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…

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 from the Travel Health Clinic – Yellow Fever, Japanese Encephalitis and Typhoid; still on the fence about rabies.

We are also farther along on the home schooling side – we have talked to the head of the math dept at the school the kids go to now and to the one at the school the kids will go to when we come back and found out that the kids are basically a year ahead of the new school’s curriculum. I had expected this since they are switching from a private school to a public one. This means we have to decide whether we treat our year of travel as a review year, just making sure they don’t lose what they have already learnt or, on the other hand keep pushing them so they will be still be ahead and go into an accelerated math class when we come back. It doesn’t help that one school uses one curriculum (Prentice Hall) and the other a completely different one (Everyday Math). But all the traveling families I’ve spoken to recommend Singapore math since it is so portable, easy to teach and apparently, pretty fun.
I’m actually leaning towards doing a review year with Singapore math, adding online math games, some enrichment and just make sure they really, really have a secure base without stressing over teaching algebra, etc. What a gift to have them already ahead so they can relax and enjoy the trip. If they whiz though standard 3nd grade & 7th grade math then we can go ahead to the next but no pressure.