Twelve Feet, Six Continents, One Year

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...

People: our visit in Melbourne was filled with great people.  Our host, who shares the duplex with the apartment she rents, was a generous and warm person who made us feel so welcome and comfortable. Her family, especially her 12-year old son and their 4-month old English Staffordshire named Lucy, brought us many smiles. The abundant toys in our rental used to be his and we are very grateful, especially for the LEGO. Our first friend in Melbourne was “Motormouth” Bridget at Oliver’s Barber Shop. We passed the shop several times a day and the kids always looked forward to saying hi. Bridget renamed Henry “Jabberjaws” and they were good mates. Bridget had lollipops for the kids but they’d love her without them.  The kids went to summer camp at the local primary school with a program called TeamKids. They enjoyed being in the company of peers for several days, doing kid-focused activities, and being as wild as they felt like. Ali and Cate made friends with two girl...

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...

Good things, even really, really good things, generally come to an end and so it is that the six of us piled into a van on the morning of Saturday, November 9th for our departure from Witch’s Rock Surf Camp, from Tamarindo and from Costa Rica. From a purely logistical perspective, we had a pretty miserable 4-hour drive to San Jose, followed by a mediocre 4-hour interval at the airport, followed by an uneventful 1-hour flight to Panama City, followed by a easy 20 minute drive to a lovely and shockingly inexpensive Westin Hotel on the Pacific coast. But who wants to think about logistics when there are such better things to contemplate. For example, I’d like to tell you about a typical day at WRSC: Lessons are offered in three, two-hour time blocks. Each instructor takes a maximum of three students who are comprable in ability and also height (having to do with wave depth) so Elise/Jon/Lily were assigned to Jose (can’t figure out the accent on this keyboard, sorry) in the first ...

Greetings from Los Angeles International Airport, where we are enjoying an overnight layover on our way to Costa Rica. It has been ten days since we pulled into Portland in the RV. Several times during that span, Elise remarked that she suddenly understands that it's possible to be hospitalized for exhaustion. This pivot, from phase one (RV) to phase two (foreign lands), was BIG. What you could see in our pictures, and in the memories of the children, is ten days of fun and excitement. Playdates, parties, sleepovers and reunions. Because of their ages - between 6 and 11 - their experiences were very different. The twins (6) had pure and unadulterated fun. They blitzed from one exciting visit to another, upset only when they were too tired to cope. For Lily, almost every moment of joy was tinged with longing. She was thrilled to be with friends but felt on the outside looking in. Theres tween drama that is absent from our family unit but there is also the sense of connection with...