Thoughts like this are sometimes best kept to oneself – kind of like when you see a kid riding a bike and they say, “Watch this, no hands”, it usually isn’t too surprising when the end result isn’t quite what was expected. Maybe every other married (or serious) couple fully researches all options and makes all decisions on an honest and transparent 50-50 basis. If that is you, congratulations, and you will probably read the rest of this shaking your head and thinking things like, “that was stupid” and “what did you expect”. Spoiler alert – that isn’t always us and we didn’t. I am not saying that the decision to take one more adventure overseas before aging parents or grandkids put the kibosh on flights of fancy and placed responsibilities or opportunities in our path was totally done from the seat of the pants, but I am admitting that where we ended up isn’t quite the “beach and golf resort” on the Mediterranean Coast in Tuscany that we had anticipated. Thus begins my first chapter – how we got here – and things that we did (or not) that might help (or not) if you find yourself thinking about moving, or being sent for a couple years to that overseas destination.
The Germination of an Idea
The story began with me in my fifth year in an education policy PhD program, the last two from a spare bedroom in our house in eastern North Carolina due to COVID and “remote learning” – whatever that really is. This was the fourth time in the area – the first three flying jets – and this one wasn’t like that at all. My wife had a great job, teaching school near the coast for the federal government and living in a tiny house (really a stationary RV) on the beach. I however had a lot of time to think about the fun we had earlier in our careers and travels, living in countries from the Philippines, to Venezuela, to England and traveling around the world and the US, eastern NC is not the same. I was thinking I wasn’t ready to settle down, or as my mom calls it when you pick your retirement locale, “it’s this until the end.” Sure you can travel – but you really don’t experience the culture, the people, and the true life outside the comforts of the USA – with all the goods, bads, and uglies that entails. So I had been suggesting (OK, I was nagging) that maybe we should take one more opportunity to live elsewhere, for just a bit, while we had this window of opportunity between the birth of grandkids and the aging of our parents. Plus, we could always hop back to the States if we were needed and I would look for and apply to a job, after spending the last few years as a real old college kid, who complained just as much, if not more, than a typical college kid. Unfortunately, she was having none of it – the NC beaches are very lovely and being in a second career with summers and holidays off made the work-life balance pretty nice. However, life sometimes has a way of shaking things up and if the idyllic life on the coast had won out, I wouldn’t be writing this.
Our watershed moment was a family vacation. Although both our daughters had graduated from college, both had great boyfriends (one was already engaged), one daughter was employed with the other due to finish grad school with jobs waiting, and both had their own lives, we are still parents. But sometimes too many bits of “good advice” and “lessons from experience” can overwhelm and can result in strongly worded suggestions about treating someone like an adult, acknowledging them as grown up, and “you worry about you”. Those kinds of recommendations can sting; and they did. We got on the airplane home and my wife turned to me and said, “Let’s go.” We landed back in NC and both of us opened up applications to teach overseas – my wife through the internal hiring process of the DOD and me as a veteran with preferred hiring status. Not quite the thorough research, thinking things through, exploring options, discussing desires, and planning in perfect detail approach; however, we only applied to schools in Western Europe (Germany, England, and Belgium) as we still needed to be able to pop home quickly (a compromise, and probably a wise one). And with our applications complete (that night), we sat back and waited for me to get hired.
Good Idea Gone Awry
Here comes another of those not quite fully thought out aspects of this adventure setup – we figured I would be hired first. After all, I have taught high school and am qualified to teach math, English, and Spanish – those qualifications are fairly specialized and typically in very high demand, so we (maybe I) thought someone has to need one of those somewhere. Plus, even if my wife got hired first, it wasn’t a big deal – most larger bases in Europe have middle and high schools, so I could tag along and get brought on as a local hire. It turned out that within a week or so, my wife started getting pulled up on hiring lists – mainly at different places in Germany, a couple larger bases – which didn’t pique our interest – and at Garmisch – a great ski and hiking base with a small school which sounded nice. One restriction with jobs in the DOD school system – you have to go to the first base that hires you, there are no second choices, and if you turn it down, you are out of the pool for a year – we knew this from previously, so we were ready. You can turn down an interview without the same repercussions, but this should also be done a little judiciously. Since we really weren’t that keen on ending up at a large base, immersed in a massive American community, in central Germany, we didn’t pursue any of the larger base options, although we did look into Garmisch, but that was not to be. A couple weeks later, with me still not getting any signs of interest, we decided to include Italy on our applications – after all, we had been to the area many times while living in England and were pretty excited about the food, the wine, and the lifestyle Italy offered. It was an easy flight into and out of the country (we had done it quite a few times, to many different locales, previously) so it would be easy to pop out to the States if required.
Lo and behold, shortly after adding Italy to the list, my wife got pulled on a list for a school near Pisa – who would have thought (well, maybe we should have, but we didn’t.) Within a couple days of being informed she was a candidate, my wife was contacted by the principal asking if she was available for an interview. So, we did a little research on the base – we read about where it was and talked to people who had been there. Camp Darby is a small Army base located in Tuscany on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, 10 minutes from Pisa and an hour from Florence, and historically known as a beach and golf resort. When we had traveled to the area, to vacation and to shop, we had felt fairly comfortable with communicating in Italian (we both speak Spanish). And even if we both couldn’t get hired (it was a real small school with no high school), we could bask in the sun on the beach or in a pool, hone our golf games (for when we moved into retirement), and enjoy pizza, pasta, and wine while living the Italian life – what could possibly be bad about this, what could go wrong. We were thinking, “this sounds GREAT!” so she accepted an interview – which got scheduled for the upcoming Friday, at 9 AM North Carolina time – the problem was, we had a late night flight out to Colorado on Thursday for our daughter’s graduation on Saturday – we were getting in at midnight and the interview was now at 7 AM and would have to be conducted in our daughter’s spare bedroom with a dog, a cat, and a house filling with people. Oddly, all went well. Now we figured we had a couple weeks until the other candidates interviewed and if something else came up, she could say thanks and ask to be not considered. But, again, life can be kind of funny.
And So It Begins
Crap sometimes happens quick. We got back to NC on Monday and on Tuesday, she was offered the job – so much for having time to see if I would even be considered. As we quickly (and I mean quickly) assessed the options, the Italian job sounded like an ideal setting for our vision of our last ride into the sunset in preparation for our real retirement. And although this would be a fairly major change in many different aspects of our lives in a rather short period, in our experience, the Department of Defense was pretty good at helping with the travel and the initial adjustments to the new locale. My wife took the job – we were off. My nagging was about to be rewarded.
Five years in academia should have taught me that theory and reality seldom align. Our visions of sugarplums and what was to become our Italian adventure were just “slightly” out of step – kind of like a mosh pit at a symphony. The realities of what we were stepping into, what would be required, and the enormity of actually moving and living in a foreign country, even one in Western Europe, have been interesting, frustrating, exciting, demanding, remarkable, challenging, fascinating, and infuriating, all at the same time. I will endeavor to share our experiences – in an effort to let those of you who might be considering a similar adventure what you might encounter or to give a chuckle or a shake of the head to those who just want to read about how not to approach this stage of life.