Who are you?
I am Adele de Caso,and I live with my husband and three children in the Murcia region of Spain. I am an author, success coach and network marketing business owner.
Where, when and why did you move abroad?
We first moved to Spain in 2006 just for a 9 month period. We wanted our children to be bilingual. Jaime is half Spanish but he was never taught the language when he was younger.We didn’t want our children to miss out on this opportunity so we made sure we came over to Spain while they were still young enough to be able to pick up the language.
The girls went to a Spanish village school and became fluent very quickly. I was so glad we had done it this way, although I did wonder what we had done at the time when we had to leave them on their first day with no one who could speak a word of English!
We have moved between Spain and England since then and have now settled in Spain for a longer period due to the two girls now being in high school. We have been in the Murcia region since February 2014.
We were fortunate that we had a holiday home that we could live in so we rented out our house in the UK and moved over.
We have a network marketing business in the UK and we can work from anywhere due to its nature, so we are very lucky.
I have also written two books which came about through the network marketing business, I became very passionate about success and personal development. I read lots of books, attended lots of trainings and workshops, and transformed my life really from what it used to be like. I was very shy and lacked in confidence. The business really helped me so I put all my ideas and things that I had learned into a book. It’s called “Shy People Can Be Successful Too!” I wrote it when we first arrived in Spain. I found being here enabled me to be more creative. I have since written another one called “52 Tips For A Fantastic Year”.
Are there many other expats in your area?
There are quite a few expats living in our area, but it is relatively quiet as where we are there are a lot of holiday homes. When we go out we tend to favour the places where we know there will be more Spanish people as we too would love to be able to speak it better.
We have made friends with some of the parents from the schools our children attend. Everyone is really friendly and they go out of their way to help if we need anything.
What do you like about life where you are?
What I love about where we live is that we can be walking along the promenade within 5 minutes, but we can also be in the hustle and bustle of the city within 20 minutes.
I also love the fact that we can enjoy sitting with a coffee and working at the same time. And of course, the sun is always shining!
What do you dislike about your expat life?
I wouldn’t say there was anything I disliked about my expat life, apart from the fact that I miss home sometimes. But we always take a long holiday in England in the summer and we go back for a couple of weeks at Christmas time.
What is the biggest cultural difference you have experienced between your new country and life back home?
The biggest cultural difference between Spain and England is the fact that you can go out with your children at any time of day and not feel uncomfortable. Spanish life is very much family orientated and although we find it important to spend quality time as a couple, we love going out as a family. In the UK, we didn’t really go out much in the evenings, but here we are out all the time especially at the weekends.
I love the food here. We were quite used to it before we moved here really as Jaime likes to cook Spanish dishes. And although I don’t eat a lot of fish, I do like to go out for tapas. There is such a good choice of restaurants here, whatever kind of food you feel like.
Another thing that I love is buying our fruit and vegetables from the local markets, there is a market in a different town every day of the week.
What advice would you give to anyone following in your footsteps?
I think my advice to anyone wanting to move abroad would be to try renting in an area first of all, to make sure that it suits you and your lifestyle. We like where we live, but sometimes, especially now that the girls are growing up and wanting to go out more, we do find ourselves driving back and forwards to town a lot and a house in the town would probably have been easier.
What are your plans for the future?
Our plans for the future are to continue enjoying being able to build our businesses from here. I am now starting to work on putting together an online course for shy people. I believe that anyone can be successful if they put their mind to it regardless of their personality.
You can find out about Adele's books and read her blog on her website. She also has a Facebook page and a Twitter account.