Why The Third Degree?

Honestly, there has been no third degree interrogations but we have had the same queries from a number of people. Naturally when one suddenly announces that they are pulling the kids from school and leaving all responsibilities behind there are bound to be a few raised eyebrows and questions. Hopefully the following answers most of them:

Why the trip?
Roughly 5 years ago we came to the realization that our kids were growing up much too fast and with everyone's busy rat race schedules life is hectic and many of the moments have just flown by. From where we are now for example Easton may only be in our home for another five years and that really scares the "bejeesus" out of this dad anyways (I must remember to read this again in five years when I am kicking him out of the house). Although many of the places will not be much of a culture shock we also wanted to expose our kids to as many things as possible and create a bit of tolerance and the ability to try new things (hopefully we can get Jacquie to expand her palate from chicken fingers and fries).

What about the kid's school? Are your worried they will fall behind?
This was one of the bigger worries in planning this trek. However, both children's schools have been fantastic in making this as simple and seamless as possible with no distance learning. As long as we continue to work on math facts, continue to read and Jacquie is able to keep them up with their oral french the schools seem to be fine. Our hopes are that they learn more from the "School of Life" during this trip which should help them much more as they get older. However, without shop, art and phys. ed. I am not sure how Easton will be able to boost his marks in the "School of Life"!!

What about Jeff's business?
The easiest way to answer this is what would happen if I got hit by a bus tomorrow? First of all, my 2 partners have been very supportive to our hair brained scheme and assured me all will be fine. With my partner coming into the office to relieve me, a great General Manager and a very capable field staff I am sure the place will keep ticking along no problem. I am a bit of a control freak at work and I am sure it will make for some stressful moments for me while travelling. But with the magic of skype and email I will be checking in frequently with the goings on for assurance. The thought that they won't want be back though has crossed my mind.

How did you pick the itinerary?
Our itinerary has changed vastly from when we first drew it up five years ago, due to price and civil conflicts. The original plan was to hit many french speaking countries and the countries from the grade three curriculum the children learn about. However, pricing in Europe was much too expensive for this group and North Africa is pretty much off limits due to the Arab Spring issues. So we put a heavy burden on Asia due to price and asked the kids what they wanted to see and went from there.

What are you taking? Are you in hotels?
In theory this is to be a bare bones trip with each of us taking backpacks with a couple changes of clothes only (Jake is suprisingly onboard with this due to the size of her pack she picked out). Our stays will be a combination of budget hotels in Asia, rv'ing in New Zealand/Australia and family hostels in Peru and South Africa. I am sure we will be splurging once in a while for a nice bed, hot shower and some western food at the odd hotel though.

Did you win the lottery?

No, but we are still hoping we do. As mentioned this has been a tentative plan in the works for the last 5 years and have had been setting some travel money a side in the event we did the trip.

Hopefully, we answered more questions than we created and gave you a little bit of insight of what,why and how we are doing this. We still don't have a lot of answers but plan to wing it as we go. We will be back soon to show everyone's fears and thoughts of the trip.

Bye for now!