-In which country and city are you living now?
Castellón de la Plana, Spain

-Are you living alone or with your family?
I live with my wife April, and we are expecting our first little one in October 06.

-How long have you been living in Spain?
We've lived in Spain for four years now -- three years in Madrid, and one year here in Castellón.

-What is your age?
26

-When did you come up with the idea of living in another country and what factors helped your decision?
When April and I were dating at university, she told me she was going to Amsterdam for a semester on a study-abroad program. I couldn't stand the thought of being without her, so I signed up to go along. Since we were going together, we decided to get married. Makes sense, right? Anyway, we had small work-study jobs with the university while we were in Amsterdam, so we would live as cheaply as we could during the week and travel around Europe on the weekends. We saw parts of Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, and Italy. I remember Rome being my favorite city.

When we returned to university the following year, we found ourselves talking a lot about our experiences in Europe. Europe had made an impact on us. Maybe it was because we had our first taste of independence there. Maybe it was because we love diversity, and Europe seemed so mixed up compared to our homogenous rural community in Iowa. Maybe it was because the general culture in Europe fit our personalities best. Or maybe God was whispering something in our ears. Regardless, we knew we wanted to go back.

The biggest hurdle, however, was still to come: the practicalities of finding a job in Europe. Read on...

-Was it hard to get a visa or a working permit?
I have a Spanish non-working residence card. This means I can live in Spain and spend money in Spain, but I have to get paid from somewhere else. Because the international NGO I work for has an office in the U.S., they pay me from there.

I don't know how to say this nicely, but getting legal permission to live in Spain is like fitting a camel through the eye of a needle. Thankfully, when we arrived in Spain we had enough financial resources to hire someone to help us with our residence work. We also had flexible working hours, so we could spend an afternoon at the police station taking care of paperwork if we needed to.

I don't know how immigrants who have very little resources and move to Spain for a better life ever find enough time and money to get legalized. Honestly, if I were them, I probably wouldn't even bother, which is what most people do. I can name off many people who live in Spain without legal permission. It's doable. I wouldn't recommend it, though. I've found that eventually those without papers begin the residency process simply for the peace of mind. It's an identity thing. It's hard to feel like you belong somewhere if you're technically not even supposed to be there.

-How do you make your living in Spain? Do you have any type of income generated?
When we were living in the U.S. and initially began looking for jobs, we looked online. I had studied to be a secondary school English teacher, and there seem to be lots of jobs available worldwide for English teachers, so we started there. We spent about six months researching job opportunities. In the end, however, we joined a non-profit organization called Christian Associates, and I went to work as a musician with an international church in Madrid called Mountainview.

The reason we took this job (besides the fact that they actually wanted us) was because we knew moving to a new country would be a challenge, and we wanted to be a part of a supportive community. At the request of our potential colleagues in Madrid, we made a two-week visit to spend some time with them and get to know them. We really hit it off. That was the deciding factor. I learned two important lessons from that experience. First, if you have the opportunity, make it a high priority to visit the place you are moving to, even if it is another country, before you move there. Find out if you're compatible with the place and the people. Secondly, keep in mind that where you live matters less than whom you work with, even if you live in an exotic place.

Between the time when we actually took the job in Madrid to when we arrived there to live, another eight months had passed. It wasn't until four months later that we received our residency permits (the process took nine months in total).

This year we moved to Castellón, a small city on the Spanish Mediterranean. April has been working on a Masters in Peace and Development Studies at the University of Jaime I. I've been working in web design. Next year we will move back to Madrid where April will be volunteering with a group there that does intercultural mediation, and I will be working as a community developer with a new church in the city center called Oasis Madrid.

-Do you speak Spanish and do you think it's important to speak the local language?
Many people are surprised to find that most people in Madrid do not speak English, or if they do, they are not comfortable speaking it. In comparison to Amsterdam, for example, where almost everyone speaks English fluently because Dutch is spoken very little internationally, Madrid operates in Spanish because Spanish is an international language.

It is true that English is the business language of Europe, and as a result, I think we'll see more English in Madrid over time (which is why many young English speakers in the city teach English). But, for the time being, plan on interacting with most people on the street in Spanish.

I have found, though, that it is much easier than you would think (I think any expat would agree with me on this one) NOT to speak the local language. Even though you are living in a country where almost everyone around you speaks a foreign language, it is always easier to seek out one or two friends who speak your native language and spend most of your time with them.

I have no doubt that if you were to move to Madrid, you would learn street Spanish (what you need to know to get by in restaurants, cafes, stores, etc.), but in order to have meaningful interaction with Spanish speakers, it will take a lot of time and work.

If you want to learn the local language, I think the best thing you can do (if you are still in school) is to enroll in a study-abroad program, or if you're really adventurous, enroll directly in a foreign school and transfer your credits afterwards. Being a student is not like having a job. If you are a student, you have the opportunity to live as much of your life as you are able in the foreign language of the country where you are living. When you are working, on the other hand, it will be difficult to find a job in the foreign language unless you speak it. A restaurant owner won't hire you as a waiter or waitress if you can't take orders in the local language, for example. For this reason, many expats initially find jobs in their native language (an example being all the English teachers that work internationally). All the jobs I've had in Spain so far have been in English.

The good news is that if you are willing to put in the time and effort, eventually you will have a good enough grasp of the language to venture off into a local language job. When that happens, you will feel an incredible sense of satisfaction because you worked hard for it. But, it may take years in the making.

-Do you miss home and family sometimes?
We do miss family, almost daily. If you're close to your family, I think that is something you will probably deal with on a regular basis, no matter no long you live in another place. I guess the reason we continue to live in Spain, even though we miss our families, is because even if we lived in the U.S., we probably wouldn't live in our hometowns. Iowa, the U.S. state April and I grew up in, is incredibly rural. There are not many job opportunities in the kinds of things we are doing in our careers.

Each person finds his or her ways of communicating with family, but for us what works best is we call our families on Sunday evenings. They plan on it, and we plan on it. Otherwise, it's so easy to lose track of each other. With our baby on the way, we're trying to convince our families to begin using web cams. Our families don't use the Internet nearly as much as we do, though, so we'll see how that goes.

-Do you have other plans for the future?
We will be moving back to Madrid this spring. We will be there for at least two more years. We haven't planned much beyond that because we know having kids will change our perspective greatly, and we really have no idea what our priorities will be at that point.

-What about housing, have you bought, or are you renting a home? How much do you pay for it?
We've only rented apartments in Spain. We rented a one-bedroom apartment near Plaza de España in Madrid for 800 euro a month. I still think that was a bit expensive, but we had a great location and good metro connections. Here in Castellón we pay 500 euro a month. Many people our age (20-30) in Spain, however, are not married and choose to live with friends in a bigger flat. They each have a room and share the bathroom(s), kitchen, etc. If you go that route, I'm guessing you could find something in Madrid for 300-500 euro. In Castellón students pay anything from 100 euro to 250 euro a month.

-What is the cost of living in Spain?
That is a difficult question. I don't really like to buy things, so I'm not entirely sure. In general, I find the prices similar to the U.S., if not a little lower. Also, Southern Europe tends to be less expensive than Northern Europe (Paris and London, for example, are incredibly expensive).

-What do you think about the Spanish people?
My experience has been a good one. When I lived in Amsterdam I found that many of the people there knew a lot about the U.S. and had traveled there (many of them had seen more of the U.S. than I had). Along with their experience, however, they had very strong opinions about what the U.S. was and wasn't and what that meant about me as a person.

In contrast, I find most Spaniards don't know much about the U.S. (which has its down sides), but they're accepting of and curious about my country. It's sort of like starting from square one. I very rarely feel any kind of "anti-American sentiment" that is directed at me as a person. If anything, people just ask questions, which are at times political.

I think it makes a difference, however, that I'm a white, middle-class American. I have female African-American and African friends who have had bad experiences with men calling them names or mistaking them for prostitutes. The porn industry in Spain is an entirely different conversation, but I think again it comes back to ignorance. Unfortunately, many of the prostitutes that stand on the street corners in Madrid are immigrants. Often they have dark skin. The assumption, then, is that every dark-skinned woman is potentially a prostitute. As immigration increases, the people in Spain are going to have to find a way to deal with it. Ignorance is no longer acceptable or responsible.

-What are the positive and negative aspects of living in Spain?
Pros for Living in Spain:
- family culture
- outdoor culture (they're in the parks and plazas instead of at home watching TV)
- value for good food and meal times
- spontaneous
- siesta, late nights
- lifestyle is not busy (work to live, not live to work)
- never far from the beach
- excellent public transportation (metro system in Madrid is my favorite in Europe)
- mixing of histories (Romans, Moors, Christians, etc.)
- one of the least expensive countries in W. Europe
- cheap health insurance
- many different cultures in one country (Catalunya, Pa’s Vasco, Galicia, Andalucia, etc.)

Cons for Living in Spain:
- for me, the 7-hour time zone difference to my family
- the exchange rate (I get paid in U.S. dollars)
- bureaucracy
- lack of customer service (doesn't bother me too much, but lots of expats mention it)
- many expats say Spaniards are not welcoming or friendly at first (before you get to know them)
- medical system is behind the rest of Europe
- most people live in apartments, so if you want a free-standing house, you better have the cash
- if your child is born in Spain, he or she does not have "right to soil."
- summers in Madrid are unbearably hot

-Do you have any tips for our readers about living in Spain?
Spain is actually contrary to my personality. Before moving to Spain, I wasn't very spontaneous. I was a very serious person. We had the choice of moving back to Holland again, but we chose to move to Madrid partly because we knew it would be a healthy challenge for us to grow as people.

Living in another country is not easy. It's very difficult. But if you're open to smoothing some of the rough edges of your personality in the process and embrace the culture, you will be a better person for it.

Also, it's okay if you don't want to live in another country. Many people come to Spain and find out in a matter of months that they actually want to go back home. This happens all the time. I think that's okay. Living the expat lifestyle is not for everyone. In fact, I think you need to be a bit crazy to want to do it...if that tells you something about me.

-Do you have any favorite Web sites or blogs about Spain?
By all means, feel free to stop by my websites and have a look around.

kellycrull.com - expat life in spain:
This is a collection of my essays and photos about living, traveling and working in Spain.

spain dad, a baby blog:
Here you'll find my daily thoughts on being an expat dad in Spain

other spain magazine:
I have Spanish recipes online here.

Here are other websites I frequent...

Blogs:
Notes from Spain
Sal DeTraglia's Virtual Tapas Bar
Mad About Madrid
Kelly's Deep (Or Not So Deep) Thoughts

Madrid City Guides:
Softguide Madrid
In Madrid (English newspaper)
Jeremy's MultiMadrid (expat forums)

Maps:
LaNetro

Spanish:
Wordreference.com (excellent online dictionary)

Churches:
Oasis Madrid
Mountainview International Church
Christian Associates