Well here we are. My first blog. I’m not a writer and never thought I’d have a blog, so bear with me… and sorry for the grammatical mistakes in advance!

A lot of you will know / heard through the grapevine that we (ok, it’s mostly me), are in the planning stages of a year of backpacking the world with our children.

Yes…you read that right, we are pulling our kids out of school for a whole calendar year and road schooling them (that’s, for those that don’t know, a mix of home schooling and letting them learn about the world around them as we go)

We hope to depart late 2017 and be away most of 2018.

I’ve personally told quite a few people our plans and the reactions have been priceless! From “that’s awesome! Go you guys” to “wow really? Why? Your kids won’t remember it!” to (my absolute fave) “you are crazy!! But if anyone could pull it off it’s you two!” 

Then the gazillion questions come, so I thought I’d answer a few of the common ones here….

WHERE ARE YOU GOING?

The plan is….SE Asia – United Arabs – Africa  – Eastern Europe – Western Europe – UK – America.          It should be 32 countries including a few mini countries.

WHAT’S WITH THE BLOG?!

To keep the fam and friends updated on how we’re going but mostly as a record of our time away, as the plan when we get home would be to copy and paste it into a photo book and get it printed for a keepsake.

What you will see on ‘the blog’ – blogs on daily life on the road/great places we’ve visited and tips on how to visit them best if you choose to visit them one day/pictures of stuff we’ve seen/how educating the kiddies is going.

What you won’t see on ‘the blog’ – pictures of our children! I’m not into their photos being online so you’ll just have to imagine them in the photos. 

HOW CAN YOU AFFORD TO TRAVEL FOR A YEAR? THAT MUST BE COSTING YOU A BUCKET LOAD!!!

It sure will cost us a lot but I’d like to hope not more than we’d spend to live our life at home.

We are in savings mode at the moment and hope to get half our trips budget in the bank before we depart. The other half will be funded by BK working as we go. Obviously as a software developer and business owner all he really needs is the Internet (and his noise cancelling earphone buds in his ears!) The plan is for him to work 4 hours a day, apart from transit days and first day in new places (plus other times like if we do a safari or a cruise). This may be in a 4 hour stint or split up over the day depending on what we want to see/how tired we are/weather etc, some days maybe 8 hours then the next day off. He’ll work it out to suit us as a family. 

WHAT MADE YOU WANT TO TAKE A TRIP LIKE THIS?

After following a family of 6 on facebook do it successfully in 2015 I felt it was something I’d really like to do with our children, BK and I did a similar trip in 2007 as our honeymoon so the thought of taking our kids isn’t overly daunting….so after following this family via Facebook for a few months I went about informing the husband of my thoughts to which he exclaimed he’d suggested it a couple of years ago!!???…well it must have landed on deaf ears because I don’t  remember him saying anything like that!!

WHY NOW, WHEN THE CHILDREN ARE STILL YOUNG? THEY WONT REMEMBER IT!! 

This is the most asked question…and my answer is pretty simple. 

Why do you read a book to a child? 

For them to remember the story? No, you read it so they start to get a love of reading, to learn words etc. Same with traveling…..we travel to get a love of travel (Here, have an expensive hobby kiddo! Haha).  We travel to learn that NZ is such a small part of the world community.  We travel to see how others live – and work out we are very fortunate to live the New Zealand lifestyle…. Yes we’ll fork out tens of thousands of dollars and yes they’ll remember some of it and forget a pile of it. I don’t remember all the places I’ve been, with pictures jogging my memory I do a bit better but there are certainly things I’ve well forgotten! 

 

So there you go, first blog post done.

Hoping to do these monthly till we depart then more frequently.