We knew we were going away for a one year sabbatical. We just didn’t know where we were going.

After years of being managing partner for his radiology practice, Houman wanted to retrain in a new subspecialty of medicine. It would be a reset for his career and he would come back with new medical skills. I hoped it would also be a reset for our family life: getting away from work days that were too long, school weeks that were too busy, weekends that were just as busy with three kids in ski racing. Sometimes it seemed as though we were surviving instead of thriving. We needed to slow down and enjoy just being for a while.

The plan was for Houman to do a fellowship in maternal fetal medicine. That meant we could go to any number of places: Sydney, Barcelona, London, Paris, or one of the big centers in the US. We both agreed that going to the US might be a good choice professionally, but it terms of exposing our family to a new culture, it lacked the richness we desired. Thanksgiving weekend, 2015, Houman called us from a conference in Montreal with the news: it was going to be Paris. I told the girls. We were sitting outside our neighbourhood ice cream shop enjoying a cone when I told them, “ We are going to do the sabbatical year in Paris!”. Sophia had a huge smile. Mavis was jumping up and down, cheering loudly. Abrubtly, she stopped, “Wait. Do they speak French there?”.

It was 3 years away. Step one? Start taking French lessons.