Traveling with your Family

Well, it has been almost a year since my last post and I figured that I better revive this blog before I forget all of the useful things that I learned during this process. At least I will be able to refer to it in another seven years when, hopefully, I'll be going on a sabbatical abroad again.
As I mentioned in my last post, it is important to plan ahead if you are going to be bringing your family along with you on an international sabbatical. There were two major considerations for us: (1) my son's school and (2) my wife's business.
My wife is a scientific writer who runs her own business from home. Because of the flexibility of her work, she was able to consider traveling anywhere, as long as she had high-speed internet access. She joked that if she could work from central Pa, then she could work from anywhere. However, we were concerned about the tax implications of her being self-employed in another country. We consulted with her accountant to make sure that it wouldn't matter where she worked or where her clients were located (some are also in Europe) -- we would still pay US taxes and not Belgian taxes (ugh). We also confirmed that she would be eligible for the Foriegn Earned Income Exclusion (sweet). We concluded that a year in Belgium (or anywhere else for that matter) would not be a problem for her work, and might even be an asset.
I knew that a year in another country was going to be a big change for my son and I wanted to make sure that his new school would be a good match for him. In Pennsylvania, he attends a small Quaker school so I knew that he would like something similar. Before my trip, my wife and I researched all of the private schools in and around Brussels. We had determined that without a strong background in French or Dutch, it would be too difficult for him to attend a school based in one of those languages. We found several English-based or bilingual schools and narrowed it down based on location and the type of educational approach.
I wanted to visit a couple of schools because I knew what I was looking for and I wanted to be sure that the schools matched what was presented on their website and promotional materials. In retrospect, it was actually unnecessary for me to make the visits. We knew that the International Montessori School was a good match for my son and I confirmed that within minutes of my visit. After a half year I can confirm that my first impressions were correct and this has been the perfect school for my son. So although it would have been possible to make the choice of schools without a visit, I would not recommend it. My visit gave us much more confidence that we were making the right choice.