The background

It all begins with an idea. Our idea was to expose ourselves and our kids to different experiences, different cultures, and different ways of life. When I first suggested we move to Switzerland, Bill looked intrigued yet somewhat confused. “How exactly would that work?” he asked. While he wasn’t surprised about my desire to move abroad — I grew up in a family that traveled a lot, spent summers in Switzerland with my mom’s family and also lived in Saudi Arabia as a child and Italy as an adult — he was curious how all the logistics would play out. At the time, we had a 2 year old and a 7 year old. Since our older child was in school, and my husband and I both had desk jobs, we needed to plan. So, planning I did. A researcher by nature, I got to work. This led to our first international move. We sold our home in Sonoma, put our belongings in storage and moved to Neuchatel, Switzerland. I quit my job and Bill continued to work for Autodesk which is why we were based in Neuchatel—they had an office there and corporate housing we could take advantage of for a few months.

Fortunately, we both had worked for a company that offered sabbaticals and we had taken full advantage of those sabbaticals adding vacation time on to them, so our kids were somewhat familiar with traveling for 6-7 weeks at a time. But this was different. I wanted to not just travel, but to send my daughter to school, to rent an apartment, to explore with my toddler and to immerse ourselves in the culture. Switzerland seemed like the obvious choice since Bill’s company had an office there and we have quite a bit of family in Switzerland. We arranged for him to work remotely at their offices, found an international French school for my daughter, rented an apartment, and off we went.

The logistics were a bit complicated with school, as my daughter was at a Charter Montessori school at the time. We didn’t want to lose our spot and have to take our chances with the lottery again since we knew we would be returning to the same small town when our travels were over because we loved the location, community and school. So, we made arrangements with the school for her to do an independent study program while also attending the international school in Switzerland. It worked amazingly well thanks to an extraordinary teacher and a very bright child who had no problem handling the workload.

I give you all this background for a better understanding of how we arrived at where we are today. Last time, we sold our house, headed off for 6 months and returned home knowing we wanted to do it again, but for much longer next time. It was such an incredible experience for all four of us that we knew that was just the tip of the iceberg. We would do it again, the only question was, when?

Neuchatel, Switzerland 2013

Neuchatel, Switzerland 2013