For years, author Christy Shriner Richards had dreamed of traveling. Not the two-week family vacation type of travel, however. She wanted to immerse herself in a foreign culture, spend enough time to get the real deal and the feel of the local people and their beliefs. Richards' idea was to throw herself all in and go to another country for a year. In Taking a Year Off, she shares her story of a dream come true. Covering everything from preliminary research to the actual experience abroad, Richards narrates how she; her husband, Gordon; and her youngest teenage daughter, Nicole, spent a year in Sitges, Spain, a beautiful town on the Mediterranean Sea as well as traveling through several countries in Europe. From the good, the bad, the ugly, the adventures, the misadventures, and the lessons learned, Taking a Year Off details what day-to-day life was like for them in a foreign country. It shares a host of tips for others seeking a similar travel adventure. Richards tells how that year was one of the greatest, most powerful learning experiences of her life and how she arrived back in the United States a different person than the one who'd left a year earlier.