Ever since we (Jen and Ryan) spent 6 months in Argentina back in 2010, they wanted to find a way to do something similar again while the kids are still young. Sometime in 2022, we put a stake in the ground and set a goal to get the kids into school somewhere in Europe for the 2024-2025 school year. Neither of us were sure how we could really make that happen – Jen owned and operating a local company and Ryan was the CEO of a VC backed startup, not to mention all of the challenges of planning and executing on such an adventure.
We went on a family vacation that was part research trip in Summer 2023 to London and Portugal with the kids and were amazed at how well the kids did and how much we all enjoyed being in new cultures. After that, planning began in earnest. We explored a few alternatives locations (Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Barcelona were all recommended), but ultimately after a quick trip to explore without the kids, we settled on London in ~October 2023.
Then the real work began…
- Visas – Learning about and applying for the UK Technology Global Talent Visa was an enormous undertaking. Ryan wrote essays, assembled evidence and had no less than 5 people write him recommendations (thank you all of you!). It still took working with an immigration attorney and a couple of months of not being confident it would work before we finally got the good news right before Christmas. We were sort of in limbo up until this point, because if that Visa didn’t get approved, we would not have been able to go to the UK and would have needed to pick somewhere else. The good news is it’s a very flexible Visa that lasts for 5 years and has no real obligations or restrictions, so we are all set there.
- Schools… tbd
- Financial stuff and taxes… tbd
- Work stuff for Jen and Ryan…. tbd
- Moving stuff… tbd
- Renting our house… tbd
- Setting a timeline… tbd
- Logistics… tbd