BudgetTravel

A: It might sound weird, but after the first few weeks of nonstop novelty, the most critical problem we encountered in Mexico was our profound inability to relax. After coming from such stressful and high-achieving lives back in the States, we were completely unprepared to live in a world where our main goal in life wasn't achieving results. It was really hard to figure out what to do when we suddenly had all this time at our disposal and nothing constructive to fill it with. I call this the "distraction void." Back home, we filled our days with almost nothing but distractions—working, vacuuming, ferrying kids here and there, calling around for the best price on health insurance, and all the other myriad tasks we exhausted ourselves with. In Mexico, we rented a house, so we had almost no house maintenance; we had no car and thus no car maintenance; and we had minimal have-to-do-this or must-get-this-done-by-Friday. That whole mundane, chore-ridden level of existence had been removed in one fell swoop, and it left us feeling anxious and confused about what exactly we should be doing with the months of minutes that ticked off ahead of us. Although we understood that confronting this void was a large part of the idea of the sabbatical, it was still a difficult transition emotionally.

After a bit of nervous hand-wringing, we realized that we felt more relaxed when there was a sense of structure to each day. So we created a routine (albeit a pretty loose one) that we could all plan our days around. We also started carefully inviting activities back into our lives. These included things like hitting the library every afternoon and signing up for a language class. The kids got to choose one extracurricular activity each week, and we found ways to connect with the community by volunteering at the kids' schools.

(courtesy of the Bernick-Roehr family) THE FAMILY TRAVEL SABBATICAL HANDBOOK • A Family First-aid Kit Checklist • Are the Kids Old Enough to Live Abroad? • Q&A with author Elisa Bernick

Ultimately, we all learned how to consciously slow our lives down. The kids went through a period when they complained of being bored, and then that eventually passed and they found many things to do alone or with each other. We read books for hours at a time. We slowly extricated ourselves from the need to be constantly distracted. After a few months, we were able to get up every day and look forward to the lazy hours ahead of us with relish instead of dread. We'd stand up on the roof deck with a cup of coffee in hand musing about some bit of writing, a chord progression, or nothing at all. And eventually, one us would catch the other's eye and say with a hint of amazement, "Hey, can you believe it? We're living in Mexico!"

Q: What did you miss most about the U.S. while you were away?

A: It seems like the younger kids are, the less they miss about life back home. That's the amazing thing about traveling with kids; they really do live in the here and now. Our kids were 2 and 7 when we left the States. They were 4 and 9 when we returned. The youngest missed almost nothing except certain snacks (Goldfish crackers and rice cakes) that we just couldn't find in San Miguel. Our oldest, however, suffered from a couple of serious bouts of homesickness mostly tied to missing friends and family during special holidays and on her birthday. My husband and I suffered a bit of homesickness as well, although ours seemed more seasonal. For example, the first spring we were gone, I became fixated on the garden I'd left behind. I kept plying my neighbors via e-mail for details about when the lilacs were blooming and whether my roses had made it through the winter.

But as our lives filled up with new friends and activities, we missed less and less about home. We thought we would miss friends and family more, but ultimately, many of them came down to visit. And one of the most wonderful surprises we encountered was how many incredible friendships we made abroad with other expats and native Mexicanos. We never anticipated meeting so many interesting and like-minded people. The majority of those friendships endure to this day, and they are truly some of the most precious and unexpected treasures of our time in Mexico.

Q: Did you feel that 18 months was an appropriate amount of time? How would you suggest that a family determine the length of the sabbatical?

A: Determining the length of a family sabbatical depends on a variety of factors, such as job flexibility, financial obligations, available income, school affairs, your family's goals for your sabbatical, and your sabbatical location. Staying in one place for the duration of a family sabbatical is more economical than traveling around, and that will impact the amount of time you can afford to take off. Also, if one of your goals is to learn another language, anything less than a year will leave you surprised and disappointed at how little language ability you return home with. Of course, the reality is that you and your family will benefit no matter how long your sabbatical. You'll just have to adjust your goals accordingly and be realistic about how much you can do in the time you have available.

Eighteen months was exactly the right amount of time for our family given our goals and available budget. One of our top goals was learning Spanish. It took the kids six months to reach the most basic comfort level with the language and another year to really achieve fluency. It took us hardheaded adults the full 18 months to reach something resembling acceptable conversational skills. Another primary goal of ours was to work on creative projects. Having a year and a half to write, read, play music, and truly get to know ourselves and our children was an incredible experience.

Q: How easy was it for you and your children to learn some Spanish?

A: Not as easy as we'd thought. My husband and I both spoke other Romance languages, so we thought we'd pick it up without much trouble. We'd also imagined that our kids would be like little sponges who would just absorb the language from the world around them. It didn't work like that on either count. Even being immersed in Spanish every day, learning a new language is a relatively slow process (even painful at times for us adults), and we didn't have a realistic sense of that at the start. It took our kids a couple months to even express interest in learning Spanish. It took a couple more for the oldest to commit to working with a tutor and to speak it without us pushing her. Eventually, she was the one pushing the rest of us and enforcing the "Spanish only" rule at dinner time. Surprisingly, the younger one was the most resistant. It took him nine months or longer to speak Spanish willingly, and even then, he spoke it only with people who he knew couldn't speak English.

Michael and I quickly realized that learning a new language at age 40 was different from learning it in high school and college. Our brains were just not as flexible, and we had to work hard to discard our French and Italian to let the Spanish find its way in. The first few months, if the telephone rang we'd either ignore it or do our best to make the other one answer it. Understanding what someone was saying over the telephone was really hard because there was no sense of the context and we couldn't see the caller's eyes or body language. Whoever got trapped into answering the call would have these long, hilarious conversations with some official stranger and then hang up and tell the other, "I think it was something to do with water."