One Day Left til Appointment
We have just a little over 24 hours until our appointment at the Spanish Consulate in Houston. Everything is prepped. This afternoon we'll drive the four hours to Houston and stay in a hotel overnight to be fresh and ready to go for our appointment tomorrow.
What have we done so far?
We have gone over the three requirement docs for us, reread the process book from the Wagoners, translated every document we have with official translators, and have copied and organized every document into folders. My documentation alone looks like the stack you have at a house closing.
Everything is ready for tomorrow. We will go to the consulate to meet with our helpers who will review and pass all the information on to their colleagues in Madrid.
What has this cost?
With prepaid health insurance for the year, rent for our place in Barcelona, and the cost of processing above mentioned stack of papers, we have invested thousands of non-refundable dollars already.
More than that, though, we have picked up a whole lot of stress over the last few months. The stress has been managed by many a massage and energy healer visits. Janis has even picked up a chiropractor to help her with some alignment issues.
To manage the stress further, and to live a more normal existence, we have declared "Spain Free Days". These are days where we ban ourselves from talking about it and try to have a normal life. It is nice to have some hours of reprieve and I am sure they've saved us from some additional stress.
Nick and Janis get to be open about this process in their lives, but half of my days are spent with an assumption that we're going to Spain while the other half of the day I operate as if everything is going to stay the same. I have to do this in order to keep our life here in Austin steady.
It takes its toll on my mind and body after a while. It shows up in the weight I've gained, I am the heaviest I've been in a decade.
Has it been worth it?
Yep.
From a very logical point of view this entire project is crazy in its own right. In the broader context of opportunity cost it makes a lot of sense. While all the downsides and stress mentioned above have a limit to them, there is no limit to the benefits of the upside.
We are very, very lucky to have the chance to move our daily lives to another country, especially with a teenager.
It is ironic, though, the last few months have been very stressful yet some of the main reasons we are going to Spain are based on having less stress in our lives. "It gets darkest before sunrise", comes to mind.
One surprise has been how supportive everyone has been to us, even those closest to us, who we thought might have reservations about our plans. They have been very encouraging and have been our coaches, always at hand to give doses of encouragement when we need them.
So please wish us luck tomorrow. It is probably the biggest milestone we have in this project.
We'll definitely have an update soon.