One step closer

Slowly but steady we are working towards the move to Spain. One step we took about a week ago is to find an extra money source. As of last week Ellen is a remedial teacher for two girls. One of them is a daughter of a colleague and it all started by the question if she could help out. Of course she didn't mind but we did have to keep in mind that things werenot getting to busy because combining a full time job with a family life is for most people more than enough. Ellen thought one hour a week did not add much more stress to her weekly schedule so she offered to help her colleague.
Apparently the girls liked the lesson because that evening Ellen was asked to help two of their friends as well. Of course it is nice to get a bit more money, but we were a bit afraid that this would maybe be a bit too much. After long deliberation Ellen decided to teach the friends as well. And so she ended up with two extra lessons a week.

The second, huge, decision we made this week was the fact that we will both follow courses to prepare ourselves to the fullest. Ellen will go back to college where she will (try to) get a degree as a translator Spanish/Dutch. It will mean going back to school for four years so it is a big investment, but if we want to start a language school we will have to make sacrifices, this is just one of them. JW will follow management courses so he can do the administration and financial side of the business.

As you can see we're quite busy trying to get everything right. At least we're one step closer!!

Doubts

The idea of moving to Spain is all very exciting, but every now and again we also have doubts.

The most important reason for wanting to immigrate is because we want a better life for ourselves and Anna, and of course the nice weather is also a big bonus. But what if the life does not turn out to be so much better then now? Will we really have more time to enjoy family time? Will we be able to see more of Anna or will we be working too much to find the time to spend with her?

Maybe Anna will not like it in Spain and will she resent us for taking her away from grandparents, uncles, aunts and friends. How will we deal with that? Because she is so young she does not have a say in any of this. We are the ones who are deciding at this moment to persue a dream and she just has to accept it. Of course we dsicussed the fact that we will objectively have a look at our plan at the time that we will acutally decide if we are going to move or not, but how objective can one be when you've spend so much time on the preparations? Sometimes it feels as if we have already decided that we will move, even though we said not to make that decission until 2014.

Of course there are also doubts with regard to the financial side of this move. We have great jobs at the moment with good salaries and ample spare time (even though it doesn't always feel like that). Ellen works four days a week and her working days are relatively short, her last lessons finish at 15.15! JW's workingdays are quite a bit longer, but that also has to do with the time he needs to travel to get to and from work . Now we need to find out if a shorter time to travel, or rather no travel time at all, out ways all the doubts we have. I don't think we will be able to give a definite answer to that question. When we are in a positive mood we can't wait to move and are absolutely sure we can overcome anything that will hit us, but on other days, which are not so positive, we questions ourselves with every move we make. Are we persuing an illusion? Time will tell......

What will it look like?

It is nice that we know we want to go to Spain, but then came the hard part. What do we really want. How do we envisage our bed and breakfast. And of course what is feasible!

We first focused on what we would like to have, and ended up with the following "demands". We want to have privacy even though people are sharing our space. So we have to have our own house, the guests need to stay in a seperate building. This creates a bit more distance but also gives us both, the guests and us, the opportunity to have time on our own and relax when needed. We think it would also be nicer for Anna, our daughter, because she can still have one-on-one time with her parents without other people hanging around.

In that seperate building we would like to establish 6 studios so the guests have the opportunity to prepare their own meals as we are not planning to offer dinner (at least not straight from the start). It is also nicer for the people who decide to follow a languagecourse so they're not obliged to eat either with us or in a restaurant. Of course we don't mind to eat with our guests so we do want to organise BBQs or Spanish Paella nights.

Now we know what kind of accomodation we want to offer. Time to think about the facilities needed for the language courses. We would like to offer Spanish and English courses with a maximum of 12 students at a time. The reason we have this maximum is that Ellen will teach the courses. When we have enough applications to start a second group we might need to hire an extra teacher but at the beginning Ellen will do it on her own. It does mean she needs to go back to university to get her degree in Spanish, but anything for our dream!!

As you can see we have enough ideas and throughout the process new ones are added or old ones are changed/deleted. This will probably not change the following five years, because we think a plan like ours is a dynamic plan and something that we need to keep developing!

Our Dream

As long as we have been together we have always talked about having a business of our own. Up until August last year we always discarded that idea because we liked the jobs we have, the safety they offer us and the fact that family is close is also very nice. This changed when we went on holiday to the Czech Republic. Not that it had anything to do with that country but it was there that we realised that, if we wanted to persuit our dream, we had to do it before we were to old, the children were to settled and so on. So we decided to write a business plan and inform our family about the fact that we would llike to move to Spain to start our own business.

Because Ellen has a lot of experience in hotels the choice to start a bed and breakfast was quite obvious. The reason we chose for Spain was mainly because of the nice weather! After a few brainstorm sessions we realised we had to offer something special to be able to attract enough guests. The idea to combine the option to stay in our bed and breakfast with the option to follow language courses came up and after looking on the internet we became more and more enthusiastic about that. The idea is to move to Spain in about 5-6 years, this gives us the time to prepare and get the funds. Until that time you can follow our developments on this blog.

Enjoy reading it!!