Time to dust off the old blog again and write! But a caveat is in order here...I open up this blog again in hopes of maybe writing during our upcoming trip. Maybe.
We definitely have another big adventure planned: Rome for 1 week, Madrid for 1 week, and southern Spain for 4 weeks. I am beyond myself excited. David will join us for the week in Rome and then sadly he needs to return back home to Minnesota for work. (David would not want you to be sad for him. For real. He's looking forward to some slow-paced peace and quiet at home.) My parents & my brother and his family (wife & two boys) will join us for the first 4 weeks of our 6 week adventure. My brother and his family live in South Africa, so this is definitely a family reunion, the adventure travel version with 6 kids ages 4-13.
What exactly brought this trip about? I'd say a variety of factors: My Dad itching for an adventure in his retirement and good health. My parents generously willing to help pay for a significant part of the adventure. All of us Minnesotans wanting to see our South Africa family members who live horribly far away from us, in South Africa. My eternal brainstorming how to work out logistics to go on another adventure. In Sept of 2023 I turned 40, got melanoma (caught early, successfully excised via surgery) and our dog Ada (for whom this blog is named) died, and I just felt the need to do something besides sit at home. Given that I'm a homeschool Mom I really stink at being at home. Christmastime 2023 was spent dreaming of the possibilities and thinking through big picture logistics and "what ifs", then we purchased our flights in spring of 2024. I think of myself as being too level-headed for this, but fine, call it a "midlife crisis" if you want.
Then there are the more philosophical "whys". We homeschool our kids in part to have this freedom.....freedom to learn by doing, by traveling. Freedom to pick up and go during the non-peak tourist months. The goal of teaching our kids to try new things, go new places, get out of our comfort zones. We get to write papers on the food of Spain, and then go try it out. We get to listen to a podcast on the art of the Spanish siesta and see if we'll be able to adjust to that cultural norm in Spain. We get to study a timeline of world history, see the long list of Roman Emperors and hopefully get to see their palaces on Palatine Hill in Rome. We get to teach our kids that education can come in many, many different forms and in different ways. (Most homeschoolers already know this, but still...) We will all have chances to muddle through in uncertainty, observe new social norms and decide if and how we try to fit in (or accept that we stick out), get lost and figure out what to do next. Simple things like food, water, and rest will become tricky at times and we'll need to muddle our way through. Good people watching! Inevitably some of our planning will fail and we'll need to adjust on the fly in a country where we are foreigners. There will be lots of asking (hopefully) kind people for help. There will be the "hurry up and wait" game that tourists need to play. The kids will get to hear Italian and Spanish at playgrounds and wonder if and how to play with the local kids. I'll try to figure out if that Italian Mom at the playground looks friendly enough to strike up a conversation to ask her about the best place to buy gelato around here.
The last months and weeks have been spent preparing, preparing preparing: Finding lodging, reserving tickets for things, renting a car (for Spain), educating ourselves about all-of-the-things, watching YouTube videos, doing my DuoLingo lessons in Spanish & Italian, checking lists, emailing teachers and friends about our absences from our regular-life activities, procuring things to bring, and reading Rick Steves books.
So about that caveat at the start of this post...I'm actually not sure if I'm going to write while we're traveling, or not, and that uncertainty is okay with me. Some of our past adventures I've felt a deep need to write to process what I'm seeing or learning. Other trips we've taken I was more in "survival mode" keeping kids fed and figuring out our next adventure, and I had no capacity to write without giving up much-needed sleep.
I can say that, if I do decide to write, I'll post it here on this blog, for anyone to read about our adventures. Or, if nothing else, I will be documenting the adventure for the kids to read when they're all grown up. Maybe.
