The Social Experiment of a Lifetime

Our far-flung adventures with Work-Away may have tapered off in the last 10 months, but I think we are overdue for an update on the great social experiment. The experiment I’m referring to is the one in which we decided to move to a medieval, semi-abandoned and nearly inaccessible village, population ca. 23, in a spectacularly peaceful corner of the Spanish Pyrenees.

I should say right now that not everyone thought this was our most reasonable decision of all time. First we deprived our children of a high protein diet rich in animal products by raising them vegetarian. And then we brought them here, to the deserted village of Bar, a half an hour from Andorra and 30 meters from nowhere, where they had no playmates and couldn’t speak either of the two official languages.

And yet, for some reason, this is what we did. Having identified an especially charming region that straddles multiple national borders, and comprises a combination of three languages (none of them being German or English, the two we were already familiar with), we found an agreeable house to rent and enrolled our kids in a nearby Montessori-ish school.

Despite a series of cross-cultural hiccups, automotive stumbling blocks and bureaucratic embarrassments, our family continues to adjust remarkably well, all things considered. Our highest priority and concern was finding a good school for the kids, and seeing that they could integrate smoothly and learn to socialize enjoyably. Our 8-year daughter was especially interested in settling some place and making friends whom she wouldn’t have to say good-bye to after a month. And mom was primarily determined to find a school that wasn’t run like a military academy or a forced labor camp, or whose core curriculum was not chiefly aimed at training young children for a life of subservience in a career as obsolete as the rotary dial telephone.

So when we headed over to school the other day to pick up our kids, and saw our daughter running around the playground without a stitch of clothing, and chattering away with her classmates in Catalan, the local vernacular, we were convinced beyond a doubt that she had been successfully socialized. I should also point out, that she was not the only child frolicking about the school yard start naked. Winter has ended here, the warm weather is back, and it seems to be cause for celebration.

Indeed, proper festivities are something absolutely not to be overlooked in this school. Almost daily, the school is sending out messages about special events and activities, all requiring varying levels of parent participation. Luckily, my wife shows no lack of enthusiasm when it comes time to participate, although her Catalan speaking skills are no better than my own, i.e. severely remedial. It did not take long at all for our daughter to reach the skill level at which we are already turning to her for help in translating words and phrases to or from Catalan. But at least mom and I are able to contribute our own skills to the occasional English-language class or event.

In the meantime, one of the dads from school has taken us under his wing and begun offering us weekly Catalan classes at no charge. Progress is slow but steady. Our teacher doesn’t speak any English — which is not uncommon in this area — so he has to explain things to us in Spanish when we can’t follow the Catalan. Suffice to say that the two-hour sessions leave our brains buzzing with vitality. And I must admit that we do feel a certain amount of envy over our children’s neuro-plasticity, which enables their tender brains to acquire new languages with formidable ease.

Actually, my son, who just turned five, doesn’t show nearly as much interest in learning Catalan or Spanish as our daughter. In the classroom, he’s been more than content just to sit by himself and build with blocks and legos, or to simply contemplate the multiplication tables in profound silence. But just in the last week, we have seen him realizing for himself that he is gradually picking up the language, and that once he decides to do it, it will be as easy as learning to build a snowman.

Beyond the linguistic challenges, my wife and I are still enjoying the region’s other cultural offerings immensely. Sharing her own expertise, she has been conducting sourdough and fermentation workshops at various venues. And we’ve both grown passionate about wildcrafting plants and herbs from the local forests and meadows. I hike regularly in the mountains, where — depending on the season — I collect wild oregano, lavender, savory, thyme, hyssop, edible mushrooms, and firewood.

Our entire family, as well as our close friends, have grown to crave the sweet refreshing taste of homemade elderberry flower syrup in the summertime, courtesy of my wife. And she has gotten to the point where she can’t walk past a field of dandelions or a patch of stinging nettle without watering at the mouth. Meanwhile, I’ve been honing my culinary abilities in the realm of seafood preparation, with some very satisfying results, if I may say so. In fact, my skills have risen to the level where my children now take to addressing me as the “fish whisperer.”

So in spite of everything, our kids might not be so deprived of protein after all. And what they lack in red meat and chicken nuggets, we can more than compensate for with generous servings of seared tuna, exotic cheese, and rash-inducing salad medleys. We only hope they don’t start plotting against us by conspiring surreptitiously in languages their parents don’t understand.

FURTHER READING: For more stories about our quest for quality education, check out this fantastic series of articles.

• Part I: A year without a principal
• Part II: Out of the classroom and into the wild
• Part III: Paradise Found