Before I even begin I will address the question everyone is first going to ask....yes kids will miss school.....no I don't care, not even a little.
If Austin does not get into Harvard because he missed a few months of his Junior year of high school to travel around India on trains, spend a week in Singapore, see Australia, and spend the Chinese New Year in the Bay of Hong Kong from the tallest hotel in the world with his family, then I guess its just tough luck, who needs Harvard anyhow(though something tells me this experience would give him more of a chance of getting in, AND we will be doing tons of school work.)
For us it's the best thing we ever do and being able to do it together brings us closer together than anything we can think to do. I think even now the realization we are all going to be really, really close for the next few months has ironed out some wrinkles in relationships, and made people more tolerant of one another(though bother Austin during a Fortnite game and you still may be verbally abused.) Travel, more than anything I am convinced will open your eyes to your own world, show you your own misconceptions, make you more grateful for what you do have and enlighten you to the idea that the world is both large and extremely small. The moment we got back from Paris we started planning this 5 years ago.
For us it's the best thing we ever do and being able to do it together brings us closer together than anything we can think to do. I think even now the realization we are all going to be really, really close for the next few months has ironed out some wrinkles in relationships, and made people more tolerant of one another(though bother Austin during a Fortnite game and you still may be verbally abused.) Travel, more than anything I am convinced will open your eyes to your own world, show you your own misconceptions, make you more grateful for what you do have and enlighten you to the idea that the world is both large and extremely small. The moment we got back from Paris we started planning this 5 years ago.
So with that little pep talk in place we plan, we plan our next adventure. We leave from SFO on Dec 2...tickets purchased we will land in Hong Kong first for a one night layover(so as to set up the perfect round trip exit 3 months later- that and it's already a 15hr flight.) The next day we travel on to New Deli India. We are going to travel over a large part of India from the Himalayas, to the coast of Goa, Agra, ride camels to tents in desert, and trains to the slums in Mumbai, and many, many places in-between(we're basically moving every 3 days for 5 weeks.) Originally we were going to go to Indonesia next, and though not typically someone who freaks out about these things I decided with the last 2 major earthquakes and tsunami over the last couple months, I could not imagine myself feeling relaxed laying on a beach while keeping watch for tidal waves. Soooo we changed that part of the trip to Australia, which made EVERYONE happy, especially our mothers and the kids. I found it was cheaper to stop in Singapore before flying to Australia so we will stop there for a week(I fell like I could write a book on how to master airfare hacks.) Australia will cover Sydney, Hamilton Islands, the Northern Territory-Kakadu, and Melbourne. Then we fly to Hong Kong for a month, where we will split our time between fancy hotels(which were actually cheaper than apartments) and apartments and run the marathon there before finally flying home at the end of Feb, hopefully full of happy memories.
Where we are...well it's been an insanely busy 4 months. We have:
Bought, gutted, planned to flip, and furnished a new house-(This would turn out to be important as we will end up homeless before the end of this paragraph.)
Put our main house up for rent for the months we're gone, get offers from 2 managers from Pro Baseball teams(both of whom were from the same city(a little b-ball trivia for ya) who wanted it for spring training but held out and rented it to a Pro Basketball player and his expectant wife...who wanted us to move out 2 months before we leave)basically 2 weeks after they saw it, I basically decide I could fast track the flip and move in there. This house was my baby, from the time I was 10 I sketched houses, got a degree in architecture, and baby stepped my way to this project(I scrapped a lot of bad floors, painted a lot of ugly walls, and learned how to basically do most anything construction wise), and this was all the time the goal, having something others would want enough to pay basically for our adventures with.
Moved into flip..it's almost done...well, we don't have stairs yet, but have become really good at ladders, and I am told, as of today, the stairs have left Mexico.
Discovered Uber Eats-this like the flip providing a roof over our head became extremely important.
Planned the 3 month trip.
Got new passports, visas, and inoculations for some things I thought no longer existed. Only regret is that I don't have a pic of the kids looking at me when the Nurse giving vaccines was telling them about all the bad things they can get in India, including but not limited to Rabies, Malaria, typhoid, etc and explaining how to tell if a water bottle is really properly sealed. They all just looked over at me with this "where the heck are you taking us" expression, which is what I was going for. We are so lucky to be able to do this, we are even luckier to be able to do it together and while I am sure it like the last time will have it's moments, I think of this like a roller coaster ride, can be scary, but in the end it's the thrills that make life wonderful, so off we go 6 people, 6 bags, 3 months, and lots of amazing memories.
