Same major, same career: How these American twin brothers ended up working and living in Spain together

Max Fouts, walking between the crowded lockers of his high school with the weight of exam results in his backpack, prefers to go fairly unnoticed by his peers. It’s easier this way, or rather, it’s second nature for him to feel, having grown up in the US, moving across states so often that he never gained lifelong friends. 

It sounds like a sob story, but Max has never felt such melancholy. After all, his family genetics had given him the gift of a built-in friend: a twin. Sam Fouts is older than Max by a few minutes, but it takes one glance at the two of them to know you’re looking at two peas in a pod. They sound the same, they look the same, and oftentimes, they think the same. They can finish each other’s sentences and laugh at the same jokes. 

It’s not uncommon to see a pair of twins actively try to differentiate themselves, as the label often boxes them into mere shadows of one another, but this is hardly the case for Max and Sam. In fact, for the most part, they couldn’t care less about the association of identity. “We have a nice place to live, we have access to food, we make money,” says Max, who is now living in Spain. “None of our problems are anything big; it’s pretty worthless.” 

Keyword: for the most part. 

Even before living in Spain, the twins had travelled a lot while growing up, moving across different US states, including North Carolina, Wisconsin, Texas, and Iowa. Source: Max Fouts

At the end of the day, Max and Sam are still two separate people. Comparisons can burn, and this was especially clear in high school. They were neck-and-neck in grades, both landing straight A’s. Yet, Sam could get a 99 out of 100 for math, while Max could get a 97 or 98, and that one- or two-mark difference was enough to label Max as the “dumb” twin and Sam as the “smart” one. It got even worse as Sam was accepted into the honours programme for participating in the school band, while Max, with little affinity for instruments, was not. 

“You played into it, too,” Sam tells Max pointedly, to which he agreed. It was easier to just go with the flow, to accept the label as the jokester, the funnier twin, or the less serious twin, when none of it is true. “In general, people like to put others in boxes. They would call upon someone, and just think, ‘I know who you are as a person, I can define you in one word.’ I feel like this is a general human experience,” Sam adds. 

It’s certainly amplified when you are born with a literal human benchmark for comparison. Though both are used to it, there’s still one thing Max would like to clarify: he had the higher GPA. 

Today, Max and Sam living in Spain together and teaching English in different schools in Spain. Source: Sam Fouts

When twins walk the same road

Somehow, the comparisons drove them closer, rather than apart. A sense of rivalry exists between the twins because they’re well aware of how similar they are, how easy they are to compare — but it’s the healthy kind. Not the “I want to pull your teeth out” kind. The competitiveness between them did not create a wedge in their relationship; instead, it steered them to pursue similar interests out of a pure need to one-up each other. 

“Whenever we meet people, I would rather be seen as the ‘same’ because I don’t want them thinking I’m less funny or more boring than Sam,” Max says. “That’s where the competitiveness comes from. I always have to be on my game because I don’t want Sam to be the better twin and vice versa.” 

Sam and Max started their college careers at the University of Iowa together. They’d been living in Iowa with their parents and older sister throughout middle and high school before relocating to Nebraska. Out of spite, Sam had entered with a double major in international relations and Spanish, because he figured that the former would be different to Max’s pursuit. Out of boredom, he switched out. 

Storytelling is a component that both the twins found themselves wanting to incorporate into their degrees. Source: Sam Fouts

“We always played with stuffed animals and toys, and we always had different storylines,” Sam says. “We created stories with the toys and continued those throughout the day, and even year-long stories would happen. Mine would be friends with Max’s group, and we would create conflicts for them to resolve.” 

The wonder of storytelling never truly escaped the two. Max would eventually transfer to Drake University to double major in digital media production and Spanish, while Sam, despite his reluctance to study something fairly similar, would remain at the University of Iowa to pursue communication studies and Spanish. It was a mere coincidence that they both had taken a liking to learning languages, and Spanish had just clicked.  

To improve their fluency, Max and Sam would watch Spanish TV shows like “Money Heist” together, and today, they text almost exclusively in Spanish. “Then there’s also the aspect of, I didn’t want [Sam] to be able to speak Spanish, and me not being able to,” Max says — to which Sam readily agreed. 

Max and Sam would watch cartoons together in Spanish to improve their fluency. Source: Max Fouts

From studying abroad separately to living in Spain together 

In their junior year, Sam and Max got the opportunity to study abroad through their respective universities. Sam, for a whole year in Sevilla, Spain. Max, for a semester in Monterrey, Mexico. This was the first time they’d ever spent a long period of time apart. Up until that point, although they were studying in different universities, they were both still in Iowa, visiting each other during breaks. 

Despite this, neither of them really missed the other much. True to their easy-going personalities, thoughts of “Oh, this would’ve been fun to do with him!” would swing around for no more than a second before they’d move on, neither being the type to get sentimental. They knew they were going to see each other again.  

“When I studied broad, and Max wasn’t there, I realised that yes, I can be my own person and people will like me — I can make my own decisions, I can live my own life. But some things aren’t as fun,” Sam says.  

Now that both Sam and Max are living abroad together, they’ve had to strike a balance between spending time together and apart. “When we went to different universities, I liked that when I meet people or when I’m hanging out with friends, no one’s comparing me. It’s pretty freeing,” Max adds. 

Max and Sam have learned to embrace their individual strengths, as well as their differences, through their time living in Spain. Source: Sam Fouts

Today, Max and Sam are working in Almería, Spain, teaching English as a foreign language in different schools through the Council on International Educational Exchange. They’re in a slightly different position than other pairs of twins, who’ve had to put aside the constant comparison from external voices, to embrace the fact that they’ll always have each other; always be tied by blood.  

Instead, Max and Sam have come to cherish each other for their differences as much as their similarities. They run separately, they work separately, and they even purchase their groceries and cook at their own times — the result of a few heated arguments in the kitchen. Sam covets Max’s ability to always remain level-headed in times of stress, while Max is eager to become as organised when it comes to “adulting duties” as Sam. 

“When something’s gone, like mom and dad are not here, that’s just that,” Sam says. “But when I go back and see them with Max and our older sister, then I realise, ‘Oh yes, I was missing this.”