Away Together

We spent the past week in Rotorua, a North Island city famous for adventure sports and stinky geothermal sites. Perhaps no other city in New Zealand, or anywhere, has come up with more ways to thrill tourists (and make them part with money) with “adventure” broadly defined. You can luge, river raft, sky swing, sky jump, bungee jump, jet boat, kayak, off-road race and mountain bike. Plus, there’s the ZORB, a giant rubber ball that bounces down a hill with a person sliding and rattling around inside it. We went on the luge and let the kids try the ZORB (just once, because of its exZORBitant prices):

The Rotorua Tourism Board will probably be upset to hear me say these activities generally seem overrated and overpriced. Our best times around Rotorua involved spending free time for free. (more…)

All packed up and ready to go. Goodbye, home!

“Why are you crying, Mom?” Kyle asked this morning as I pulled away from my next-door neighbor’s hug. “Are you sad or happy?”

I thought about what had unleashed the tears: the final walk through our bedroom, where the hardwood floors echoed from emptiness because nearly everything is in storage. Then the last good-byes. It hit me that I will miss our home and neighborhood terribly. It also hit me that everything we had planned during the past six months had come down to this moment, and all the work and difficult decisions had made us ready to go — and we really, finally were ready to go — so I was crying tears of relief. And also, I was indeed happy that at this crossroads in our lives, when a great deal is transitioning personally and professionally, we had chosen to go in a direction that Morgan and I believe will keep changing us for the better even after the trip is over.

“Both,” I finally answered.

“Well,” Kyle said, “if you’re sad and happy, that makes you sappy.”

I am sappy, so much so that the family began mocking my sentimentality last week. “This is the last time we’re going to Crogan’s,” I said the other night as we approached a favorite pub. “Awww,” said Colly, her voice dripping with pity, “and this is the last time we’re touching this crosswalk button!”

“The last time” became a running joke until Morgan got the last word on our final morning at home. He marched to the bathroom after coffee and Cheerios and proclaimed, “This is the last dump!” (more…)

People keep asking (somewhat skeptically), “What about school during your trip — are you homeschooling?” I keep answering (somewhat defensively), “No; our kids will do the same work as they would do in school, with real teachers assigned to help them, so they won’t fall behind.” I expound on the educational benefits of the trip and explain that we’re taking the year off largely for the kids’ sake. But inwardly I’m less confident, and all summer I have worried about “back to school” — about the transition to schooling our kids on the road.

My "roads scholars" pictured earlier this summer near Tahoe.

I know it’s kind of crazy, because we’ll encounter extraordinary educational opportunities at every turn. Plus, most wise people recognize that learning takes place all the time and is more apt to blossom outside the confines of a classroom. So why the worry and resistance to the idea of homeschooling? (more…)

In 2008, my most adventurous plan for 2009 involved swapping our living room and dining room. I put it on my to-do list as the Big New Year’s Project and thought a lot about window treatments.

Then, life took a turn. Or you could say my husband Morgan and I both switched off the autopilot and had one of those “blink” moments where we knew what we needed to do, and it felt strangely right. Instead of hiring a decorator and moving furniture around, we researched countries on five continents, purchased One World airline tickets to sixteen destinations, developed an independent study plan for our daughter and son, and found tenants to rent our house for at least 10 months.

We're packing up and leaving our home sweet home in Piedmont.

Now it’s summer — the kids just got out of school — and my stomach feels knotted when I consider the two months left until our departure, which is August 15 (give or take a day). The details to debate and arrangements to make leave me short tempered and quick to cry, like an amped-up wedding planner in her third trimester of pregnancy.

Between now and August, we will clean out closets, pack away personal belongings and repair miscellaneous broken things. We’ll organize finances and copy important documents, and plan and scan the kids’ lessons for their 3rd and 6th grade curriculum. We’ll go to the dentist, get shorter-than-usual haircuts and fill prescriptions for things like Cipro. We will synch and streamline our laptops and cameras, untangle and condense all the cords that go with them, and smartly pack our suitcases with multipurpose, easy-care outfits that we will find time to buy.

We’ll try not to drink too much when we throw a goodbye party, and try not to cry when we give our dog to my in-laws. And in my free time, I will practice Spanish, learn new software and read novels set in countries we’re visiting.

(If I say all this like I believe it, perhaps it will increase the chance of these things actually getting done.)

People keep asking where we’re going, which is easy to answer (check out our map) — and in some ways not as relevant as it may seem. Going anywhere is the point. We will try to follow advice we read somewhere that travel, to be meaningful, should be less about where you go and more about what you do and how you interact with the people and environment wherever you find yourselves. The more interesting question — what we’re still sorting out — may be, how did we get to this point? As David Elliot Cohen described in his book One Year Off, it’s one thing to dream about chucking it all and going around the world; it’s quite another thing to actually decide to do it and get ready — and not chicken out before you go. (more…)