Our Sabbatical Adventure – Day 1-New Years 2018

New Years Day for many is a time to start fresh and set resolutions to improve themselves over the coming year. This year New Years Day has extra significance to us as it marks the first official day of a six month sabbatical from my job as a Principal in the Comox Valley, BC.

It is often difficult in today’s society to find a work/life balance. With a wife, three young kids and a job that is demanding of my time, this is a constant juggling act.

Sometimes work monopolizes too much time and it is time to bank some family time. Sometimes we need to anticipate this and explicitly plan to spend the quality time with family. With this in mind we have been putting a portion of my salary aside in a deferral program for the last four years, in order to take 6 months off in 2018. This has provided me with an opportunity to create some time dedicated solely to my family. While it is pretty exciting to head off on this adventure, it was also difficult to leave school half-way through the year. We had worked hard over the last 4 1/2 years to facilitate the building of a new school community at Cumberland Community School, and are just starting to realize the fruits of our labor. It was an amazing community of students, parents and staff. Although I feel guilty leaving, I am grateful to have had the opportunity to work with them and look forward to watching from the outside as the great work continues.

When we started the deferral program we had just returned from a month’s vacation in Europe with our one year old son, Nicholas. We had experienced a wonderful holiday visiting friends and family in London, Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Berlin before spending some time in southern France centered in Villefranche Sur Mer and Provence. This was the second time my wife, Katy, and I had vacationed in Europe. The first time was before we were married and included time in London, Paris, Nice, the Cinque Terra and Provence. Before that my exposure to Europe had consisted of chaperoning educational field trips for high school students in France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Greece, Turkey and Italy. Katy on the other hand had extensive experience travelling and living in Europe. With British Immigrants as parents, she had returned to the UK almost yearly as a child to visit relatives, and visited her Grandfather in Spain on a regular basis. The family even organized exchanges from Canada to live in the UK on more than one occasion.  She worked as an au pair in Italy after high school and in university Katy spent time singing opera in the Czech Republic.  After graduation she spent a half dozen years pursuing her singing in London.

We decided to return to Europe for our sabbatical adventure. Our oldest son, Nick, entered kindergarten this fall and is enrolled in a French-Immersion program. We hope that amongst all the amazing learning experiences he and his younger brother Matthew will have while travelling, Nick will learn some more French while in France and be ahead of the game when he enters grade 1 next fall. It will also give Katy the opportunity to keep up her French, and I will have another chance to pick some up. Katy and I are both busy on Duolingo trying to improve or Spanish and French before we go. We will be starting our European adventure in February in Seville and slowly working our way north as the weather improves. The final stop will be Paris before coming home to Comox in late June.

Before we leave, I am looking forward to some full on Dad time, filled with many of the everyday things I don’t normally get to do like dropping the boys off at school and daycare, volunteering in Nick’s classroom, and hanging out with our 3 month old, Olivia. I also hope to get in as much skiing as possible at Mount Washington!

I plan to document our trip using this blog. It will both be a record of our travels and a place to reflect on everyday life and the many adventures we are sure to have. I look forward to hearing from others and hope to inspire you to tackle your own adventures.