It was during this time that Abby truly fell in love with working with children and became quite passionate about community development.
After graduating from college in 2013, Abby spent some time working in the journalism field at both a newspaper and a magazine. However, she really missed working with children and feeling like she was making a real difference in her community.
Around the same time, Josh felt like he was also missing purpose and connection in his work. He spent some time studying renewable energy and business management, and he worked in a variety of fields, including horticulture, carpentry and telecommunications.
In the end, both Abby and Josh just felt like they headed down the wrong professional paths. They both also greatly missed that sense of adventure that comes with traveling to new places and getting out of one’s comfort zone.
After a lot of talking and thinking, Abby realized she could connect her interests in writing, working with children and traveling by teaching English in a foreign country. In 2014, Abby and Josh had their first serious conversation about moving to Vietnam to live and teach English for a year. On February 25, 2015, Abby and Josh boarded a plane at JFK. It’s final destination: Hue, Vietnam.
Our first year in Vietnam quickly turned into two, and then two into three. In the end, we spent nearly four years living and teaching English in Vietnam. In fact, Josh never imagined himself as an English teacher. Surprisingly, he began teaching after just three months of living in Vietnam, when a stranger approached him at a coffee shop and asked if he could help teach English lessons at a local language center. Josh, too, quickly fell in love with working with children.
