Episode Link
Clint Bush 0:12
Hey everyone, welcome to we will wander exploring life off the traditional path, a podcast about location independent families living and working all around the world. I’m Clint Bush.
Zélie Pollon 0:21
And I’m Zélie Pollon. And twice a month we talk to families about what it’s like to live location independent, travel full time or educate their kids on the road. The world is big and time is short. So let’s get started.
Zélie Pollon 0:39
On today’s show, we speak with Darcy Tuscano who is quarantined with her wife and two children in Spain for the umpteenth day. In fact, she just ran out of water. She tells us a little bit about how she got where she is and what the Coronavirus is like in Spain.
Darcy Tuscano 1:00
My wife and I have been together since the year 2000. We met in New York City, and we lived there about 15 years, had a couple of kids along the way and decided when they were about preschool age that rather than spending all the money on some fancy New York City preschool that we would take all that money and go backpacking through Southeast Asia instead, we had done a couple of little trials of living abroad spending different times throughout the year in Costa Rica or Mexico and just kind of dipping our toes into it. So our twins were three and a half when we left New York City. And the next year when we came back to the States, we knew we didn’t want to live in New York City anymore and so we moved to the Fort Lauderdale Miami area and we really loved it there the the change of lifestyle Compared to New York was great. And after spending the previous year in the tropics, it was nice to just be in another tropical area. But I started getting wanderlust again. And I came across a blog when I was researching summer camps. Actually, I wanted my kids to go to a summer camp, that all of us could go to maybe some kind of family camp, and really immerse ourselves in Spanish. And one thing led me to another down the rabbit hole of the internet and I found a woman’s blog and American who lived in Spain, and the things that she was writing about living in Spain, and the visa that was available to Americans and the cost of living in her particular area. It just kind of blew my mind away because I written Europe off as being too expensive, basically. So I just started doing a lot of research and proposed the idea idea to my wife that maybe what we were looking for was not a summer camp, but to actually have like a permanent summer camp. And so we both started researching mad. And it was five days, five days, it took us really to make the conclusion that we wanted to at least go to Spain, and do a recon mission, so to speak in, try to see if it felt good. So from the time that we first put the idea in motion of even thinking about it, too, that was that was in March, and we moved to Spain in September. Wow. So Holy
Zélie Pollon 3:41
cow, that was fast. That was fabulous. Well, you had to transition parts of your life as well as your working life. How did you decide on the working part, and how are you all working abroad?
Darcy Tuscano 3:55
Right, so my wife is a business consultant in strategy development and she had been working for Deloitte Consulting for over a decade prior to our move, and she tried to see if she could continue to work for them from abroad, but due to tax reasons that didn’t work out. So we thought, well, let’s see if this is the move, to strike out on our own and develop our own business. And we did, we took all she took all of her consulting skills and opened up her own consulting agency. I had been working in nonprofit education, that wasn’t going to work so well in Spain. So I had also been a journalist and worked for a number of newspapers, magazines in the past. And so I transitioned back into my writing side and editing side of work, which I had been really wanting to get back to, and I now had more financial freedom to do that because our cost of living went dramatically down. And so what ended up happening was, she ended up with a better business and work life balance than she had in America. And so did I. And it took about maybe six months to a year for that to really develop. We had started off with, you know, enough savings for us to make it through the first year. Because we thought, Well, if nothing else, we can do anything for a year. And if it just turns out to be a great experiment and a fun year, and we come back to America at the end of it, then nothing lost, right? But about six months into it, we realized without a doubt that no it was going to be much longer than a year we didn’t know how long but we wanted to to stay and to keep going with it, which is exactly what we’ve done. So that was a little over four and a half years ago. We got here so we got here when the twins were five we put them straight into it. All Spanish public school, very much a sink or swim sort of situation. And they’re completely fluent in Spanish and of course, English. They’re their third culture kids there. They’re not they don’t feel quite American, they definitely don’t feel Spanish. And so it starts to be well, where are you from? Where am I from? I don’t even know anymore. So, yeah.
Clint Bush 6:23
He said the twins learned Spanish when they went into school. Were you both speaking Spanish before you decided to go?
Darcy Tuscano 6:31
That’s a great question. No, my wife and I backpacked throughout Central America one summer for about three and a half months. And we did study Spanish along the way. And that was at least a decade prior to us moving to Spain. So some of that came back. We both studied French in school and so the French helped us with the Spanish which we didn’t anticipate. My wife is a very type a failure is not an option. type of person and so she just threw herself into learning Spanish. And she’s she’s fluent now, I have not been quite as failure is not an option with the Spanish. And I and I have found with almost every x pack couple that I know that there’s one who’s very strong and the language and the other one is like, Ah, that’s good, you know, and I’m I’m constantly learning I’m constantly improving, but I am also much, much more talkative than my wife. And I think for her because she doesn’t talk as much as I do. That constantly learning and putting into process what she’s learned is fine because she never had that much to say so to speak. I have so much to say that I can’t be slowed down trying to find the right Spanish words to say it. You know, that’s my excuse. Anyway, thankfully, I have a lot of really nice Spanish friends now that are very kind and patient with me and they helped me and I try I do but my children laugh at me. And it’s, it’s quite, it’s quite comical the whole thing. It’s not easy to learn a language and I was I was 45 when I moved here and I’ve never been great at learning languages. I love them. I love learning about them. But I think at the end of it what I’ve seen with my kids and my wife some people are just really good at languages and others will constantly struggle. My kids have not had an easy time and they go to an all Spanish school.
Zélie Pollon 8:36
And do you all live with I mean, are your friends primarily Spanish or expat? I mean, for example, here in San Miguel, it’s so incredibly difficult to speak Spanish because everybody speaks English around you and I realize if I were in a less expat area, I would probably speak much more Spanish. Is that the case where you are.
Darcy Tuscano 8:54
I know about San Miguel de la de and I know how heavy it is, and I I would say we’re probably in a similar area. I don’t know, you know, we’re in a much smaller population. The small village that I’m in is maybe 3000 people. And when we did this this recon mission that I was talking about earlier, we took about 12 days, just my wife and I, and we pinpointed places in Spain that we knew we didn’t want to live, and then places where we would consider living and some of that had to do with weather or close to a beach or to rainy, or we loved Barcelona, but in the public schools there, they only teach Catalan with just a few hours of Spanish per week, and we didn’t want our kids to come to Spain, and not learn Spanish, right? So there were places that we could say no, no, no all over Spain. What we didn’t quite realize is if we limited it to the Mediterranean coast, that we would be ending up very ex-pat heavy, almost anywhere. Went, and that if we had just gone slightly inland into the mountains but still close to the coast that we would have had a much more authentic Spanish experience. So we do have a number of Spanish friends here but almost all of the Spanish friends here are from somewhere else either in Spain or Latin America, there’s a lot of people from Argentina hears and Venezuelans from Oregon, Paraguay, Chile, all over South America, not much Central America, they go for the bigger cities. So most of our friends also speak English. And when they see us struggling, they switch because as English is almost always better than my Spanish. So it is very difficult on a day to day basis to get beyond the shopping the eating the necessary things, you know, the repetitive things and to get to a new level. Yeah, can you
Clint Bush 10:58
can you go back real quick and just Talk about you said there’s a special visa for Spain. for Americans. Can you just expand on that a little bit? And is that only for Spain? Or is that also something available other places in Europe? Just a little bit more information?
Darcy Tuscano 11:13
Sure. So when we discovered the blog called Wagner’s abroad by an American, they had found a visa, a long term visa for Americans called the non lucrative visa. And I’m not sure but I’m pretty sure that up to date right now, Italy, France, and Spain all offer this visa. And what it is, in a nutshell, it’s a retirement visa without the age stipulation. So as long as you can show X amount of money in the bank, and every console, it has its own formula for what that x is, it’s going to be this much for head of the household plus your spouse plus this much for each child, right? Every constant It has their own formula. They you need to show that amount in your bank account, you need to have FBI clearance, yes to show that, you know, you’re not a criminal coming in. And you know, all of the requisite bureaucratic paperwork, you know, showing that you are, who you are, and so on and so forth. But really, it’s money in the bank, and don’t be a criminal. And for us, in Spain, this is granted to you for the first year. And then the next year, you have to apply again, if you’re accepted, you are granted a two year visa. And then after those two years, you apply again, and you have another two year visa. And then in the end of that which will bring you up to five years, which is almost where we are our next visa will be a five year visa. Well, yeah. And the other thing was Spain, which I’m not quite sure about Italy, Italy. I know that homeschool is legal France I think it’s legal, but it has a few more rules, I think then then Italy does. But in Spain, homeschooling is illegal. And we have a number of homeschool or world schoolers who live in this area and also throughout Spain, but they’re very much under the radar. And most of them are all European citizens who can kind of fly under the radar, because they don’t have to go to the offices and be granted these visas and go through all these background checks. For us when we go to get renewals. We also have to show letters from our school with the date and the official seals and everything showing that our children have been in school for the last year and that they are enrolled for the following year. And there have been people who have been denied their visas because their children have not been in school because it is illegal. Well,
Clint Bush 13:55
that’s a that’s a good stipulation to note especially among kind of the traveling Families which the majority of them tend to be homeschooling in some sort.
Darcy Tuscano 14:04
Yes, you you might be able to get away from it with it for the first year depending on when you arrive. But for your renewal, no, I know a number of people who came here and they might have homeschooled for their first year but the second year when they were told that your kids either need to be in school or we’re not going to renew your visa, suddenly their kids started going to school.
Zélie Pollon 14:28
Oh, well, this leads to another question, which is really what has been your most difficult challenges in the move and in resettling both imagined in real?
Darcy Tuscano 14:38
Oh, wow.
Both imagined and real. Okay, well, let’s start with imagined. I think my wife and I both thought that learning the language would be so much easier than it has been. I don’t know why because it doesn’t seem very logical looking back, but I think we both thought that perhaps it would be like automatic And we would just get there, and we would just be around it and it would just sink into our heads. And then one day magically, we will wake up and we would just speak beautifully. It’s like that David Sedaris book, me talk pretty one day, like a year in France or whatever. And I swear every year, I still think, you know, me talk pretty one day and then one day one day, and when when we started realizing just how hard it was going to be, and not just because learning a language is hard, but because of where we live, and that so many people switched to English and that even when we insisted on speaking Spanish, they would switch to English, you know. So I think that would be one of the imaginary you know, things of I thought it was going to be much easier to learn the language. I think applying for the non lucrative visa prepares you for the bureaucracy that you’re going to face here. And if you can, keep your question pool with all of the papers and processes and keep organized, and not let it get to you, you know, just say, Well, this is what it is. And the faster that I accept that this is how things are done there and and don’t question it and don’t try to compare it to how life is where you’re from, then the faster it will be that you just get on with your life and have a good time with it. Because I know way too many people who are constantly complaining about how things are done in Spain. And that’s one thing that we were very, very careful not to do when we got here. And I think also, we’ve traveled so much through 35 other countries before we even arrived here that we were very level headed with. Yes, America may do things one way but the rest of the world definitely does not, you know, and that helped us. And it helped us just to remain flexible and try to find different ways to doing things. I think that the language has been the hardest one. And also realizing that you’re never going to fit in, you’ll find yourself surrounded by experts and other immigrants most of the time because none of you are locals. I mean, we moved to a small village where everybody knows everyone, everyone has an aunt, an uncle, a cousin, a grandmother, they all live together right next door down the street. They’re all extremely tight, and we will never be able to penetrate that circle of theirs. And they don’t want us to, you know, and so that has been kind of a hard thing to stomach is that you can walk by someone who really wishes that you weren’t in their village for the most part, you know, there have been locals who are okay. But overall, the locals are not really receptive and warm of the expats moving into their village into finding their paradise so to speak. Right. Right. Right. Is
Clint Bush 18:10
that something you find that you think is relative because it’s an expat heavy area? Or do you find that, that maybe is just kind of the culture in the part of the world you’re in? Because I find in certain Indonesia, for example, parts of Indonesia are very welcoming to foreigners. And then there’s parts of Indonesia that are not because it’s a heavily tourist Bali, for example, there is a welcoming community, but then there’s also a lot of animosity towards foreigners because it’s such a heavy expat and heavy tourist area. So have you do you think that it’s partially because it’s the type of village that you’re in and the amount of expats that are there or just kind of the culture in general?
Darcy Tuscano 18:56
I don’t think it’s necessarily culture in general. I think that anything misconception that we might have had is we had spent so much time in Central America and South America, and we had experienced so much warmth and friendliness from people. And the Spaniards are very warm and sunny. But they’re a lot more standoffish than, say, Central Americans or South Americans. There’s just a bit of a coolness, and we hadn’t necessarily expected that. And the other thing is that I don’t think it’s necessarily the whole culture of Spain. We’ve also learned that there are definite regional differences. It’s a huge country, you know, and the place and the particular village that we’re in, has a reputation of being very closed. And we had no idea about that when we moved here. But then when you tell somebody they’re like, oh, other Spaniards, you know, Then you know that like, Okay, I’m not just imagining this. So we’ve found so many lovely people in this Pueblo, but they’re all Spaniards from somewhere else. So I call them the Spanish expats. And then we are the expats, you know, so we’re all outsiders and so we all kind of band together, you know, and the local stay local as they should, and quite honestly, I don’t blame them.
But that said, a friend of mine moved to Barcelona. He married a Spaniard they had a child, he was there 12 years, and he said he was never able to penetrate and to make his own in depth group of friends. And when he and his wife eventually divorced, he said he was completely alone. And now Barcelona is much more of a tourist area, but he said exactly the same thing. He said, no matter how long you’re here, it’s insular in a way. So it’s, it’s interesting that you had a very similar experience.
Clint Bush 20:56
I was just going to say we’ve we have friends that are in France, and we’ve heard this Same. In Italy, we’ve heard the same too. And it’s interesting because Italy, for example, is actually trying to bring foreigners and expats in and try to populate some of these smaller towns and stuff. It’s, it’s just interesting that these are kind of the stories we hear. And yet the governments are trying to bring in residents from outside the country just to kind of get things going with economic wise.
Zélie Pollon 21:24
And Americans also have that reputation of making friends very quickly, but there’s no depth to the friendship and I know even with my friends and family in France, they say it may take you a while longer, but they will stay your friends for life. So whether it will just toss that in there that they claim to have much deeper friendships.
Darcy Tuscano 21:43
I have some very, very close friends who are French and and I would have to agree with that. I mean, they are loyal and they are very deep, and I can always count on them. So maybe, maybe that’s true. And I mean, my Spanish friends that I have that are actually from around This area, but not local to this village. They Yeah, they’re very, very loyal friends. I think that if I were a local who lived in a place like this, where people were constantly coming and going, I would be a little cautious to have letting anyone and or or even spending my time getting to know them because quite frankly after being here for almost five years, I know that I often do the same thing I can find out. Okay, you’ve you’ve just arrived. How long do you plan to be here? Oh, you’re just passing through. Okay, well exactly like it unless I have some kind of massive connection with you. I have so little time to focus on my own family and friends that I don’t want to constantly be Hi, this is who I am. And here’s my story and we live in an extremely transient little place. So there’s always new people coming going Coming going, and I can imagine from a local that can get exhausting, you know exactly.
Zélie Pollon 23:06
So what have been the greatest benefits of your move to your relationship and your entire family unit?
Darcy Tuscano 23:14
Well, with every move that we’ve done outside of New York, our cost of living has gone down. So I would say that that has been our biggest benefit is that we have been able to make money and save money here, like nothing we could have ever dreamed. And I think that we all know that financial freedom gives you freedom for pretty much everything else in life. You know, you can devote your time and energy to things that you wouldn’t have been able to otherwise just because you were hustling. And we’ve been able to really slow down here. We live directly on the Mediterranean, but with mountains in backup We can be hiking, biking, kayaking, paddleboarding, you know, any kind of outdoor activity that you can imagine. It’s just right there in our in our backyards, which has been fantastic. And I’ve definitely felt more at peace, less anxious, just being able to kind of slow down life, especially coming from New York. So it’s also all perspective, right? We came from one of the most chaotic expensive cities in the world, right. So anything is going to go down from there, but I think it’s been really good as our family unit because we start every day. The goal is overnight with Coronavirus. Suddenly homeschooling is legal in Spain. The irony right. But even before this, the way that the school day is designed is that the children are in school from nine in the morning until two in the afternoon. Spaniards eat very late. And so lunch is never until 230 or even three, and then dinner is usually for us sometime around eight. And so we eat every single meal together. And we have for nearly five years, you know, so lunch is our biggest meal of the day. And so we all have a very big sit down lunch, often outside because the weather’s nice. And we just can relax and talk and talk about their day and talk about our day and then everybody gets a little downtime. It’s not really a siesta, nobody sleeps, but it is downtime. And then usually around five or six o’clock at night activities for children start back up again. So maybe they’ll go to kung fu or have an art lesson or tennis or something like this. So it’s been it’s been really really good, I think for the life flow and for us to all support And a large chunk of time together. You know, my wife and I have both worked from home now for over 10 years. So we’re used to all being at home and in small places and sharing space together. So this is just kind of been our life as long as as long as we’ve had kids, this has been our life.
Zélie Pollon 26:21
Sounds like a wonderful life. I like that. A lot of the people in our audience too are either contemplating move and or are moving abroad, but what kind of advice would you give to other families who might be contemplating uprooting moving somewhere else? Well,
Darcy Tuscano 26:39
I think you really have to think about what you’re wanting to get out of the experience. And to make sure that you do a lot of due diligence and your research and choosing the place that you want to go to. I love where we are. In retrospect, I probably would have chosen another place. Just so that I wasn’t surrounded was such a transient population. And so I could have been a bit more immersed in Spanish culture and customs. That’s been our biggest challenge here. And so when people have asked me, oh, I’m thinking of moving to Spain, you know, I’m looking at your area, and I asked him, What do you want out of it? If you’re wanting a circle of friends who are all English speaking, then absolutely, you can find that. But just know that it’s going to be much harder for you if your goals are for Spanish fluency. And you have to think about your children because we never thought and we never in our wildest dreams would have thought that we would have so many hurdles to our kids learning Spanish even though they go to a Spanish public school, but because we’re surrounded by so many expats who are also sending their kids to Spanish public schools, what language do you think the kids are all speaking together?
Zélie Pollon 28:00
The same here in Mexico? Absolutely.
Darcy Tuscano 28:03
That has been my biggest shock at how much extra work I’m having to do with the Spanish language, even though they’re going to school. And I think that, you know, you have to look at the temperaments of your children. Are they shy? Are they extroverted? Are they the kind of kids who will, you know, go up and just talk to anyone on the playground? Because that’s the kid who they are or, you know, are they the more reserved one who will stand aside? Because that’s, that will impact their language learning and how well they go into a school system and adapt to things. We have twins. And so my story is going to be completely different than somebody with a singleton or even children of a different age because my kids had each other so they were like, great, we have each other we don’t really need to make friends with anyone whose language we can’t understand. Right? Yeah, but I think I think just looking at cost of living in Places, what is it that you want to add to the experience and be informed? Do you know know that if you’re wanting to move to Valencia, they speak valenciano and they’re going to teach that in the schools? Yes, they speak Spanish on the streets, but Valenciana was taught in schools. Same with Barcelona and Catalonia, right. So just be aware of all the cultural differences and the places that you go into the country, the cost of living, how big is the expat community and what you’re wanting to get out?
Clint Bush 29:28
That’s good advice. Yeah. Thank you, Darcy. So we want to switch gears just a little bit because we are all living in this very interesting time right now. And we want to kind of find out how the Coronavirus pandemic has affected you and your family, especially living abroad. So if you can just tell us a little bit of kind of how that’s been for you for the last month. That’d be great.
Darcy Tuscano 29:51
Sure, sure. Well, we travel a lot. That’s one of the other bonuses of being able to live here is that we’re We’re able to kind of use this as our base and take off often because things are so close in Europe, and the flights are often quite cheap. And so we have been traveling a lot this past year, and we were in France on a winter break in the Alps skiing when the news from Italy really started getting bad. And I had already been following it from China. I think everyone who kind of went like oh, something bad is happening in China. That doesn’t sound good, glad it’s over there. And then all of a sudden for us when it hits Italy, you think Hmm, that’s just next door. That’s not so good. When you start for me anyway, I thought, hmm, it’s going to come to Spain. We don’t know exactly when but it’s getting quite close. And I, I remember being in a in a grocery store in France and thinking I’m going to buy some hand sanitizer because that’s something that we don’t use here in Spain, at least not where I am and you can’t find it and I I distinctly remember thinking, I’m going to get some of that because I’m going to need that. And I came back and I, I really thought it was March 3. And I really thought when I landed in the airport, there would be some sort of notification of like due to the Coronavirus. There was nothing. And I thought when my kids go to school this week, surely there’ll be a little like, Hey, kids, you need to, you know, really focus on washing your hands. Now, there was nothing. In fact, there was no soap in the school bathrooms at all, which is the norm here. There’s no soap anywhere. And I was really quite dismayed and shocked. And for the first week, I just kept following all the stats and thinking, when are we going to do something when is and I got ridiculed by a lot of people here as being alarmist and making something out of nothing. And it was just the flu and bla bla bla bla bla and I was overreacting. And then the second week, all of a sudden, you know, people start taking notice and had already been quietly shopping and getting things in order and mentally preparing for what I knew was coming. I thought, you know, Italy is our future. And I’m looking at the stats, and I’m not a statistician, but I’m looking at these stats and going, huh, yep, that two weeks. Got it. And so then when they made the call, I had already taken my kids out of school, one of my sons has asthma, and I wasn’t comfortable with it anymore. And I knew it was gonna happen. So we were ready. But nothing quite prepares you for like, you cannot go outside anymore. You just I know other places have had looser regulations and they can still go to the woods or, you know, go on a trail or something as long as there’s social distancing, but to be told that you can’t even go just on a trail right and back of your house, which has no one on it anymore is really depressing. So we do have the big terrorists which is great. And the kids can go out and play ball and jump on the trampoline and stuff that I think the first week we just kind of floundered around trying to figure out what we were going to do was school and scheduling and trying out a different schedule every day. And the second week, we kind of hit our groove. And you know, the third week has gotten better. Just yesterday, there was a government decree that they were going to have another two weeks and so that will put us at six weeks total. And so yesterday everyone was quite down. It just kind of you know that it’s coming but you get depressed. And I saw from some of your posts that your son you’ve had some emergencies, you’ve had to run to the hospital and can you talk about that? I’m assuming that was your son who has asthma and how you feel about the the medical system there in general.
So during the second week, so my wife had been traveling right up Until a week before the lockdown. She actually had business in Italy. And thank God they canceled all of it. But she had to go to London and Rotterdam about two weeks before the lockdown. So she had been home for a week and during that week that she was home. She never had a fever, but she had all of these other symptoms of Coronavirus, and she had the cough and she had the massive fatigue and yeah, yeah, yeah. But we had called the hotline number that we were given. And they said no, basically, you’re not bad enough. So, and Spain is like many other places in the world, they’re saving the tests for the people who really really need them and everyone else is just kind of told to stay at home and self isolate and if it gets really bad, we’ll then we’ll think about you know, testing you and getting you in for treatment. But the last place that you really want to be at a hospital, where you can be contaminated and or get somebody else’s Right. So she never developed a fever, but she had so many of the other symptoms. And then it was about a week and a half after that, that my son who’d had a perfectly wonderful normal day, about five 530 in the afternoon just said, I’m freezing, I’m freezing and all that strange, and so cold, we put him in bed and just piled every day on him. But we couldn’t he still couldn’t get warm. But he didn’t have a fever. I’m feeling his forehead and then within an hour, his favorites spiked up. And another 30 minutes after that had gone up even more, and he’s complaining about his eyes, how they just feel itchy, and heavy and he can’t open them and his breathing is getting really shallow. And this all happened within a two hour window. Two and a half. Yeah. And so we call the hotline and they said, you know, monitoring for another 30 minutes. We call them Insurance Company. And basically when his fever got to about in Fahrenheit about 103 point five, they said right, okay, try to give them some pain reliever. But if that doesn’t work, you’re going to need to bring him in, especially with this history of asthma and this shallow breathing and he started coughing. Yeah, so like everything all at once, boom. So we gave them some paracetamol and drove him to the nearest hospital, which is about 30 minutes away. By the time he got there, the fever got down slightly. They did a scan they looked at as long as they listened to his breathing, his lungs were completely clear. And they they basically sent us home and did not want to test him because again, he wasn’t that bad. They were really short on tests and Spain at that time. They’re still short but they’ve gotten more testing now but they were really really short during that time if they had any at all who knows. And so, that night, his favorite went down and went down and went down. And by the morning, he had no fever at all. He was tired. He spent the entire day on the sofa, however, unexplained as well, he got a rash. And I got a rash on my face, which I later learned is also a symptom of body rash. And conjunctivitis of the eyes is also a symptom. And my eyes for the next two days in the evening were really, really swollen and itchy. And that was it. So it probably went through my wife first, and then him, and then me, and I’m sure that my other son has just asymptomatic, right, like got it and never even knew that he had it. Which, if I hadn’t had Max, my other son who had it probably will never know for sure. I probably would have just thought, Oh, my contacts had been in too long or, you know, I wouldn’t have even typed it all in so I wouldn’t have even noticed if it hadn’t been for him that these things were going on in me It probably would have just passed through me as well.
Clint Bush 38:02
It is hard, though, I think for a lot of families because it is coming off of the heels of flu season. And I think, especially if you’re in anywhere that suffers from flu season just to kind of when do you make that call? Right. And I think at this point now, though, as far as we’re into this pandemic, I think everyone is willing to make that call right away, but I think right at, like earlier stages, it was alright, I have a fever, but it could just be something that’s going to pass really quickly. So it’s, yeah,
Darcy Tuscano 38:32
all right. Yeah, we we thankfully have quite a few friends in the medical field, both in Europe and America. And we’ve talked to a number of them since then. And every single one of them is, yeah, you had it. Like you’ll never get tested. Right. But yeah, just consider yourself that you unless
Zélie Pollon 38:51
you find out later that you have the antibodies and then you’ll be in good shape anyway. Yeah, sure.
Darcy Tuscano 38:57
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So yeah, it was scary. It was super, super scary. And then also crazy that, you know, less than 48 hours later
Clint Bush 39:10
talk about a rollercoaster ride. He’s
Darcy Tuscano 39:11
fine. And even he said, Yeah, he was like me. It’s almost like it never happened. Like I just went to the hospital one night, and then the next day, everything and I’m like, I know and I wouldn’t it just sounds too bizarre to even be believable, except that it happened to me. So I know. I was
Clint Bush 39:29
I wanted to ask you one more question. kinda sent around the Coronavirus pandemic, just how is your community been handling it? Because we’ve seen on the news we see there’s Italian, the Italian town that they were seeing to each other. And then there’s some communities that are completely rejecting the idea and going out and still going to the beach and all that and just kind of how is your community handling it there?
Well, I mean, the Spanish are so used to being together a community is everything. I mean, my, my Spanish friends, they don’t even have coffee at home in the morning. Because why would you want to go for coffee by yourself when you can go out to a cafe and have coffee with lots of other people? You know? So for my Spanish friends, I think this has been just horrible, absolutely horrible. You know, the thought that you have to spend all this time by yourself in your house and not seeing your friends or your family. But because most people live in while we’re in a village and we’re quite close to everyone else. We don’t we’re not in a house on the hills, you know, far away and isolated. And so I can see 100 different people leaning out their windows or on their terrorist is you know, all the time. And so you never really feel like you’re alone. And we have this town where I’m in has been quite good about staying inside and not making unnecessary trips and there’s a tradition all over Spain that at eight o’clock, everybody comes outside and we clap and we usually have different themes like tonight were clapping for the healthcare workers and the night before that it was for the grocery store people who work and the night before that it was for the kids who are inside with autism. And then I you know, so there’s always like a different theme. Let’s say you’re clapping for and they come out and then after all the clapping stops after about like, three minutes or so somebody will like blast music from their terrorist or their rooftop and everybody dances on there, you know, so it’s just like, it’s one part of the day and I broadcast it live on Facebook a lot, or I post videos afterwards. Because it’s just it’s such a nice thing to look forward to every night when everybody just kind of comes out and you feel like you’re all together again and that Yeah, we’re all stuck inside but we’re all getting through this together. You know, it’s a good It makes me finally feel like I’m actually a part of the community.
Zélie Pollon 41:54
Do you feel like you’ll that you’ll have a tighter community after this this idea of we all survived This together?
Darcy Tuscano 42:01
Well, I’ve thought about that myself, you know, because I’m so happy to like live in this little Pueblo and be surrounded I can I can feel the energy, I can just feel like how connected everyone is in in getting through this, you know, even just from the rooftops and looking at people and people that you’ve never seen before, and you’re just like waving to them and they’re waving back and you’re like, yes, we made it another day. It
I think it is a I think it’s a that’s a huge question. I think a lot of us are asking just what is this going to look like after the dust settles? And I think everyone’s going to be relieved that, you know, once we get out of this and we start moving forward, but there are going to be things I think that we miss about this shared experience. And I wonder how much of this will we’ll carry on after the dependent mix settles down? Oh,
yeah, I’ve thought about that too, especially coming from a place where homeschooling is illegal. And I’m not sure that I want to be a homeschooler or not. But I certainly would like the option of that being available to me. If my children thought that that’s something that they might like to explore, right now, they’re really liking it. They’re liking the freedom and the flexibility of it. And the fact that we get to incorporate some things that we’ve always wanted to do, but maybe have not had time or that I can just throw my own creative spin on how to do a lesson. So we’re having a lot of fun with it as much fun as we can be. But overall, they they miss their friends. And I think that I hope that we make it’s kind of like, I want there to be good things that come out of this. At the same time. I know that my kids want life to go back exactly like it was where they can just see their friends and know what every day is going to be. I think that for for us, we’ve always worked from home and had this very flexible life. I think that as we look at to other places, especially in America, where people were always told no, you can’t do your job from home and all suddenly now you can, you know, in the same here in Spain and throughout Europe, suddenly people who were always told they couldn’t work from home have to work from home. And I hope that some of that will carry over and that we can be more flexible and how we approach work, how we approach education. I hope that some of the good that is doing by people stopping and the environment healing itself, I hope that that can can continue. I’m fearful that instead the travel industry will ramp it up even more to try to recoup all of their financial losses. I don’t know. But it could go either way. I hope it goes the way of being kind of Mother Nature and not destroying everything that has been healing during this time. And I just hope that you know, all of this reading reaching out and connecting everyone has been really good about doing during this time that we keep doing that, that we keep those connections open. And don’t forget about picking up the phone and you know, putting a face behind it instead of just texting or just forgetting about people, I hope that there’s a lot of good that can come with.
Zélie Pollon 45:20
That sounds like a perfect ending, unless there’s anything else Darcy that you would like to add for any other families who, again, kind of circling back to the beginning who are thinking about making a move after this, maybe maybe they want to work at home and they want to move abroad. Is there anything else that we didn’t ask or that you’d like people to know about your experience?
Darcy Tuscano 45:41
Only that you really do your research and try to connect with as many Facebook groups or bloggers that are out there doing that so that you really get some first person accounts of what life might be in the place that you’ve got your eye on. Always try to visit beforehand if you can, and if you can’t, it’s even more important to do as much research as possible. Yeah, that would be my
Zélie Pollon 46:08
Canadian and I come visit you guys.
Clint Bush 46:12
Yeah, we have. We have an after the pandemic, though after
Yeah. After the fen demmick. Hashtag stay home.
Darcy Tuscano 46:20
Exactly.
Zélie Pollon 46:22
Yeah. Thank you so much.
Darcy Tuscano 46:25
You’re welcome. Thanks. It was great to talk to you.
Zélie Pollon 46:34
Well, that’s the show. Thank you all so much for listening. If you like the show, please leave a review on Apple podcasts. It really helps others find us and let us know what you think.
Clint Bush 46:44
You can find links in episode notes at we will wander calm. Also, if you want to leave feedback or ask us a question. Go to our website. We will wander calm and click on ask the question. Looking forward to hearing from you. For we will wander
Zélie Pollon 46:57
I’m Clint Bush, and I’m Zélie Pollon. Remind You to get lost
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