Bridging Cultures: Our Family's Spanish Adventure

Welcome to our intercultural classroom blog! I'm excited to share our family's journey as we embark on a 7-month adventure in Spain, reconnecting with our children's Spanish roots after 12 years of building our life in New Zealand.

This space will document how I weave my interculturalist lens into our family's education during this experience. As an extension of my work at Intercultural Connections, this journey represents a personal application of the principles I advocate professionally. The theories and frameworks I use with organisations and teams are now being tested and lived through our family's daily experiences.

What does bridging look like for us? It means finding grounding in the discomfort of change and the unknown. It involves developing genuine curiosity about differences and learning to ask thoughtful questions. For us adults, it requires patience with the learning process itself—something I often emphasise in my intercultural training sessions and am again experiencing firsthand in a deeply personal context.

I'm already discovering that the bridging skills I teach professionally require consistent practice and humility when applied to one's own family life. Moving outside our comfort zones can be challenging, even when the destination is as beautiful as Spain. The concepts I explore at Intercultural Connections about adaptation, cultural understanding, and embracing ambiguity are coming alive in new ways as we navigate this transition.

Stepping away from formal education and our everyday routines takes real effort—this is definitely not just a long holiday! It's a deliberate educational choice that aligns with the core values of showing up with an intercultural mindset, that underpin my professional work.

In this blog, we'll share both the difficulties and the rewarding moments that make it all worthwhile. We'll post photos, tell stories, and hopefully, other family members will occasionally contribute their unique perspectives too. These real-world examples will complement the theoretical frameworks I discuss in my professional capacity, creating a bridge between theory and lived experience.

I invite you to join us on this journey as we navigate the joys and challenges of immersing ourselves in our Spanish heritage while carrying our Aotearoa roots with us. Through our stories, perhaps you'll find inspiration for your own cultural bridging, wherever you may be—and gain insight into how intercultural principles can be applied not just in organisational settings but in family life as well.