Jessica Sueiro’s first experience living abroad with her family four years ago did not go well.

The toilet in their small Paris apartment barely worked. She and her husband, Will, slept on the couch the entire summer. Their daughter got so sick with mono that she had to be hospitalized.

The Sueiro family walk inside an ice grotto in Charmonix, France. Of taking a leap to go abroad for a while, Jessica Sueiro says it's normal to have a difficult transition like they did, but worth the immersion. Photos courtesy of Jessica Sueiro

The Sueiro family takes a break in St. Raphael, France. The family has spent the last five months driving around France as part of a several years' adventure. The couple wanted to spend more time with their children and educate them to understand different ways of living.

And yet, “with everything that happened, it was such an amazing experience,” said Sueiro, 45. “We watched our children grow, we grew closer as a family. Everything, even though it was awful in many ways, was so fantastic. We came back and said, ‘OK, we’re going to give ourselves 12 months to figure out how we can make this happen.’

The Jay native and her family left for Costa Rica the next year, which, again, turned out to be both awful and amazing. From there, it was on to Ecuador and then back to France, where the family has cruised around in an RV for the past five months.

Earlier this year, the couple started WorldTowning, a service to help other travelers navigate long-term stays away from home.

It addresses logistics such as insurance, visas, homeschooling, learning a new currency and adapting to work on the road.

“We’re really honest with our clients: Don’t feel like you’ve failed if it’s really awful in the first couple months – that’s totally normal and totally typical,” Sueiro said in a phone interview from the south of France last week. “When we started traveling, no one had told us this.

“We talk with them about having a strong ‘why.’ ‘Why are they doing this?’ ” she said. “For us, our big ‘why’ is our kids. We wanted to spend more time with them as a family and we want to educate them through the world so they can understand different cultures and different ways of living … When they grow up, they can decide which way works for them and how they want to live.”

Sueiro grew up on an apple farm and graduated from Jay High School in 1990. After leaving for college in New York, she worked in Los Angeles, New York and Boston in graphic design. Will, a “recovering corporate accountant,” was working for a bank in Boston when they decided they wanted to start seeing the world with their kids, Avalon, 13, and Largo, 10.

“We always had the travel bug in us,” Will said. “We were always trying to get an overseas assignment.”

He worked remotely out of his company’s Paris office that first summer. After they sold 90 percent of their belongings and decided to head for Costa Rica in October 2014, he lined up other remote work.

Jessica Sueiro said that each time they’ve moved, it’s to a place they’ve never visited before. They’ve figured if it’s too terrible, they’ll move again.

Before getting their RV, which they nicknamed Lemonade, they booked lodging through Airbnb, negotiating a cheaper, multimonth rate in advance.

Sueiro said they’ve had a few big, amazing adventures, including weeks in the Galapagos Islands and hiking Machu Picchu in Peru, but there’s also been a lot of fun in the small moments.

The family recently spent a week volunteering on an Italian horse farm, working four- to five-hour days in exchange for meals through a group called Workaway.

“It was the most amazing experience with an awesome family,” Sueiro said. “There was a volunteer from Switzerland, a volunteer from Spain. Every night we would cook this big Italian dinner together and we’d all talk, like 13 to 19 of us, at the dinner table. Those moments, that was my best experience in Europe so far, watching our kids relate to people in other cultures.”

They planned to spend Christmas in Barcelona and, over the next three years, visit every RV-accessible country in Europe, all driving Lemonade.

Kathryn Skelton can be contacted at:

kskelton@sunjournal.com

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