From Miami to full-time nomads, Sol and Camilo reveal how COVID catapulted them from brick-and-mortar business owners into van life, paving the way for international travel. We're talking about how they pivoted to passive income through real estate and travel hacking via Home Exchange. Unpack their entire journey from visiting family in Colombia to the massive impact of the Boundless Life community, conquering language fears, and why putting their kids back into traditional school in Spain is actually their latest worldschooling hack. Don't miss their take on haggis at the end.

Suzy:

Welcome to the Wander Worldschool Podcast. I'm Suzy, a travel-loving money nerd, mom of two, and our family lives between Spain and Colorado. On this show, we discuss the stories, logistics, and finances of traveling families and the many ways to learn along the way. Today, we get to talk to Sol Velasquez and Camilo Camposano.

Please tell me a little bit more about you and your family and where you're based out of.

Sol and Camilo:

Thanks for having us. I'm Sol and this is my husband, Camilo. We are based out of Miami, Florida. We are currently living in Spain. We have two kids: Luna, age 11, and Leo, age 10.

Suzy:

And we were actually near Estepona this last weekend. We finally—the sun has returned. Well, we're going to jump into family travels and all that fun stuff in a little bit, but I always like to go back and get to know you as a person and what travel was like growing up, or as a young adult, and how that love for travel originated.

Sol and Camilo:

I grew up in California and then moved to Minnesota when I was around nine. I spent the rest of my adolescence in Minnesota before going to Miami for college at 18. I honestly don't remember having that much travel as a child.

When I moved to Miami, it was kind of like moving to another culture from Minnesota, actually—believe it or not, it was vastly different. I was exposed to a lot of other cultures, obviously the Spanish language, which is part of my background. My dad is from Colombia, but I didn't grow up speaking Spanish. And then in my college years, I did a study abroad where I went to Europe and actually lived in Spain for three months. And that really made me fall in love with Europe and international travel.

It is something that I'm lucky to have a full-circle moment and be doing that now as an adult with my family.

Suzy:

Cool. And how about you, Camilo?

Sol and Camilo:

I'm originally from Colombia. I used to travel a lot when I was a little kid back in the eighties. We did a road trip all the way from Medellín to Ecuador. It took a couple of days, and that was one of the best memories that I have of being a kid. Then I moved to the United States around 2000. I was 23.

It was a shocking experience, but a good experience.

It was scary when I moved to the United States because I didn't speak any English. And I needed to work, so I didn't have enough time to be learning English. My English got better after we started dating. I remember the first couple of words that I said to you; that was so horrible.

But yes, it helped me a little bit to learn English and to be able to feel comfortable speaking with the accent and maybe saying words that are not the right words in the middle of a conversation.

You need to overcome your fear.

If you don't try, you will never learn. Now we're on the same process basically here in Spain. She speaks pretty good Spanish, but every time that she feels like a little bit of a scare, I can say, "Try, try," and then you will learn the word, and then I'm going to say it right the next time. To be fair, I thought I spoke Spanish really well before moving to Spain.

But Spain's Spanish is really different than Colombian Spanish.

Suzy:

I've followed some people that are like, "So this is what Spanish is and this is what Andaluz is." So there's a distinction in this part of Spain. I think that's what's interesting about Spanish is how different it can be. You said you didn't learn Spanish growing up?

Sol and Camilo:

Well, my dad is from Medellín, Colombia, and he went to Minnesota as a foreign exchange student. He went in high school. That's actually where he met my mom. Then he was lucky enough to have a family that sponsored him to come back for college.

He met my mom again in college. Then they moved to California where I was born, but then they separated when I was a young child. So I didn't see my dad all the time.

And so my principal language was English. When I was younger, he took me to Colombia a few times. And I have really fond memories of going there and speaking a lot of Spanish.

But in the '90s, it was obviously very unstable in Colombia. And I am white with freckles and red hair; I don't look Hispanic at all, and I speak Spanish with an accent and couldn't speak perfectly. So he just had some concerns about traveling there with me at that time. And so I didn't go back to Colombia for a long time—basically from like 1994 until 2010.

And then in 2010, I went back to Colombia and spent a month there and really immersed myself in regaining my Spanish and kind of connecting with those roots. I think for my dad, because he speaks with an accent, I think that has always been maybe a little bit of an insecurity of his.

He's proud of that background, but he has had some obstacles, especially in Minnesota.

And so I think he prioritized his English and he does speak very well. When I moved to Miami is when I really had to pick it up because everybody in Miami speaks Spanish. So it's a non-negotiable. You have to speak some Spanish to get by—at least be able to order yourself a colada.

And Camilo and his family only speak Spanish—his mom, his siblings—and being around my dad's side of the family that only speaks Spanish really helped bolster that for me.

Suzy:

And it's easy to look back and say, "I wish I had had it earlier," but there's so many reasons and twists and turns to our journey. A podcast mentioned this to me: that an accent is a sign of bravery—that I sought out a language, I learned it, and I'm trying to speak in it. Like you said, you've got to get over that fear. That's the hard part.

Let's talk about family travels.

I was looking at how you guys started right around when COVID led families to homeschool. How did travel play a role and what does that look like in the last few years for your family?

Sol and Camilo:

So COVID was really the catalyst that catapulted us into homeschool. Honestly, I had been interested in homeschooling prior to that. I'm an attorney by trade. I had a friend that was also an attorney and a mother of four, and she was homeschooling her kids. And I would see her on all of these adventures to France and national parks and international trips. And I just thought, "Wow, how is she managing to do that and be a professional?" It was something that I thought, "Well, I would love to do that, but I could never do that."

When COVID hit, we were both working and we were not only working, we were owners of our own companies. I was running a law firm with staff and a brick-and-mortar building, and Camilo is the owner of a restoration company and had 20-plus employees at his office space. Like so many others, COVID hit and everybody went home. We went remote and our kids came home, and at first, they were plugged in online. Luna was in kindergarten and Leo was in pre-K 3.

And it was actually really frustrating trying to work at the same time and be involved with them on the iPads.

And even things like P.E. were on the computer, which just seemed kind of ridiculous. It was new for everybody. Everyone was doing their absolute best.

And when it was time to return in the fall, Leo was supposed to go back to his physical school, but Luna was not allowed to go back to school.

So it didn't make a lot of sense. One kid allowed to go to school and the other one to stay home. Yeah. So...

Suzy:

Yeah.

Sol and Camilo:

I remember we reached out and we said, "We're going to keep Leo home, but could you maybe help us with some resources? We want the curriculum that he's going to be learning in pre-K 4." And they said they would give it to us, but they were going to charge us $500 for the resources, and then there was going to be no teacher review or supervision of the work that he was doing. And that didn't make a lot of sense to me. I thought, "Well, he's in pre-K 4. Anything that I do with him at home is still going to be a benefit because he doesn't necessarily need to be in school at this age." So we'll just keep Leo home.

And for a short stint, maybe no more than two weeks, we let Luna try the online virtual school. It just didn't make sense for me to be spending the time with Leo and for Luna to be doing something else that still kind of quasi-demanded my attention. I thought, "I can homeschool them both and we'll give this a go for first grade and pre-K 4."

We started that journey and, right out of the gate, we went on our first trip in September of that year and we got on a flight to Montana, which was a little bit crazy.

We knew that we didn't want to be taking on homeschool and staying home; we wanted to take advantage of this opportunity to travel with the kids. And the best place for us in COVID during that time was to get out in nature and be outside.

So we took that trip and we did a road trip from Montana to Colorado, going through the national parks. And we just had a phenomenal time. We rented a family van. We were staying in Airbnbs and hotels, but we were traveling in a family van, and I remember putting all the chairs down and having like a picnic in the trunk and doing homework. We took our materials with us and we would homeschool for a couple of hours during the day and then hike the rest of the day or have picnics and explore. And after that trip, we knew that's what we wanted to do. We just got the momentum going and booked the next one and the next one.

That paved the way for us for what's been now the last six years of homeschooling, roadschooling, and worldschooling.

Suzy:

That's so cool. How did international travel come into play there?

Sol and Camilo:

The international travel came later in 2022. We went to Colombia and lived in Colombia for four months. It was as a result of Camilo's dad passing.

And I think it was a different experience for Camilo going back there with his family and the kids at a different age where they were going to the park, meeting other kids, playing with them, involving themselves in other activities and doing some side trips from where we were based in Cali. We went to Medellín, we went to Salento, we went to Cartagena; we went to a lot of different areas, but we just had a great time abroad.

And from there, we found out about Boundless Life, which is an international worldschool hub community, and we signed up for Portugal. So that was our first trip to Europe in fall 2023.

That first trip, we spent the entire month in the United Kingdom going through Ireland and Scotland. The entire month, and then we went to Portugal and lived in Portugal for three months. And from there we went to Morocco, Italy, and then back—it was like six months out of the country on the first trip. We took full advantage, yeah.

Suzy:

And I'm wondering, because you did spend a bunch of time in Colombia and Colombia has changed a lot probably from when you left, right? And it is a hotspot for digital nomads and for traveling; it is very much on my "to-visit" list. What was it like to be back?

Sol and Camilo:

Yes. It was a really nice experience being able to go back, especially with the kids, to the neighborhood that I grew up in, going to the same park that I used to play soccer in with my friends when I was 15 or 16 years old.

When I left Colombia, it was a really bad time between the government and the revolutionary groups and all that. So we were having a lot of acts of violence everywhere. Going back to a safer Colombia was really enjoyable.

To know that you can go on a road trip and feel safe, that nobody's going to come and kidnap you or rob you. Of course, you need to be really careful. So I was always aware because I grew up there. It was more like for my kids and my wife, "Take the cell phone," you know? Like, try not to give the opportunity. Like we say in Colombia, "No des papaya."

Don't give the opportunity to get robbed. Because a lot of the crime committed in Colombia is stupid crime. Like you give the opportunity, somebody comes and grabs the phone. But I think that happened now that we've been traveling in a lot of different places. I had a few bad experiences in different countries and I never had a bad experience in Colombia.

It was good; a completely different country than the country that I left 25 years ago.

Suzy:

Yeah, I can only imagine how that must feel. Fill me in a little bit on what your approach to education has been. You talked about how that switched to online and then saying, "Hey, we can take this on the road." But how has that evolved over these last few years and what does it look like now?

Sol and Camilo:

So we started in 2020. Luna was in first grade, Leo was in pre-K 4. The ages were so easy. We were working on phonics, right? And addition and subtraction and very simple things. Honestly, it probably should have been our easiest homeschool year. I would say it was still challenging for me, though, because I was putting that pressure on myself—you know, a lot of kind of like self-doubt. "Am I doing this right? Are they getting enough of XYZ thing in their curriculum?"

And I think it's something that a lot of first-time parents go through with their homeschooling journey, because we all just want to do our best for our kids and know that they are succeeding.

But it was very rewarding—having that one-on-one time with them to invest in them and see them excel and flourish by that personal attention to their specific needs was so rewarding. And also getting to explore different things that were their interests and hobbies and having creative time with them and just allowing them to play and explore and having that time with them to observe—that was really priceless and special.

We used a lot of resources over the years. We used workbooks, we used a lot of online resources, even from Pinterest, like Teachers Pay Teachers online. We used IXL for testing. Education.com, Time4Learning—some online resources like that. And then we would do different worksheets or read-alouds together, silent reading, and then write a little summary of that, or draw a picture of what you read. A lot of different things that we just came up with because we liked it and things that we had an interest in, like history or outdoor exploration—picking up leaves and then researching what kind of leaves are these and sketching them into a journal.

Everything became a learning experience and that is what makes it fun and rewarding. You don't have to be bound by a certain curriculum or a certain timeframe. That's the joy and the liberty of being able to homeschool your kids.

As they got older—and they are now 11 and 10—so much has changed in them and their academics. It did become a little bit more challenging. And I would say that came up in the last year or so, especially with our eldest and getting into fifth grade. And it did kind of become like that show, Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?. In some things, we are not.

Suzy:

And you really start to question if you are.

Sol and Camilo:

So we needed to outsource some help for some things. Like for example, we used Outschool and she got some help with math through Outschool. And we used Outschool throughout the years for a couple of different things. Before we went to Portugal, our kids took Portuguese lessons through Outschool. We reinforced their Spanish through Outschool. Even my son, who was a little bit more shy and timid in his earlier years, we did like a public speaking class on Outschool and he would just do like a kind of show-and-tell thing where he'd bring a stuffed animal and talk about that. So that has been a great resource to us.

We do have aspirations that they'll graduate and hopefully go to university someday. So we try and keep up with those things as well. As they've gotten older, both their needs, their learning habits, and the materials have gotten a little bit tougher throughout the years.

I think one of the most frustrating parts of homeschooling at the beginning was being able to do the lesson in a couple of hours. Because you sit at the desk with them, teach them for two hours, and then think, "Is this enough time?" because they go to school for eight hours and we were doing the class in two hours. Are we doing a good job? Are we teaching them enough?

But I think it was good because it was just whatever they needed to learn at the moment. And if it took two hours, two hours and a half, or whatever, it was the quality time that we were giving them. It's that one-on-one time that you have where they can advance so much further than they would otherwise.

And then what it opened the door for was all this free time and creative time to be able to go to piano lessons or take art or just go outside and play and explore. Another cool experience that we had was we did the American Revolution. Starting from Florida, stopping in every single state and the most important parts in the country. And we were watching this show, Liberty's Kids. They were in love with that.

We did the revolutionary tour. I think our kids will never forget dumping the tea into the sea and Plymouth Rock. Yeah. And two years ago we did a trip in the van through middle America. And if I'm being honest, I didn't think it was going to be that exhilarating going through the plains. We learned about the Oregon Trail and the pioneers and the movement. I even broke out the Oregon Trail game for those of you that know it, you know? And "Poppy has dysentery," "Poppy died," you know? I had so much fun playing that game. Yeah.

Suzy:

Such a classic. We all remember it.

Sol and Camilo:

We had a lot of great trips with that—doing the freedom trails and learning about slavery and westward expansion, Native Americans, and lots of things that we got to experience by living it and having to travel back in time and do that. But I would say in the last year, it's become apparent that their needs are a little bit different. Our capabilities are a little bit different.

So it was in 2023 that we did Boundless. And at that time, Boundless was kind of the happy medium for us to say, "We want to continue traveling. We want to travel internationally. We want to spend a long period of time there. How are we going to meet people? What are we going to do if one of us gets sick?" And Boundless allowed us to do long-term, slow travel while having community and something curated for us so that if any emergencies did arise, we would be covered. Our kids would have friends.

We had an amazing experience with Boundless. The kids made lifelong friends that they see across the globe, which is incredible. It is rare to be able to have friends that you can say, "Hey, I'll see you next year in Greece," or "I'll see you in Japan," and meet up with them in different parts of the world. And us, too. I think that was the big surprise for us as adults.

And as parents, we were thinking we didn't need that necessarily. We were content to give it to our kids. And this was something that they needed and we'd have fun traveling, but really it was for the benefit of them. And we walked away with an amazing experience meeting other families that are like-minded, which was really needed for us after a couple of years of homeschooling and roadschooling—finding other families that were living similar lives.

I think the help was realizing that there are more families like us. They want to travel and teach their kids living experiences—teaching them that there are different religions and colors and foods and living experiences. So that was really good, having that and meeting people with the same lifestyle. Yeah. And it opened minds to a lot of other things, too. It's great to piggyback ideas off of other people, share resources, share travel tips, share information about how you're able to live this life.

It gave us more than I think we expected when we signed up. So we're really grateful for that experience through Boundless. And we continued doing that after Portugal. We went to Greece and then we came to Spain and next year we will go to Japan. So it's something that we have continued doing and it's something our kids still look forward to. And the program keeps evolving, which is great because our kids keep evolving and getting older, right?

Suzy:

And you bring up a really good point that community is important for our kids, but also for the adults as well. Of course, there's so much variety in the worldschooling community. And that's why I love it, because I feel like I could talk to thousands of families and it would all be a little different because everyone's doing it in their own unique way. But at the same time, there is someone who's maybe been in a situation that you're curious about and can offer some insight. So it's very inspiring to have the opportunity to talk to other families. And then, what does language look like in your family?

Sol and Camilo:

The kids grew up hearing and speaking Spanish in the home. Some of their first words were "tete," which is like "tetero," but they live in a bilingual home because Spanish is not my first language. Our relationship is also bilingual. We predominantly speak English, but he'll say things to me in Spanish. In Miami, the kids had a lot of exposure to Spanish because our family also is Spanish-speaking. Camilo's family only speaks Spanish—his mom, his siblings.

Now in Spain, they're having a hard time here in Spain because they use a lot of different words or "vosotros." And the words are different; we have different words for different things.

And when we go to a restaurant we say, "Me regalas agua?" which literally translates to "Can you gift me water?" and the Spanish people will say like, "No, I can't gift you that, you need to buy it," or you need to ask for it or whatever. Or "Regalas la cuenta?" Yeah. So, you know, funny things like that—little nuances that are different in every Spanish-speaking country.

So it is kind of like learning a new language here for us, even though we're familiar and we feel comfortable for that reason that we are able to communicate. So it gives us an opportunity to be able to immerse ourselves in the culture. Our kids play on Spanish football teams.

So they're only with Spanish-speaking kids and Spanish coaches. Our homeschool, roadschool, worldschool journey has changed a lot in the last eight months because they are now in a traditional school in Spain. So that's very different for us than the lifestyle that we've been leading for the last six years prior. I think being able to travel with the kids helped them to increase the desire of learning a new language. Because when we went to live in Portugal, I remember doing Duolingo with them—a little bit of Portuguese. We spent a few months there and then we went back last year. And you can see them trying to order food in Portuguese.

They don't feel ashamed to try to speak, to try to come up with different words and things like that. Same thing in Greece. So we're planning to go to Japan next year and Leo, for example, has been doing Duolingo for maybe six or seven months. And it's so impressive just to see him doing Duolingo because...

Suzy:

Yeah.

Sol and Camilo:

Obviously, we don't understand anything that is written and he can read it and say—you know, pronounce the words—and we are like, "Wow." We're in shock. Yeah. And that was his own initiative. We didn't ask him to learn Japanese. We didn't even mention it. He just has the desire to do it. And yeah, I think it is because they have this respect for other cultures and wanting to have an appreciation for it—wanting to be able to communicate in somebody else's language, even if it is just a few words: "Hello," "Excuse me," "Thank you."

Suzy:

Well, you've motivated me to get the Duolingo back out so we can hop back onto Japanese because we're going to the Boundless Hub there. Getting that head start and knowing that you can start to recognize some things—like your son is already—that's super helpful. So you mentioned that you had a brick-and-mortar business. You were running a law firm, correct? And everything shifted with COVID. What has the financial and logistical piece been for you since then that allowed the RVing and allowed this opportunity to be in Spain now? What does that look like?

Sol and Camilo:

Yes. We kept working through it with our businesses, even though we were not going to our brick-and-mortar offices. As time went on, I didn't want to go back. I wanted to keep staying with my kids and homeschooling them. And I kind of kept that under wraps.

On trips, I'd take one blazer and my laptop, and we'd be in a national park and I would put on my AirPods and suit up and make sure I didn't put my Zoom profile as a cat and log into court hearings and things like that and just kept it going. We were fortunate that our businesses did well and we were able to fund our travels and our trips while working steadily and making that income for a time.

In 2023, a lot of things changed in the state of Florida with the type of work that we did. I did first- and third-party property disputes for homeowners insurance, and Camilo worked in restoration, and a lot of things changed. And COVID was ending. So it was kind of this moment where the type of work that we were doing wasn't really going to be feasible in the same way, doing it from afar. And court was back in session. We knew that there's just no going back to the way that our life was prior to that.

So we had invested in real estate and we had started buying some properties and renting them. We stopped spending money on things that we didn't need when we were traveling. For us, it was less expensive to live out of the country than living in Miami. I remember we were paying like almost $1,900 a month for health insurance. And right here in Spain, we pay $1,800 for the entire year.

So we started cutting a lot of expenses and, instead of wasting money, we bought a few properties, flipped the properties, and put them in our BNB short-term rental. So that helped us a lot to be able to live. We're still working; we just don't kill ourselves working. We work more for the experience than the materials.

So like if we have money to go to Italy for the weekend, we try to look for the cheapest tickets and get a place to stay. We don't need to stay in a five-star hotel, but we want to do the experiences in the places that we go.

Suzy:

And your background was restoration. Was that restoring houses and fixing houses up? That was an easy transition to fixing up some of your own properties and being able to manage those?

Sol and Camilo:

Correct. Yeah. Now we have a number of properties and we are living off of that income. So we manage those properties—some of them ourselves, some of them through a property management company that helps us out with that, and we pay them a percentage.

But we have that passive income. It's because we've switched from paying a thousand dollars a month for a car to paying a thousand dollars a month for a property that is going to give us a little bit of income. So we get rid of unnecessary expenses and put the money to work in something where we can have more advantage.

Once we prioritized traveling and just not being there, you realize you don't need the things. We got rid of a boat. We got rid of our cars. We got rid of even smaller things that maybe seem minuscule, like our cell phone bills and our cable TV subscription and different things like that. Our kids understand that we're not buying things, we're buying experiences, and that has changed a lot for us too, from the time they were born until now. I think they'd rather go on a trip and for us to be able to spend the money to go and see...

We just saw some friends from Boundless actually in Italy a week ago and we were able to go skiing with them and have that experience. And you are traveling, you're not in your own space, right? And traveling with a suitcase and you've got the same ten sets of outfits and nobody knows, nobody cares. And so it really does just minimize your life.

It's just that mentality of: really, what are your goals? What are you willing to divert your finances into and your energy? What are you prioritizing?

And once you're clear on that, it's easy to get rid of all of the excess stuff. And aside from that, on the financial things, there's a lot of little things that we do to help maximize our travels for less. We have credit cards with miles. I think we haven't bought a single airplane ticket in years. Yeah. In years. We're not flying first class. You know, we're flying economy. We look for destinations on Skyscanner that are cheap to fly to on the off-season. That's also a great thing about homeschool—not having to limit yourself to the months of June, July, and August to travel.

So we love to do walking tours and things like that when we travel to a new country; we love to learn about the culture. So we'll do free walking tours where it's just tip-based and you can tip them. We also have been utilizing Home Exchange a lot within the last year. That is just an online platform where you swap houses with other people.

So if you go and you stay at somebody's house while they're not occupying it. It's just point-based. So you have to put a property onto the Home Exchange platform to offer it up. When people stay at your home, you accumulate points and then you can use those points at other locations. And you can either do like a simultaneous exchange—like kind of like the movie The Holiday with Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet...

Suzy:

Yeah.

Sol and Camilo:

...or you can utilize your points and book at a different time, a non-simultaneous exchange. And that's actually been really great because a lot of places in Europe are cutting back on Airbnbs because there's a lot of housing crisis happening all throughout Europe. And you meet a lot of other great families, you know, that are willing to host you and people that are responsible and clean and just wanting to do the same thing that you do. And so that's been a great way for us to save money too, because I think outside of traveling from the United States to Europe, for which the plane tickets can be very expensive—we've been able to avoid that with points—but aside from that, it is the accommodations that are the most expensive thing.

And so using platforms like Home Exchange has been great in saving us those costs.

Suzy:

That's awesome. I love Home Exchange. We're doing a reciprocal swap for the first time to Naples in April. It's such a great program. I'll add: you clear it with the landlord; you don't have to own the property. This is our rental in Spain that we then put up there. But there's more possibilities than you think with the Home Exchange platform. Let's also talk about some of the challenges and then we'll finish on the wins.

Sol and Camilo:

I would say at the beginning it was definitely people's comments and criticisms, mostly sadly from family and friends. Yeah, sometimes the people closest to you are your harshest critics.

And obviously, when you love them, you care what they think and how they feel, and you know that it's coming from a place where they love you, too, and they want what's best for you. But I think when you're starting out and you're navigating that for the first time, and it can be kind of overwhelming and scary, it can be hard when you don't have the full support of everyone around you.

People asking us, "Well, when are they going to go back to real school?" and "If they had a bad day, they should go back to real school." And "Aren't you concerned about their socialization?"

When we were traveling in the van, we would stay at Campgrounds of America, which was great. We would utilize Harvest Hosts also, which was phenomenal. And we had some great experiences through that. Everywhere we go, we find other kids and they would just automatically play with those kids because there was no inhibition for that.

And so I think it just creates this outgoingness that people think you need to have in a school setting or can only get in a school setting—that kind of socialization and interaction. And it's just not true.

Suzy:

I like to take advice from people that have done it, and tricks and lessons learned are very different than "That sounds scary, I'm worried." What are the family wins that you're experiencing now or along your journey?

Sol and Camilo:

For me, one of the most positive things about the traveling experience with the kids is the way that they see the world now. They see the rest of the people. They have friends everywhere—different cultures, different religions, different colors, different languages, different foods. They don't judge. They know that, like... my daughter has friends from Morocco right now, a girl that goes with the hijab to school, and it's amazing that they can be playing without a problem, playing football in the park with kids that don't speak the same language. Or being able to eat escargots in France and knowing that people actually eat different types of foods, not just hamburgers and hot dogs and pizza.

Suzy:

My youngest, who loves French fries, has learned that there are French fries all around the world. You do see the connections that we have while also every place is so different.

Sol and Camilo:

I'll just add: right now our kids are in a traditional school setting and that's been a huge change for us as a family. And initially, when we told them we were moving to Spain and that they would have to go to a school, there was a lot of resistance from them and, honestly, from us. It wasn't our first choice. Our first choice was we wanted to continue homeschooling and worldschooling, but because we are here on a visa and our goal is to get citizenship, we knew that they were going to have to go to a school here and that was going to have to change.

And it was a hard transition for everybody. The win of that is seeing our kids be able to adapt to a new situation and thrive. And I think obviously one of the famous misconceptions about homeschool is, you know, "What's going to happen when they have to get up at a certain time?" "What's going to happen when they have to report to a job or they have to sit still in a chair or they can't get up?" "The rules," yeah, things like that. They have thrived in this setting, not necessarily because they're able to now conform to some of those things, but I think because they have learned to be confident, adaptable, open-minded, curious, and just willing to try new things. And they have a great international community where they are.

The kids are still having this communal experience being in a new country, learning a new culture, being away from their home, trying new things. It has been, I think, more challenging for us now that they're gone and our lives have changed—our routine has changed, right? And we don't have as much liberty to come and go as we would like, but we have also realized that this is still a worldschool experience.

They're not in an American school. The school system is not the same here. Yeah, they might go to school Monday through Friday and have a set amount of hours and that kind of traditionalness to it, but they're still having new experiences in a place that is foreign to them. They are still putting themselves out there to make new friends in a different culture with new foods and adapting to the language and all of the things. And so we realized this is just a different type of worldschool experience for all of us and that it is creating a lot of positives in them and their appreciation and value for different places.

Suzy:

Not all schools are the same. It's what I've learned through our various schooling journeys as well: if you're looking for a certain type of school or a certain schedule or something, there could be something out there that works well for you and your family that gives them those opportunities that sometimes are hard for us to provide. So it's finding that balance that works well for the whole family. Let's wrap up with a lightning round. What is your best tip for learning a new language?

Sol and Camilo:

Immersion. You have to be immersed in it and you have to speak. Yeah, take the risk. Yeah, and don't get upset when people try to correct you.

Suzy:

Very true.

Sol and Camilo:

Somebody who wants to come and tell you, "No, don't pronounce it like this, try to do it like this."

Suzy:

A learning opportunity. Very true. What is the best or worst food that you've ever tried?

Sol and Camilo:

Haggis was interesting in Scotland. Not our favorite. And it feels bad because they feel proud of the food and I didn't like it. I'm sorry.

Suzy:

No, it's always good to try something. Doesn't mean we always need to like it. What's one item you could not travel without?

Sol and Camilo:

Camilo's camera. Camilo is a photographer and he takes beautiful photos. It's the first thing that I pack. And I don't care how big the bag is.

Suzy:

This is great. I'd love to make sure people can connect with you if they have any questions about your journey or want to follow along. Where can people find you?

Sol and Camilo:

We have two Instagram accounts. We have Viajar para Educar, which means "Travel to Educate." And that really just came out of our kids learning something every single time we went somewhere and wanting to document that. And then we also have Have Less, Live More, which is our family motto that we started a few years back. That one is more of our day-to-day lives, everything that we're up to, including our travels and our adventures and Camilo's beautiful photos, too.

Suzy:

I'll make sure to link all that in the show notes, but thank you so much. It's been great to chat.

Sol and Camilo:

It was so fun to relive our stories. Thank you for having us.

Suzy:

Absolutely.