Meandering Around the World

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 like Borneo and Singapore. I’m going to be home schooled by my mom and dad and thats going to be fun – not!! So I’m pretty against the idea of going around the world but it will have it’s fun moments. Here is a random fact: The 57 on Heinz ketchup bottles represents the number of varieties of pickles the company once had.

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 it is good luck to rub his nose. We are definitely going to see an opera because there they give you massages and feed you while you watch. I am going to see my cousins in Chengdu which is where the giant pandas live. We are going to be panda keepers for a day and feed them bamboo and apple slices. I have three cousins who live there- John, Sarah and Lilly. The reason they are there is because of their daddy’s job. He works for Chevron. I can’t wait to see my cousins and aunt and uncle because I haven’t seen them in a long time – two years!!! From Chengdu we are getting on a train to the top of the world. Tibet has the highest mountain in the world and we are going to go pretty high up!

I feel kind of sad about leaving New York but I know it will be fun going around the world and seeing so many new things. My friends are really sad that I am leaving but I told them about skype.

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 monkeys. They also have a Deer Mouse that looks like half deer and half mouse. It is very small. The best part about Borneo is there are no museums, just nature! !!!! We might even go swimming with giant turtles and see orangoutangs. It is sad leaving my friends but it will be fun. I will still see them on skype and will write note’s to them. My Mom and Dad will teach me math and english. For math I will use flashmaster which is really fun. We will have lots of field trip which I love!!!!!

After Borneo we are going to China. We watched a video about China and the lady made it seem really funny and fun but it actually is very fun! She went to an opera where you can get massages and drinks while watching the acts which were very cool. She also did a cooking class which we are definitely going to do. In fact, we are going to do a cooking class in every single country we go to. Maybe we can make a cookbook when we come back!!!!!!!!!

It is unbelievable how many blogs there are out there. There are probably thousands of people writing or have written about their own personal trips around the world. Even narrowing it down to families traveling around the world it still even feels like hundreds- big families (blogs.bootsnall.com/kiwifamily), small families (travelswithanineyearold.com), families on bikes (familyonbikes.org), families with travels never ending (soultravelers3.com).

Some go 3 months, some 30 months but the majority go 11-12 months. They all have different reason, different itineraries and different tactics. I tend to focus on those going the same general areas I am with kids the same general ages.

I probably lose more time reading their stories than doing anything else in preparation for this trip, Sometimes I’m horrified to find I am still clicking over to yet another entry at 2 am knowing I have to get my own kids off to school in a scant 5 hours. I have learned valuable things – who knew Malaysia was so cool for kids? When I was there 20 years ago all I heard about was how badly they treated women and political opposition and how it’s version of Islam was so much more repressive than in any other SEA country. It rep was so bleak I just trained straight thru from Bangkok to Singapore. This time we will be spending at least a month there between Sabah, Sarawak and KL. Other things I knew but have been re-emphasized. The need to go slow, to not plan more than one activity a day, to take days off and do “nothing” even when there are six great places to go see. To just relax and enjoy the journey rather than check off “must sees”. Priorities have shifted and only other parents with kids can understand what I am looking for – finding that water park in Vietnam or knowing if the killing fields are too much for a ten year old are now waaaay more important than finding the cheapest losman or secrete beer joint.

The most important thing about other peoples’ blogs however is how they have helped rope my kids into this adventure. I can say to my son “look this 9 yr old boy just loved this country/ride/mountain” and presto, he has something to look forward to (so far, zorbing tops the list). When we talk about the various countries we plan to visit, my girls now ask to see photos from other family’s who have already been there. So, for that I am grateful. And that really is the only reason I am even interested in if other people see this blog. I am of the (last) generation to think private thoughts should be left private, that a diary is actually only for oneself. I don’t even pretend to know how one makes money from blogs. At this point I haven’t even mentioned to friends and family that I am already writing something they can follow although I assume I will once we leave. If someone somewhere is researching (yet another) RTW trip with kids, this might help. But otherwise, it’s just for me :).

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 Asia. Ironically, one of the reasons it was so easy to pass on that train idea was how perfect it was – July/August is the ideal time to make the trip and one or two months is plenty of time to get on and off the train at various stops so it fits neatly into any future summer vacation.

We initially wanted to drop China as well but my brother will be in Chengdu then so we decided to keep it in. So now, our first stop is Beijing, train to Xian, train to Tibet, fly to Chengdu then maybe overland to Hong Kong or fly, haven’t decided yet. It also turns out this means we will be in TIbet during some of its most important festivals. I think the kids will way prefer seeing Tibetan horse races and archery competitions then just monastery after monastery!

Actually the kids have suddenly gotten a bit more excited about the trip. I think adding Borneo was the turning point – for some reason they believe me when I say we won’t be traipsing thru cathedrals or museums there, that it will in fact be mostly meeting orangutans and proboscis monkeys and maybe some swimming on beaches. Up till now they have been assuming this was all some perfidious ruse to get them to see more (!) historical houses and learn more (!) ancient history. They have done a bit more research (ok, had a few websites pointed out to them) and found out about water parks in Vietnam, zoos in Singapore, zorbing in Thailand, white water rafting in Nepal and are starting to even get a bit eager about some of those activities. We have agreed to find (at least) one completely child friendly and “un-educational” activity in each country. Miriam and Leontine even suggested we take cooking classes in each different country and learn at least one local recipe that we can do at home so that by the end of the trip we have our very own cookbook (and heaven knows we wouldn’t be learning anything by that). So I think they are beginning to see we are open and eager to their ideas. David Evan has been fabulous with his suggestions of exactly what Santa can bring us all for Xmas next year (lots of itouch apps) and asked for his own “sardine can survival” kit for his birthday. They seem to have absorbed the idea that this is really going to happen although their commitment to it wanes as they age. Miriam and Leontine are the most gungho. Tonight while they were taking a bath we started talking about how they could be learning their multiplication tables next year while in a volcanic hot spring somewhere and we decided to call it “bath math”. They got so excited they insisted I buy a little gizmo they use at school to practice their math skills so we will be able to use it on the road (http://flashmaster.com/).

David Evan still has regrets about leaving his friends and moving to PA but since even if we stayed in NY he would be changing schools (assuming he got into Hunter) he has become more resigned. The blog http://travelswithanineyearold.com/ has been a huge help. He sees photos of this boy about his own age climbing the ruins at Angor Wat or getting sunburned in Australia and it all seems a bit more doable to him. so thanks Theodora!

Ming, my oldest, is the one most removed from the planning since she has been spending most of her time getting college applications written. She will also be dipping in and out so she has to concentrate on figuring out where and what she will do on her own as well as finding some way of funding some of her own travels. I have a feeling she will decide to join us based on how much she likes the food in whatever country we happen to be in!

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 be done. This month’s resolutions:

1. Get M. into college. Admittedly this is something she has primary responsibility for but it is another two weeks of reading and editing her essays and supplements before the last final college application is due. We just had a slight anxiety attack trying to decide if she should change the essay she already submitted to two colleges to the (seemingly) better essay she is sending off to the next 4. I will be soooo happy when this is over! I will be soooo unhappy if she goes to college in California!

2. Put house on the market – it is pretty clutter free, in fact looks so nice I wish we had actually lived like this for the past 5 years! So just have to choose a realtor and put it into their hands.

3. Get an appraiser out to look at furniture and china. SInce we will be combining households (our rental in the city with our weekend house in the country) we need to downsize or do we really need 3 hutches and 4 highboys?

4. Get WIlls finally done. Yeah yeah, I know, inexcusable but we have actually been in the process of getting them done for a decade, somehow the final signing never gets done!

5. Make a decision as to whether we are going East to West or vice versa. It is fundamentally impossible to get tickets to the Trans-Mongolian Express without going through an agency at the height of the summer season so if we are going to do that we might as well go thru one that will organize our accommodation as well. Unfortunately most of these agencies have an age limit (as in no-one under 12 yrs old). In order to qualify as our own “private tour” that can include the girls we need 8 people. Wellllll, we thought we had that cracked when one of the girls’ best friends (and her parents!) jumped at the chance to ride a train across Russia. But now we have to see if they are ready to commit (we need to buy the train tickets before we can get the letter of invitation to Russia before we can get the visa and before we can get the first plane ticket since it establishes when we need to leave by). But if for whatever reason they decide it was a great idea but no thanks we have decided to flip the trip and start instead in South America instead of ending there. This is nice because then we start with the Galapagos island and what a cool way to begin. Either direction has its merits, we just need to know which direction we are going! This by the way, is why we are not making any promises to meet up with anybody along the way….

6. Contact the home schooling co-ordinator at the kids’ PA school and start working on my presentation. We have to submit a “prospectus” on what the kids will be doing all year in all the usual academic subjects. When we come back they will be examined by an independent evaluator to determine whether or not we hit those goals (and I suppose whether they can re-enter the system?). Not too worried about it but need to start lining up my ducks.

7. Check out the sales and decide what I am going to be using to lug my life around the world.

8. Take down the Xmas tree and all the decorations….

9. Oh yeah, send out New Year’s cards!

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 house in Radnor, PA. But literally everything went so beautifully. Our annual Christmas party, where we invite 100 people and 75 turn up went like clockwork. 15 years of doing it has greased the wheels pretty well and this year we didn’t even have to frantically throw things into boxes and into closets since we had already gotten rid of so much clutter. We had plenty of food, too much champagne and the best, biggest tree in Manhattan. We picked it up right in Union Square from Joel, the guy who comes to the market every year right after Thanksgiving with his trees. He told the kids the whole history of our tree – it is a 29 year old Fir that originally came from New Mexico. I had no idea Xmas trees can’t grow from seed in the North East, they have to be started down south and transported up as 2 or 3 yr old saplings! In any event, he thought it was a 12 ‘ tree but we have 12 ‘ ceilings and still had to cut off a foot at the top and the trunk before it would fit. As it was, the branches would poke M & DE when they sat at the dinner table! But it was definitely big enough for all our ornaments, even the ones we usually have to keep back and display separately. I wonder if I am going to be able to contain myself from collecting ornaments from every stop we make on this trip?

M & L were angels and singing doves in the Church’s annual Christmas pageant and DE was a Villager. They were all beautiful and this was the very first year since M was Head Angel that both V & I sat in the pew and simply watched instead of rushing around backstage wrangling or taking photos. And the lottery gods understood it was our last time so they gave us a seat right up front and center so that when the little angels come down the aisle, both M & L (and Cadance and Josie) ended up sitting right next to us, couldn’t have been more perfect.

Then of course, there were all the rituals and traditions of Christmas Eve and Christmas day. M & L and even DE left out their letters to santa along with the cookies and carrots and jumped into bed. I thought I was so organized I decided to go to the midnight mass next door at church. I meant only to stay for a tiny bit but the singing was so beautiful I couldn’t leave. I paid the price however, when I was still wrapping presents at 4 am, how did that happen!?

Three hours later I was woken up by all 4 kids piling into my bed with their stockings. Even, M, our 17 yr old insists on everyone being together and pulling treats and trinkets out one by one, one after another. I think that is the part they all look forward to the most year after year. My favorite tho is after when they all emerge into the living room and see the Santa gifts laid out (or piled up!) on the coffee table. This year, everyone got everything on their list – American girl dolls, horses and stables, comics upon comics and for M – an entire cake decorating kit complete with a cake turn table! She has become very crafty lately what with baking and knitting.

And then from that point on was just joy and happiness, everyone opens presents one at a time so we can each see what everyone got – I hate the idea of turning around and just seeing ripped up wrapping paper beside a huge jumble of gifts! Actually, my kids very often start playing with or reading whatever they open and have to be prodded into opening another present (most often by L who keeps her nose to the grindstone). That happens most with M, so she always ends up with a a stack of unopened gifts long after everyone else is finished. In the afternoon we have wonderful neighbors who always invite us over for Xmas lunch which means V. takes the kids over and I get to take a nap!

Xmas continued the next day when our best friends and godfathers came over for Boxing Day lunch – I have discovered the caramelized richness of roasting and went a little crazy – lamb, brussels sprouts and cauliflower all roasting away at 500 degrees sent the smoke alarm off at least 5 times…. The plan was to drive up to our country house the next day but we awoke to – completely snow choked roads. Broadway, an fairly important avenue in the center of one of the most populated cities in the US looked like it hadn’t even been plowed! Stalled buses and taxis blocked the roads. Woe betide any car that tried to turn onto a side street, at every corner drivers were trying to push their cars out of snowdrifts. The kids, of course, went out to play in the garden of Grace church next door with Luke and James. After a while the girls came bursting back in declaring they could no longer feel their legs. Once they had taken off their completely soaked jeans, it was abundantly clear the the snow had been up to their thighs! Then, instead of sliding off the road on the way to Millbrook, we took the far more prudent course of taking the girls to see their very first New York City Ballet Nutcracker.

So all in all, we did all the things we usually do one last time, enjoying each to the fullest without a hitch. Now we are ready to start from scratch and have a brand new experience next year.

I am worried about lots of things. Most importantly, will my kids be bored, will they be fussy and miserable, will they hate us for taking them out of their school and away from their friends? Will they want to go home two months into the trip? And then, how will we cope when they are fussy and bored and hate us and want to go home?

Secondarily, I’m also worried about finding a pace for our travels. I like seeing or doing at least one new thing everyday when traveling but my kids (and spouse) love lazy days and we frequently find whole days go by where they have not gotten out of their pajamas, especially during vacations. So I know we are going to have to build in some regular down time but how? Given that we have gone halfway around to world to get to some place, it seems like blasphemy to sit around and watch TV for hours in a hotel room! Actually I am assuming most of the time we will not be staying at places fancy enough for english TV but that only means pent up desire will want to be met! Compromises will have to be made. They will be bringing movies loaded onto itouches and ipads so they can definitely get their fix while in transition on buses and trains and we will factor in beach stops where we really do just chill, not to mention already promised waterparks and zorbing (tho somehow that doesn’t seem to count as “lazy” but whatever) but there will be a certain amount of “we are in Borneo, we need to see some orangoutangs today”. Some people have suggested keeping one day a week quiet to just organize and do errands and that’s a good idea. But does that means just staying in our room and doing laundry or does a day of meandering around town and stopping for chai count? Do they have to get out of their pajamas? We’ll have to see.

We are not buying a RTW ticket because, frankly, there is no way we could stick to a preset itinerary and we know changing 5 or 6 tickets simultaneously will be ridiculously expensive, not to mention limited to whatever cheapo seats were on our RTW ticket category. More flexibility obviously allows us to pick and choose where we want to go and when we want to go. We have enough of a budget to decide on the fly where and how to move on and enough time to settle in one place if it turns out we like it. However, this does mean I will always have to be nailing down the next stop on our itinerary as we move. And personally, I am just a little bit worried about being stuck on the computer researching and booking tickets/accommodation rather than out exploring. Then I will begin wondering why it is I am the only one capable of sorting out logistics, get resentful and have a big blowout with hubby in front of the kids, everyone crying on the side of the road… Really, planning for all eventualities.

You may wonder why I am not worried about health issues but I figure, those could happen anywhere (my daughter picked up a MRSA infection in my uncle’s house in England, and broke an ankle stepping off a curb in New York city), they are not regulated to South America or South East Asia. We are planning vaccinations, already picking up malaria pills and going to be sensible about mosquitos in general. Quite frankly, if something happens, it happens and we will deal with it then. I hope it won’t!! But they have hospitals and doctors who are probably well versed in whatever tropical ailment we encounter. And going back to my kids’ love of lazy days, they’d probably jump at the excuse of a tummy bug to hang around in bed and play games on their Itouch. In their pajamas.

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 thought out, of traveling around the world. And one of the great reason for doing this was to educate our kids. We actually thought long and hard about when in their educational life span we should take this year off from traditional academics. My oldest daughter goes to Hunter, which has been cited by every academic survey as one of the Best High Schools in the Nation and by far one of the hardest to get into (and free!). So it was out of the question to go until she graduated. I may be capable of many things but I really don’t think I could teach college level phyics or calculus. But she is graduating this year so, yea, gap year! The plan is she will travel part of the time with us, part of the time on her own. Then we will all roll up to PA together and she will start college at the wonderful little mini-ivy 20 minutes from our new home.

DE will be missing 7th grade but the great thing is – at his present school he would be starting algebra next year but not until 8th grade in the School in PA. In other words he is one year ahead in math so we can spend the whole year reviewing and enriching his pre-algrebra foundation rather that trying to teach him brand new stuff (anybody noticing a touch of math phobia here?). M & L are of course the easiest, because even I can teach 3nd grade multiplication (I hope!). So the emphasis on this year will be on keeping them on track in math and english. History, geography, and world religion will be pegged to whatever country we are traveling through. Science, admittedly will be more piecemeal. Fortunately the science DE would be doing at school is, yay! biology. It is way easy to incorporate ecosystems and/or digestive systems into jungle treks, nature hikes and to top it all off a cruise through the galapagas islands! Imagine if it had been what he is studying this year – the periodic table, electricity and magnetics.

Anyway, the point is, this is a very nice break in their academics, DE won’t lose anything, M is taking a break between HS and college and the girls are just the right age to soak up information on the fly. Sigh, then in their infinite wisdom, the college in PA turned M down and Hunter, the HS of most peoples’ dream asked DE to take the entry test. So instead of our dropping back in after a year away with M staying practically next door, she will now be going to some college in some other state potentially either a 5 hr drive or a 6 hr flight away. Somehow that makes arriving back a scant couple of weeks before class starts slightly less plausible. Moreover, if DE does turn out to be “gifted” and is invited to Hunter, how can we turn it down? And then what, since we would never be able to keep him up to speed with those courses even if we were allowed to take him out of school for a year? Think we will still do it but if ever there was an example of “men make plans and the gods laugh” this is it….

I am so not impressed with One World. Their RTW website is terrific, just click on a map and seemingly all your dots are connected. But then when you get to the nitty gritty of picking flights it all goes to hell in a handbag. To get from India to Thailand you have to go via Hong Kong, to go from Thailand to Malaysia, back vou go thru Hong Kong turning an 1 1/2 hr flight into a 9 hr ordeal. Not to mention the constant message “no flights available” meaning you might be stranded in some town for days till a “L” grade seat becomes available. Don’t think we are going to go with this company.

It’s difficult to balance the need for structure with flexibility. With 6 people we may not be able to afford to just jump on a plane at a moment’s notice, especially for the big jumps. On the other hand between Ming and Vincent people may be coming and going at various and random times as we meet up and reconnect. Maybe I should just think of myself and the 3 youngest as one pod and let Vincent and Ming join us as they will. We will probably end up with a skeleton RTW ticket from airtrek which we will fill in with local transport within SEA & SA but it depends on how easy it is to change the itinerary and what the fees will be to do that.

DE desperately wants to go back to his regular summer camp before the trip so that means we can’t leave till August which means it is well & truly only a 12 month trip since we have to arrive back in the states August a year later in order to give us a month to catch our breath and gear up for starting a new school..

Update – as of now, Dec. 2010, we still haven’t bought any tickets but I now think we will just buy the first few leg (NY – London – Estonia) and maybe the flight between China & India. We will be taking trains between Estonia, Russia & China. Once we are in India we will just buy the rest of the tickets as we go along.