storage unit and bring what we want to Spain.” He agreed with me, but we had to figure out the best time to make the trip, which, as it turned out, was the kids’ spring break.

One Foot In, One Foot Out

I’ve written about the dreaded storage space a few times, most recently here. It was an anchor around my neck, bothering me quite a bit more than it bothered Will. We packed nine checked bags along with four personal items and four carry-on bags when we left in 2024. I decided to leave behind my mom’s retirement clock, artwork we collected on our travels before we had kids, and our family Christmas stockings.

The storage unit represented what we would need to start over if the move-to-Spain scheme failed. We placed my beloved cast iron pans into bubble wrap and boxed it up. My prized Dutch oven? Tucked into another box for later. Well-loved Fiesta dishes in rainbow shades? Another box.

All of my Christmas ornaments—both vintage and new(ish)—sat in their plastic cases alongside the Christmas stockings, my mom’s Santa piggy bank from who knows what year, and preschool and elementary decorations my kids made for me over the years.

Will and I packed up the remnants of our own childhoods: yearbooks, a letterman jacket, a handwriting award.

As storage units go, it wasn’t much. But it was everything we couldn't bear to part with. Yet.

Breaking Open the Boxes

My face fell the first time we rolled open the door to the storage unit after arriving in the U.S. It was packed fuller than I remembered, and I was completely overwhelmed by the task at hand.

Nearly two years later, I wasn’t even sure what we’d find when we opened the storage unit, but I had my heart set on bringing the Christmas stockings back to Spain.

Opening our small fire safe had me in tears on the very first day, seeing my mom’s and grandmother’s wedding bands staring up at me.

At one point, I held up a can opener from a kitchen box and looked at Will and said, “Really, Jen? This was worth storing?”

Another box revealed every report card I’d ever received, which immediately went into the trash. (Thanks, Mama.)

I looked at Will and said, "We were paying to store trash." He laughed.

Eventually, I uncovered the cedar chest—the one I've been debating how to ship to Spain since we moved. It lived in my mom's bedroom as far back as I can remember. Getting it to Spain was proving nearly impossible without a shipping container. I was not prepared to go that far to save it.

Ultimately, I decided to sell it, and I tried not to watch as the new owner rolled it away.

During the first stage of our move, Will became an expert in Facebook Marketplace. I watched dishes, my dining table, bookshelves, cookware, and a beloved coffee mug collection leave.

Surprisingly, it was relatively easy for me to chuck old diaries, notebooks of writing, and most of my childhood keepsakes into the trash. Some of the content was … embarrassing, to say the least.

Closing It Up

Before we arrived in Nashville, I arranged for the unit to be closed out on April 10th, with management telling me we had to be out by 10 p.m. and leave the lock off the door. I knew we’d be done before then, but I wanted every last second since we were flying back to Spain on the 11th.

By the last day, the unit contained only our donation items, which we loaded into our minivan rental. Everything we were keeping was packed into our luggage and safely stowed at the hotel. (We needed six checked bags to get it all home.) I took a photo of the kids in the empty space before dropping by the management office to let them know we were officially moved out.

And that was it. This thing I’d been dreading for two years was suddenly gone. It was such a relief. And it felt final. The move was complete, and we were not moving back to Tennessee.

I simply felt … finished.

I write here about building a life abroad—slowly, imperfectly, and with a lot of trial and error.

You can subscribe to receive new posts by email, or support this work with a paid subscription, one-time contribution, or just hit the ❤️ button below to help others find poco a poco.

If you’d like to reach out directly, you can find me at jen@jeninspain.com.

If you’re new here, read more about the process of moving abroad:

“I want to go there someday.”

That was my refrain as I watched House Hunters International or Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations or … Pick your poison.

I had a running list of places I wanted to visit and not much of a plan to follow through on.

Part of the problem was finances—or a lack thereof. The other problem was being deep in the throes of raising small children, and the desire to drag them across the country or halfway around the world was not high on my list of priorities.

Once upon a time, I worked at a place where the motto was, “You won’t see the inside of a restaurant unless you’re working there.” It referred to getting out of debt, and while Will and I had long left debt behind, that attitude stuck. Until my mom died, I wasn’t able to escape that mentality, locked inside my own prison of dreams passing me by.

I was a dreamer—someone who knew how to imagine something big but not able to execute because of my own hangups around spending money and allowing myself to enjoy life.

Subscribe now

I recognize this same trait in others who tell me they want to move abroad.

There’s a lot of planning, questioning, and dreaming, but there is a distinct lack of execution.

Picking up an entire life, selling most of what you own, and moving yourself, a spouse, kids, and/or pets to a new country is daunting at best and terrifying at worst.

A self-induced anxiety-producing maelstrom of project management, decision-making, and panic.

My mom’s death forced me to see that “someday” isn’t a real point in time.

First there’s grief. Then comes the aftermath. Unrealized dreams, unfulfilled retirement aspirations, lost time. The entire last quarter of a life planned and lost.

Two and a half years after my mom died, my "someday” moment landed as I learned about a school shooting in Nashville, just 30 minutes away from my own home. I finally shook off the haze of my grief, looked at my kids, and recognized that I wasn’t giving them the childhood or the travel I’d always wanted to.

The common theme I see among people who make the move abroad isn’t that they’re braver, smarter, or have more money. It’s that they realize none of us knows when our “somedays” might run out.

I receive messages regularly from people who are “thinking about” moving abroad. They see what Will and I did, recognize it’s possible, and start dreaming.

I get excited for them, sending messages of encouragement, tips, and keeping my inbox open.

Then I never hear from them again.

If you don't want to be one of those people, I'd love to talk. I offer one-on-one calls for people seriously considering a move abroad—no judgment, no pressure—just someone who's done it. Book a call here.

I write here about building a life abroad—slowly, imperfectly, and with a lot of trial and error.

You can subscribe to receive new posts by email, or support this work with a paid subscription, one-time contribution, or just hit the ❤️ button below to help others find poco a poco.

If you’d like to reach out directly, you can find me at jen@jeninspain.com.

More life abroad essays like this one:

Las Fallas dates back centuries, and no matter what else is going on in the world, Fallas persists.

The scent of gunpowder blended with sugary churros and hot chocolate permeates the air. Children throw firecrackers to the ground, giggling with delight when they pop.

Last year was our first Fallas. In our second year, somehow, we’ve made our peace with the noise and have mostly slept through the live music drifting into our apartment from the street below. (Let’s not even get into the mortar-style fireworks exploding all around us.)

This past weekend, we rounded up the kids and went on a scavenger hunt for monuments near the city center. We were dazzled by them last year, but this year? The monuments were even more elaborate, and the political messages were clear, with Trump dominating much of the imagery.

This is probably our final year remaining in Valencia while the city burns—at least for now. Peace with the noise only goes so far. With an elderly dog, kids, and the general 40-something desire for a good night’s sleep, unless you’re part of it, even most Spanish people will tell you to leave. (My neighbors did and advised us to do the same.) The party stretches well into the wee hours of the morning, with live concerts beginning at midnight, fireworks exploding, and drunken partiers shout-singing off-key.

It takes months and millions of euros to build these monuments, only to watch them burn—symbolic of renewal.

I took the photos below with my iPhone on a gray and gloomy Saturday (using Lightroom to highlight their artistry), but you can see how much effort goes into their creation and why the Valencians are so proud of their city’s tradition.

Feliz Fallas!

Subscribe now

I write here about building a life abroad—slowly, imperfectly, and with a lot of trial and error.

You can subscribe to receive new posts by email, or support this work with a paid subscription, one-time contribution, or just hit the ❤️ button below to help others find poco a poco.

If you’d like to reach out directly, you can find me at jen@jeninspain.com.

Read more of our family’s adventures in Spain with these pieces:

You’re going to make mistakes.

It’s inevitable when you move to a new country, and honestly? Some things you just have to learn from experience. But I do believe some mistakes can be avoided just by doing some minor prep work beforehand.

I recently ran across another Business Insider article from a mom who moved her family to Madrid, and she shared some of the things she would’ve changed if she had it to do over today. One tip—keeping a translated medical profile on your phone—hadn't crossed my mind. I'd already learned the rest the hard way.

Community

Rebecca, the author, writes that she felt lonely her first few months in Spain. She deprioritized her social life in favor of getting everything else done.

Girl, I’ve been there.

The truth is, making friends abroad can be hard. You have to really put yourself out there, and some of us are just worse at it than others. (Ahem, yours truly is one of them.) The saying, “Fake it ‘til you make it,” comes to mind, and there are lots of ways to meet people if you’re willing to put in the work.

I still don’t have a lot of friends here, but I have started to create a network. There are people in my WhatsApp list I could text or call in an emergency, and I have even more acquaintances.

The work is uncomfortable. Do it anyway. You'll find your people.

Schools

Enrolling your kids in an international school in Spain means it will take longer for them to learn Spanish. In the article, Rebecca mentions that she didn’t realize her kids would be learning alongside native Spanish speakers.

Full disclosure: My kids go to an international school. When enrolling them, I was told the school is about 60% Spanish, and the other 40% consists of other nationalities. My kids are enrolled in Spanish as an additional language (SAL) classes. Elementary kids have that class every day (if they aren’t native speakers), and middle school has an SAL class twice a week.

I was well aware the majority of kids at the school would be native Spanish speakers. My experience has been that most international schools here are populated by Spanish kids whose parents want them to learn English. A couple of my neighbors (both Spanish) have children in international schools for that very reason.

If your expectation is that your kids will be learning alongside other native English speakers all day while they learn Spanish, recalibrate.

Subscribe now

Document Translation

Rebecca experienced a serious medical emergency not long after her move to Spain. A translated medical profile on your phone that includes a complete medical history is the kind of thing you don't think about until you're standing in a Spanish emergency room trying to explain it in a language you barely speak.

While we did bring our medical records with us to Spain, I did not make the extra effort to translate them. And while I’ve become aware of medical translation services through Facebook and WhatsApp groups, I’ve never used one. Instead, I’ve mostly relied on my doctors to speak at least some English—a huge mistake on my part.

I’ve been lucky thus far, but it's time to fix that.

Driving

Driving in Spain is a whole thing. The process is long and expensive. I wrote about it here, and in case you’re wondering, I still don’t have a license. (I’m actually a little terrified to drive here.)

For the first six months of living in Spain, you can get by with an International Driving Permit, which you can easily get at any AAA office or online. And pro tip: Even if you decide not to get a driver’s license in Spain (which I do not recommend), the IDP is a document you’ll still want to have on hand for travel within Europe if you need to rent a car.

Do yourself a favor and get the IDP before you leave the U.S. It’s $20 and takes about 20 minutes in person. You’ll thank me later.

U.S. Phone Numbers

This is a topic I researched extensively before we moved to Spain. Some people online recommended Google Voice. Others recommended Tello. Google Voice is appealing because it’s a one-time fee and, with any luck, it’ll work forever. Tello is an ongoing monthly fee, but it can be nominal, depending upon your particular phone needs. (I spend about $6/month for me and a little more for my husband.)

Completely cutting ties with a U.S. phone number is appealing. After all, who really wants to maintain two phone numbers? But as a 40-something adult with lifelong ties to the U.S., it is a must—mostly because of finances.

My recommendation is always Tello. It’s a real phone number at a super low cost, and it works off WiFi. Tello won’t cut you off for living abroad, and you will always receive 2FA texts because it isn’t a VoIP.

Rebecca made mistakes. I made mistakes. You will too. You’re juggling a lot of moving pieces, especially if you have kids, pets, or both. After spending a year and a half in Spain, I’m still making mistakes and learning from them every day. The goal was never to get it perfect. It was to get here and figure the rest out as you go.

I write here about building a life abroad—slowly, imperfectly, and with a lot of trial and error.

You can subscribe to receive new posts by email, or support this work with a paid subscription, one-time contribution, or just hit the ❤️ button below to help others find poco a poco.

If you’d like to reach out directly, you can find me at jen@jeninspain.com.

Getting settled in a new country takes time. Here are a few of my past pieces to help you get started:

The past couple of weeks have been crazy busy, and things aren’t going to get much slower until school is out in late June.

And I had a realization.

My son will be in eighth grade next year.

What?!

My sweet boy was off to kindergarten just a moment ago, and now, here we sit at the precipice of the last year of middle school, prepping for high school.

And my youngest? She’s starting middle school and going into sixth grade.

Time waits for no one, which means the window for traveling and doing activities with our kids is shortening fast.

When we moved to Spain in 2024, one of the carrots we used to get the kids (kind of) on board was a promise to visit Disneyland Paris. But we haven’t made it yet, and not too long ago, my son asked me, “Mom, when are we going to go to Disney?”

It hit me that we’re coming up on two years in Europe, and we’ve really only traveled in Spain, which has been wonderful, and there are so many more places I want to see here.

But.

I want to show the kids the world. It’s a big reason we moved here, and as that time starts to slip through my fingers, I recognized that it’s time to do some of these trips we promised our kids when we moved.

So when my son asked when we were going to Disney, I had a moment of panic. I looked at Will and said, “I’m about to go into ‘f**k it’ mode.” He asked what I meant. “The kids are asking when we’re going to do Disney. Do you realize we only have about four-and-a-half more years before our oldest turns 18? Time is running out.”

And then I got a little weepy, sat down, and booked the flights to Paris.

Later, I booked the hotel, and we are well on our way to a Disneyland Paris adventure this summer.

There’s another trip I’ve always wanted to take, and luckily for me, the rest of the family is on board, although my daughter has her own agenda with this one because it involves horses. (Of course it does.)

As an adult, I’ve long wanted to visit Finnish Lapland, particularly at Christmastime, but I couldn’t figure out how to afford it. I thought that once we were based in Spain, it might be more affordable, but lemme tell ya: Lapland at Christmas isn’t cheap no matter where you happen to be traveling from.

I don’t discuss it much here, but I’ve been playing the credit card points and miles game for years. I picked up the hobby after we took the kids to Disney World in Orlando and realized there had to be a cheaper way to travel with a family. Since then, we’ve taken multiple vacations funded partially by points. And in Mallorca, we stayed at a hotel we wouldn’t have been able to afford (or justify) without using points.

So about a week ago, I started searching Google Flights, taking stock of flight costs, activity options, and what we could expect to pay for lodging.

Flying to Rovaniemi, Finland from Valencia is kind of like flying from Nashville to Seattle—not a short flight, but not quite as long as flying across the Atlantic from the East Coast. And I don’t think there is such a thing as a “cheap” flight during the Christmas season.

Cash was not an option.

Looking at the points cost, though, it started to come together as a possibility. Eventually, I found tickets that worked for our school break, and I booked them, paying a total of about $345 for the taxes and fees and 104,000 Avios.

If you've been curious about the points game, the Chase Sapphire cards are where most people (including me) start. Here’s my referral link if you want to get started.

My bucket list trip is starting to take shape, and while there is still a lot of research to do, I cannot wait to tell the kids. (It’s a surprise for now!)

Living in Europe certainly has its advantages, and the proximity of places like Finnish Lapland is a big one.

Subscribe now

I write here about building a life abroad—slowly, imperfectly, and with a lot of trial and error.

You can subscribe to receive new posts by email, or support this work with a paid subscription, one-time contribution, or just hit the ❤️ button below to help others find poco a poco.

If you’d like to reach out directly, you can find me at jen@jeninspain.com.

Latest posts: