Meandering Around the World

It is amazing to me how devil-may-care I was the first time I went off on a trip around the world. I temped in an office for a few months, made about $2,000, went to a tiny little hole in the wall bucket shop and bought a RTW ticket and got on a plane.

And. That. Was. It.

Now, I’m sorting out visas, packing up houses, booking vaccinations around baseball games, and filing leave of absence forms from formal schooling. What kills me however is the tiny little things that trip you up.

I had found out that one of the requirements for homeschooling is a standardized test in 3nd grade. Well, it just so happens my girls will be missing third grade. So I thought, let’s get ahead of the program and take the test before we leave rather than that being the first welcome back after our year away. So I found out which tests were acceptable and how they were administered. I found out some could be administered by the parent themselves so long as the parent had a college degree. Great, no problem, until I tried to actually register and discovered I had to PROVE I had a B.A. by sending the testing center a copy of my degree. Now I don’t know about you but I did not frame the dang thing and hang it in my bathroom. In fact the last time I saw said sheepskin was when it was pressed into my hand 30 odd years ago. So far, everyone has just pretty much believed me when I wrote it on my resume. But I think, no problem, I’ll just call my old college and have them send me a new one. Hah! Seems you have to jump thru a few hoops first, sending in “letters of inquiry” and filling out affidavits and “signed consent forms” ( and paying fees) and you still don’t get an actual copy, just a piece of paper on “official” stationary saying this person did in fact go to this bloody stupid school. I lost strength just on the first go round. Maybe I can gear up again in a few days. Or maybe we will find out what happens to kids who arrive in 4th grade without ever having taken the bloody stupid 3nd grade test.

Then this week I thought, well, we have a little time to kill, lets get the vaccinations over with. I knew some of them take three doses and over a month to finish. I also knew from checking with my kids’ pediatrician that she could give the rabies vaccination (and thus save $1,000s of dollars since it would be covered by insurance) but she couldn’t give the yellow fever ones. Those could only be given by licensed travel clinics. So I call her up to say, let’s get started on those rabies shots and her secretary says sure, they will give me a prescription to take to the pharmacy to get filled. Huh? They don’t actually have the vaccine, they will just administer it. So I call the pharmacy to say, I have this prescription for a vaccination against rabies, can you fill it?and actually, no, they cannot and neither can any other of the big pharmacies around town. Well, That’s a quandary. OK I thought, let me check with the Travel Clinic after all and that’s fine they have plenty of that vaccine and all the others. So great, but when I tell them the age of my kids they say, oh no, we are not allowed to give shots to anyone under 18. So my ped can give the shot to my kids but doesn’t have the actual stuff and the clinic has the actual stuff but can’t give it to my kids. Sigh….

This is what my days are filled with now…

Of course the first thing people ask me when I tell them we are taking our kids around the world is “are you going to teach them yourself?” with a tone somewhere between “are you insane” and “thank god that’s not my problem”. I usually give a pretty flip response that we are going to keep them up with their maths and they will be keeping daily journals but other than that learning will take care of itself. But in truth I’ve been researching the hell out of home schooling and vacillate between being worried about keeping them focused enough to maintain the bare minimal amount of work and worried that I cannot stop myself from piling more on! It is going to be hard to be the one responsible for the discipline day in and day out, especially when I might not be particularly interested in doing math that day anyway.

On the other hand, this is just a year, we are not yanking them out of school forever and they are still in relatively early grades and able to make up things pretty quick. So the other side of the coin is taming my desire to make everything “educational”. We went down that road in Italy where there was just a few too many museums and churches! Some museums they love – any science or natural history museum with buttons they can push and levers they can move – fantastic! They still rate the Leonardo De Vinci exhibit in Venice as one of the best places they went because they were able to try out all of his mechanical inventions. But they will never forget the torture of being pulled through the Musee d’Academia. I keep telling them there is no equivalent of a Louvres or Hermitages in Laos or Cambodia so stop worrying! But, conversely, I will also not be visiting as many temples or watts as I would on my own. Forts and “old places” will need to be negotiated.

I was very intimidated by one homeschooling mom I spoke to who had designed an intensely elaborate academic curriculum for english, history and science – complete with research projects and papers for the year they were away. I really can’t see doing that and getting any enjoyment at all out of our trip..

Some overarching topics such as world religion or colonialism will be discussed as we move and geography will be pointed out as we cross over mountains and drift down rivers. Writing will primarily be journals and maybe blogging (emails would be nice too but I have a feeling they will prefer sykpe). I am trying to find books for them to read set in the countries we visit. It was a huge relief to find out David Evan would be missing Biology the year we are away since that is the one thing he will be learning about in spades via nature reserves, jungle sanctuaries and above all by visiting the Galapagos Islands.

Sometimes I think – eh, the internet and youtube will make everything a snap. You can google any historical fact and there are so many math games or homework help sites out there I think we can probably just stumble along. Sometimes I think, wait, Miriam has to work on writing creative stories, Leontine will miss learning to research a big project and David Evan is ready for algebra! Aie! What are we doing!? In the end I just keep telling myself – how lucky we are to be doing this BEFORE David Evan hits high school. It’s really the last chance I would feel comfortable doing it.

it's approximately 5 months till the trip and I'm sad. I'm sad because I'm leaving my friends and going an entire year nonstop with my annoying little sisters. But I do get to see panda bears and go to places ... [Continue reading this entry]

I am going around the world with my family. I can't wait! First I am going to Borneo. Then I am going to China. In China we are going to see the biggest Buddha in the world and ... [Continue reading this entry]

The part I am most excited about is Borneo. There are lots of cool and interesting animals there! There is a monkey with a giant nose that looks like a droopy water balloon. They are called the proboscis ... [Continue reading this entry]

OK, we've dropped Russia. Our friends who were going to take the trans Siberian Express with us couldn't make the trip and we quickly figured out that skipping that section would give us four more weeks in South East ... [Continue reading this entry]

January first, a new year, only 7 months till we have to leave. Yikes! OK, maybe we should try something different, set out a list of all the things that need to be done in the order they need to ... [Continue reading this entry]

It was a lovely one. From this point on everything will be marked as the last .... to be had in New York City since when we return from our RTW trip we will be landing in our new ... [Continue reading this entry]

OK, let me now be a downer. I assumed there would be bumps in the road. I just thought we would be on the road when they happened. We have this plan, which we thought was pretty well ... [Continue reading this entry]

So where are we now? Definitely more informed as too the medical side – we have gotten all the ho hum vaccinations that are covered by health insurance and in January will get the ones that are only available ... [Continue reading this entry]