Twelve Feet, Six Continents, One Year

Sunday started like any other day under a Restricted Movement Order in a barely-familiar foreign country. There was breakfast and screen time and generally low expectations. Then we heard about Peru. The news reported that Americans (and others) in Peru were effectively stranded. There were no commercial flights available for them to depart and due to “optics,” according to the stories, the US government did not want to send in a military plane to evacuate them. Then we heard about Singapore. Several sources informed us that Singapore had revised its COVID measures and would prohibit even transiting (connecting) between flights for foreigners. Our main exit strategy had been eliminated. We had decided on Friday (March 20) that we would give ourselves a break for deliberating on our plans until Monday (March 23) but here we were on Sunday back at it. It's eerie to read the posts from Friday and Saturday in light of what's transpired since. What if Malaysia extends the RMO...

Can you tell that we're smiling? We went on a date to a store (Tesco) that resembled Target in its scope. I'm not very good at adapting. I think I've written before about the fact that when I have a plan in mind, it's very hard for me to let go. Professionally, it's taken me a long time and a lot of effort to learn to understand that my own ideas aren't the only and certainly not necessarily best way to go about something. I wasn't a very good or valuable colleague until I figured that out. The same is basically true for me as a spouse/partner. I have concrete memories of fights from previous relationships that centered on the fact that I believed I had the right to say "no" definitively and end the conversation there. I had a lot of growth ahead of me in those moments. Approaching this trip, I knew I was going to struggle with this issue. I knew things were going to go wrong or at least awry. I knew that it was my number one goal to demonstr...

Okay. Take a deep breath. (Unless you assume the face mask on the person next to you is to protect you from them instead of them from you.) It's February 28th and the news of a flulike disease has been spreading faster than the disease itself for more than a month now. I want to write about this at length, in part to document my feelings at this particular moment in time but also to communicate those feelings to spectators who express their concern and curiosity to us on a regular basis. First, please understand that my viewpoint is cynical. Since the beginning of time, news media in any form has had a singular motive: sell. Journalist friends and friends of journalism: I do not speak ill of thee. But if you go to the New York Times website, there has been a flashing red box for weeks announcing breaking news on the subject. Sometimes there is something new to report but mostly there is just a new derivative of the same limited information. But sell, sell, sell means headlines ...

Here's our hotel room on a recent night-before-departure. This is hard for me to say but I made a mistake. I don’t even remember how or, specifically, why I made it. Fortunately, it hasn’t been hard to remedy. All I had to do was write two emails that included the word “cancel.” Here’s the rest of the story. When we left the US on November 1, we had plans for everything up to March 14th, when a plane would carry us from Mauritius to Johannesberg, South Africa. We had booked a tour of Cambodia and Vietnam for three weeks in late February and early March. We had booked a resort for four nights in Mauritius because it turns out that it’s one of the ways you can fly from SE Asia to South Africa. We had booked a crazy “transit hotel” in the Singapore airport for an overnight layover between a flight from Hanoi and a flight to Mauritius. It was all nailed down. I felt pretty good that this was a fair balance. We had done four months of domestic travel and we had planned fo...

First of all, is my math right? I know that we started on June 23rd but that was in the United States. Today is January 8th but that's in Australia. It's only January 7th in the US. Does that mean the trip is longer or shorter? Can anybody explain daylight savings time to me? Second, we've been having a really good week. Elise took the day off on Monday and regained some energy. We found a daycamp here that is effectively drop-in during their school holidays. For friends in Portland: this is like Campfire mixed with Trackers. In other words, it's awesome. We showed the kids the "menu" if activities on each day and the result was that Henry and Lily went on Tuesday, Ali and Cate on Wednesday and all four on Thursday. Arriving at St Kilda Park Primary School for TeamKids Camp We feel really satisfied and proud that our kids show up at a new venue with unfamiliar kids and adults and plunge right in. Henry made a friend, which led to a playdate and possibl...

Things didn’t go badly today but they did go wrong. First, school went quite well. Lily is struggling with her latest essay, a report on Treasure Island, but she’s making good progress. Elise has advanced her technique for teaching phonics to the twins and that seems to be helping. I don’t know if I’ve written it down anywhere else so I’ll say it here: Henry’s biggest problem with school is reading directions. Heaven help this boy if he every has to assemble IKEA furniture.  Second, we returned to the amazing playground at Kings Park to have lunch at the cafe. A meal goes quite well when the kids have that amazing facility to enjoy while the food is being prepared. They also ate quickly and without fuss so that they could get back to their play. We even had some fun kicking around a soccer ball together (all six of us doing one thing, mostly happily). We snuck in a picture of our twelve feet just to memorialize the place. Third, we headed downtown to rent bi...

Monday, December 23rd was our first full day in Perth and we had high expectations. The day before, we had landed in the early afternoon, obtained our rental van, arrived at our house, shopped for groceries, eaten dinner and gone to bed mostly without incident. The house is exceptional, with plenty of sleeping space, a well equipped kitchen, excellent air conditioning and many terrific amenities for the kids. We woke up quite early (on account of a few hours westbound jet lag) with two main goals in mind: re-establish the school routine and do a massive amount of preparation for Christmas, which was only two days away. Leaving the kids with the house's gobs of toys and cable TV, Elise and I headed to a nearby Target, confident that we would enjoy the same one-stop shopping as we would at home. We didn't. This is a much smaller franchise that is fine for clothes but not for all the other things. For example, we planned to buy a digital camera to replace Lily's, which die...

This post is probably not interesting to anybody except my future self. Feel free to skip this one if you visit this site to see pictures of our cute kids. I don't mind. Tuesday, December 10, 2019 (Santiago, Chile). Wake up with alarm. Elise's back hurts. A lot. Finish packing, showers, etc. Breakfast at excellent hotel buffet.  Discover flight is two hours delay. Reschedule airport shuttle. Kids watch more TV. Easy shuttle to airport. Easy time checking bags, going through customs, etc. except that Lily's visa is invalid on account of a typo in her passport number that I didn't catch. The application fee is mysteriously waived so, you know, whatever. The kids are getting pretty good at this. Even have time to change remaining Argentine pesos into Chilean pesos to spend on souvenirs.  Fail to mail postcards from Chile because 'open" post office in the airport is unstaffed (as warned). Eat lunch at Ruby Tuesday in Santiago Airport because, well, w...