Nice to Meet You!

Hello: My name is Amie, and it is my hope that my experiences will not only entertain in some fashion, but will also serve to compel those who may feel stuck in some way to realize that it is possible to live life and be happy. My daughter and I will be moving to Madrid, Spain in a few weeks, and it has been a stressful and exciting process, but one that I hope to share with you.

A Little Family Background: I have three children, two that are now legal adults, and one that is always by my side.  My relationship with my daughter, age 12, is synonymous to that of Rory and Lorelai Gilmore of “The Gilmore Girls.” Honestly, that is usually the best similarity I can come up with when it comes to describing our mother/daughter bond.

As many before me have done, I got pregnant at 19, married to my son’s father at 20, got pregnant with his brother three years later, had our baby girl six years after that, had a whole lot happen in between, and got divorced in 2010 after 13 years of marriage.  Whew! Say that ten times! Without going into too much detail in my intro blog, let me just say that it was my choice, and it was something that needed to occur. My ex and I are completely opposite people, with opposite views on virtually everything under the sun. With that being said, our working relationship regarding the legalities and custody arrangement of the children has always been stellar for the most part, and I consider myself very fortunate.

Work and School: I went to college later in life and graduated in 2013 with my Bachelor’s degree in journalism. Thinking that since I free-lanced for a couple of news publications and a foodie magazine in Austin, TX before graduation, plus reporting for the criminal courts in Middle Tenn., I just “knew” I was going to get flooded with job offers. Flash forward to today, and well, here I am, and I am still not reporting for a newspaper on my way to winning a Pulitzer!

After graduating, I worked for the State of Tennessee for almost a year, then took a job working from home as a customer service agent, and within that year and a half got a promotion as an escalations supervisor. I decided to apply to law school as this is something I had been working towards for a while now after having taken the LSAT a couple of years before. I got accepted, and went for a year, but the tuition got the best of me, and student loans weren’t an option this time around. During one of my summer breaks, I took a job at a law office that did eviction law, and that was hands down one of the most awful jobs that I have ever had. I thought that having a job at any law office would be great experience, but I was sadly mistaken. That wasn’t the type of law I wanted to practice at all. I wanted to be a criminal defense attorney, and after leaving that job, I started thinking long and hard about how I wanted to spend the rest of my life.

Embracing My Free-Spirited Nature: My first instinct as I was looking for another place of employment was to start packing and put our belongings in storage when our lease was up so that we can move to Europe. However, after doing more research I soon found out that you need a visa and can’t just move to Europe without a plan.

The light bulbs began flashing as a more realistic approach to traveling on a budget began to take form in my thought process. How do I obtain an ESL teaching certificate? There are several ways, and I opted to try the online course. I will go into this more later, and explain the pros and cons of both, but so far it has been positive and I was even offered a teaching position in Vietnam but I turned it down. My heart and spirit have been yearning to visit to Europe, but it is much harder to get a job in Europe if you aren’t an EU citizen.

I was, however, able to find out how to apply to become a teaching assistant in Spain. My next few posts will delve into the application process and interview as well as all of the excitement and stress of this process of moving to Madrid.

Stay tuned for our crazy, non-traditional lifestyle!