Meandering Around the World

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.

How has it gotten to be the middle of September? My birthday is Sept 1 and it was supposed to be the point at which we really started buckling down and planning this trip. But what with clearing ... [Continue reading this entry]