Feeling at Home

When we moved to Spain in 2015, we had been living in Georgetown, Texas since 1987 (with one short sojourn in Bryan) and I had been in the same job for 19 years, so it had been a while since I had had to find my way in a new situation. Being an introvert was both a positive and a negative for me. As an introvert and happy to be a little lazy after a lifetime of working, I really didn't have any angst about spending a lot of time sitting around the apartment and reading. At the same time, I have always had a few close friends, and I missed those interactions.

In the past I met people at church, at work, and participating in volunteer groups. As a lifetime Episcopalian, I was sad to learn there are no Anglican churches in Toledo, and in fact really our only option was an English church, St. George's in Madrid. Before we came we thought we would go to Madrid most Sundays to attend church there, but without a car, we soon realized that the round trip by bus (down to the bus station), bus (to Madrid), and metro could take close to eight hours! We do go sometimes, but not enough to really be a part of that community. We sometimes attend church at one of the Roman Catholic churches here, but the church here doesn't seem to be as much about community as we are used to in the States. And of course I'm no longer working, so no meeting people at work.

John, an extrovert who likes nothing better than to meet new people, started meeting people almost immediately by sitting down in neighborhood bars, drinking a beer, and talking to whoever was there. By asking questions about politics and local history and events, he quickly gathered a group of "geezer" friends who he often ran into in several watering holes around town. I'm not much of a bar goer, and really those kinds of gatherings are more male oriented anyway, so that wasn't a solution for me. On the other hand, I did get to know the deli guy, the butcher, and the veg guy at the local market pretty quickly! And we can't forget our friendly neighborhood mazapan guy (mazapan is an almond candy like marzipan which is very typical of Toledo). In addition to selling us mazapan, he is always ready with a recommendation when we needed someone to repair an electrical plug, etc.

John was also on the hunt for musicians to play with, and his technique of attending live shows and talking to the musicians afterwards finally bore fruit, although it took almost a year. Once he started playing live though, he met more and more musicians, and was invited to help out with various projects, and now he knows pretty much all of the local musicians. In the last week he has even been interviewed for two different radio shows. And, I have met quite a few people through his friendships with other musicians. I won't say we're close friends, but I enjoy talking to the other guys in the band, and their families, and I know a lot of people to kiss on the cheek when we meet these days!

Eventually, though, we found ways for me to meet and make friends with more local folks. One of our breakthroughs was to start attending English language practice sessions (called Tertulias) at a local restaurant bar, as their token American English speakers. Over time we have become friends with a number of the attendees, and they often will come sit with me when John is playing so I don't have to sit by myself. As a spin off of that I have also made friends with a woman I met at the Tertulia who recently retired from teaching English. She wanted to be able to keep her English up, and I needed more Spanish language practice, so we arranged to meet weekly for language exchange. At first we tried to speak English for an hour and then Spanish for an hour, but that felt artificial, so we switched to one week speaking English at my house, and the next week speaking Spanish at hers. As it turns out, we have a lot in common, and we are becoming friends beyond the language practice sessions.

Another activity that has brought both John and me a lot of gratification is volunteering with Down Toledo, a group for support of individuals with Down Syndrome and their families. We meet once a week at the library with their easy reading book club where everyone takes turns reading out loud (me too!) and then we all go out to breakfast together afterwards. We have become quite attached to the "chicos", as well as their teacher and the other volunteers. They are taking the summer off from the book club, and we're missing them!

Another way that I have found to meet people has been by rejoining Rotary here. I didn't do it the first year we were here, but when a Rotary friend visited and wanted to attend the local Rotary Club meeting last fall, I took her, and then found myself going back to visit until they asked me to join. It's a very small club (six of us), and there are still times when I have trouble understanding what is going on when everyone starts talking at once, but they are nice folks, and will stop and explain when I ask, or if they notice I'm looking confused. Because I was a Rotarian for so many years, they have faith that I will be able to make a contribution. I hope so!

One thing I haven't been able to replace here is my book club, but most months I Skype with my book club back in Texas while they are meeting. I enjoy the conversation and discussion of the books, but don't get to enjoy the meals. And with the time difference, I'm up until around 4:00 a.m. on those days! Still, it's nice to be able to keep in touch.

So, the net result of all this is that during the school year I have three or four set appointments a week, which is enough to keep me out and meeting people, but not enough to wear me out. During the summer much of this grinds to a halt, but since we have been spending about a month back in the States during the summer, and the heat makes staying in and reading attractive, that's OK.

[Point of irony, I was spending a quiet evening at home working on this post while John was out playing, when my friend with whom I do the language exchange called to say she and her husband were going out for a drink with friends and I should come join them. Despite my attempts to politely beg off, I found myself heading out at 10:00 p.m. to catch a bus down to the Poligono (one of the neighborhoods outside the wall) to join them (and hear John's band in the distance).]

Why Spain? Why Toledo?

As mentioned in my previous post, we are frequently asked why we chose Spain, and specifically Toledo, when we decided to move abroad after retirement. We had been talking for years about moving to Mexico after we retired, and after some exploration of the colonial cities, had decided on Guanajuato, which is the capitol of the state where San Miguel Allende is located. Unfortunately, Mexico is going through a rough period now, and although we believe Guanajuato to be quite safe, getting there was becoming more problematic since we normally travel there by bus, and some of the areas we would have to travel through are not so safe. So, reluctantly we started looking for somewhere else to start out our life as expats. (We still hope to get to live there someday!)

We wanted somewhere where we could use our Spanish, since that is our best second language, and so we were thinking about Central or South America, but since we were traveling to Spain to walk the Camino de Santiago pilgrim route right after retirement, John suggested thinking about Spain. Of course I loved the idea, but I had my doubts whether we could afford to live in Europe, but we agreed to look around while we were in Spain and see what the cost of living was like. We left for a couple of months in Spain in August of 2014, and after having to leave the Camino after only a couple of weeks due to the heat and my feet problems, we had plenty of time to explore the idea of living in Spain. We made a pretty extensive circuit through south central Spain, and discovered to my surprise that the cost of living here is quite reasonable.

So then of course the question was where to live. During our six weeks of exploration we had visited Cuenca (recommended by the International Living magazine publication on Spain), Granada, Malaga, Antequera, Sevilla, Cordoba, and Toledo. When we went back to Texas we had a short list of Cuenca, Antequera (a small but charming city close to Malaga) and Toledo. In the end, as you know, we chose Toledo, partially because it was so close and accessible to Madrid (it's about 50 minutes by bus depending on traffic, and considerably less than that on the high speed train) and partially because it is just so charming and historic. We felt that the accessibility to Madrid was important not only because all the transportation hubs in Spain center on Madrid, but also because we knew John would want to play music here, and we didn't know if he would find a group in Toledo to play with. As it turned out, he has had plenty of opportunities to play here in Toledo, but it has been nice for them to also be able to go up to Madrid to play occasionally.

We are very happy we chose Toledo. We love living in the "Casco", as the historic district is called, and we have gradually found a circle of friends, (or as John calls his musical friends, his tribe) here.

Why live abroad?

We get lots of questions about being expats, but probably the most common one (from both  Americans and Spaniards) is simply why did we move abroad when we retired. The answer to that is multifaceted, but probably the strongest reason is just because we wanted to. John and I were in the Air Force when we met and married, and so the first years of our marriage we lived in Berlin (actually West Berlin back in those days). Before our marriage we had both been stationed in the Far East, John in Thailand, and me in Taiwan. We also both had an exchange student experience as teenagers, John to Argentina for a year, and me to Mexico for a summer, and loved the experience. In fact when we first met at language school in the Air Force, that was one of the first things we found that we had in common. We both enjoy being a part of another culture, and seeing what life is like as a person who lives there, instead of as a tourist. And it takes time living somewhere else to really get a feel for what that life is like.

We're also big fans of learning other languages, and although we both knew Spanish when we got here, we have both improved our language skills a lot since we've been here. For John it's been more incremental and fine tuning since he was already very fluent when we got here. For me the change has been more dramatic (but slower). I still need to work a lot on my grammar, but I definitely am much better at carrying on a fairly sophisticated conversation than I was when we got here.

And, there is the financial aspect to the decision. We are living on my municipal pension, which is not huge. We made the decision to retire relatively early so that we could enjoy spending time together while we were both healthy and able to be active, which means my pension is smaller than it would have been if I had worked to age 65. Living in Spain we have been able to cut our expenses a lot. First, we do not have a car, so we don't have the expense of owning, maintaining, insuring, and putting gas in a car. Instead we take public transportation which is quite reasonable. Our health insurance policy is less than we were paying in the States, and medicines are cheap here in comparison to in the States, even paying the full cost which we do since we did not opt for including prescriptions. Food costs are also for the most part less than we were paying in Texas, and the food is fresh and locally sourced. There are not as many convenience foods, but being retired I enjoy being able to take my time and fix dinner from scratch without the pressure of having arrived home late after my commute. Our rent and utilities are also pretty cheap, and our son and his family are renting our house in Texas for a nominal sum which covers the insurance and taxes, so housing costs make sense here too.

So I guess the bottom line is, fun, finances, and culture!

The other big question, again from both Americans and Spaniards, is why Spain, and why Toledo, but I think I'll leave that for another post.

Not Such an Old Broad!

I named this blog "An Old Broad Abroad" because I couldn't resist the homage to Mark Twain's A Tramp Abroad and Innocents Abroad. And of course it just sounds cute. Despite that, at 62 I don't really think of myself as old. More middle aged really, although the chances of me making it to 124 (or even wanting to) are slim. Still, for me this is my prime, to enjoy doing things the way we want to and where we want to, while we are both relatively healthy and mobile.

When John and I first moved to Spain, lots of people said I should write a blog, but I didn't think that was really my thing. But, recently I've been thinking a blog would be a good place to put down random thoughts about life in Toledo, and life in retirement which seem to be out of place on Facebook.

For now, I'm thinking I'll just try out the concept, and if I keep it up and it seems worth making public, I'll let my friends know about it.

So, if you are reading this, either I did decide to make it public, or I didn't figure out how to keep this private!