e) other FAQs
What do the children think of the trip?
The six-year-old wants to stay at home with his bike, but he’s not sure he could be separated from us; I think he’ll end up coming!! Of the rest who are old enough to have an opinion, all are unanimous in their desire to GO. They are the ones who say, “No, let’s not get takeaways coz we can save that money for the trip”. They are the ones who suggested getting travel gear for Christmas instead of “presents”. They have been reading about different places and making a book about their life in NZ to share with people we meet. In a word, they are ENTHUSIASTIC.
What do you know of the local languages and cultures you’ll be encountering?
In 2004 our older boys (then aged 7 and 8 ) expressed an interest in learning Mandarin. We purchased some tapes and all of the children ended up working away at that – it looks like it may have been good preparation, even though we didn’t know at that stage that we would be going to China!
We also read widely and so the children have encountered lots of different ideas in our read-aloud sessions. We’re planning on focussing next year’s read-alouds on the countries we anticipate visiting.
But all that said, Rob and I turned up in Poland in 1990 knowing only the word for “ice-cream” in Polish. By day two we could say “I don’t understand” to anyone we met when we went exploring! We survived. You learn a lot by just being there, making an effort to meet people and keeping your eyes open.
How do you cook for so many people?
One hurdle we needed to overcome was working out how to cook beans (our money-saving staple, which we eat all the time at home) on the road without a crockpot. None of us wants to be standing over a boiling pot on the stove for five hours while everyone else is climbing the Great Wall. But at the same time, we do not want to limit ourselves to convenience foods. So we devised a system for bringing *anything and everything* to the boil in a pot, then putting the pot in a padded woollen bag I knit and leaving it all day – it’s ready to eat by dinner time. And the bag can be used to carry your ingredients home from the market first!
We also like to bake our own bread, but after years of kneading by hand, now use a mixer to do the kneading for us – so we set out to find an acceptable no-knead bread we could make on the run. It turned out to be more than acceptable – it’s excellent! If only we could bake it in our bag.
What kind of camera do you use?
Rob needs to answer this one!
What about your website?
We’re 21st century travellers and you don’t leave home without a website. I knew nothing about website design, but after submitting myself to the discipline of almost-daily writing with our blogs, I decided it would be a good way to record our trip and fantasised that it couldn’t be that hard to learn. After an initial almost-depressing-totally-unsuccessful week I got a quote from a professional! That was enough to make me return to designing it myself!!! I made up a mock one with my scrapbooking papers and then learnt how to transition from paper to screen…when pages disappeared and graphics wouldn’t sit where we wanted them, I decided a blog would be sufficient…….so there was a dream of a fancy-schmancy website with funky backgrounds and snazzy wee buttons, but time and ease are of the essence and This Will Do.
What will the children do for schooling?
Apart from writing for the blog…..maybe you could take a peek at the *live and learn* pages.
Do you ever think you’re crazy?
We know we are!
Do you ever have second thoughts about this?
On days that the kids are right royal rotters…..but they’re gonna play up on occasion wherever they are, so why not let it be somewhere exciting?
Did you always plan on having lots of kids?
Rachael read a book as a child (The Family Nobody Wanted) that made her want a big family – but they were all going to be adopted!
Rob was never having more than three!
Now we can’t decide which ones we’d get rid of (well, not permanently anyway!)
rayres
Thanks for your comment and the lovely offer! Maybe we’ll see you in China!
I’m reading through your blog now, and I just had to stop and ask what your no-knead bread recipe is!?
Gina, sorry for the tardiness in getting back to you!
The recipe is here at the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/08/dining/081mrex.html?ex=1320642000&en=a55ab31eb6c5a47d&ei=5090
If it disappears, just google Jim Lahey’s No-Knead bread and you’ll come up with 7,392 blogs that mention it!
My own picture is here:
actually I can’t find my blog post with a picture of the bread. I was sure I’d done one. Oh well, I’ll have to do one soon!