Amid my other blog posts about books, bookish love, and teaching, I'm excited to share thoughts about our family's travel while we are on the go. My life partner Mahan received a Fulbright Award for a teaching and research project in Morocco and Spain. (You can see more about Mahan's professional life here.) He actually applied for the Fulbright in the summer of 2019, which seems like a lifetime ago since it was in the "before" era... But then COVID-19 came, and amid quarantine, we heard in April of 2020 that he'd received the award, but we weren't sure what it would mean for us. Fast forward to January of 2021, and the first vaccines were becoming available in the US, and things looked more promising for a trip that we could do safely.
After many stops and starts, we found out we'd be going on our journey from May of 2021 through December 2021 with three months in Agadir, Morocco, and four months in Madrid, Spain. Our children, who are four and six, will do homeschool in Agadir and then will enroll in school in Madrid.
Mahan and I have traveled quite a bit in our adult lives including living in Ogaki, Japan back in 2006-2007 while we each participated in the JET programme, but we haven't done much international traveling with our children yet. In the summer of 2015, when our oldest daughter was 11 months old, we lived in Granada for part of a summer while Mahan participated in a grant program there. We also traveled to London and Madrid together during that time. Traveling and learning about other cultures is a passion for both of us, and it's something we hope to experience with our children. So when this opportunity came along, even with the major setbacks and fears amid a global pandemic, we absolutely did not want to miss the chance.
So we started planning all of the logistics that we could as the time quickly approached. I'll be sharing on here about some of our preparations, what we packed, and what things are like once we get to our destinations. I'll post about our travels and share about our experiences here. We also have an Instagram account, Nature and Narration, where we're sharing about our journey.
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