September 2009

The James family educated their children on the road last year. Their understanding of biology and geography has been forever enhanced.

Raising global children

Around the world and back again

by Dani James

Last July, my family began an adventure. We had noticed a certain restlessness as we approached major midlife milestones. Fifteen years of marriage; a daughter entering high school; even the “baby” was an elementary school grad.

Craig was coming to a transition point in a couple of big projects and, in business for himself, had the flexibility to close things down in the office for a while. I was wrapping up a chapter spent child-rearing and volunteering at the kids’ schools. The time seemed ripe, if you were checking for ripeness, to do something different.

We’d talked over a few ideas: Was it time to move to that small, mythical college town with no traffic where we could walk to a bookstore or coffee shop? Maybe a year in another country, just to surround ourselves with newness for a while? A different career path for Craig or back to the traditional work world for me?

We brainstormed ideas and traded thoughts because the one thing we knew was that we were ready for a change.

I think it was Craig who came across the acronym “RTW” when he was researching ideas for family travels. “What would you think,” he asked me over lunch one day, “of taking a year off and traveling around the world?”
We thought about it and read scores of already existing blogs kept by RTW families. A sort of secret, year-long feasibility study ensued.

The whole idea seemed totally far-fetched at first. We were not, like many of our friends and neighbors, hearty, outdoorsy types who had earned real travel cred in the Peace Corps or hiked up and down cliffs in Utah or went camping under the stars. I hadn’t even done the post-college Eurail trip.
And what about school, income, packing lists? How would we work out all those logistics? What if we got sick of each other---or worse, just sick? How could we possibly give up a whole year? I was a bundle of worries.
But Craig found an affordable and flexibly round the world air ticket. I found an accredited online school. And Caroline and Conor found that we were actually serious about the whole thing.

After shots, and waiting in line a few times at REI, and filling a rolling suitcase with a million pounds of textbooks and cameras, we were gone.
Our journey took us down, across, and around. We ate strange foods and dodged careening tuk-tuks; shouted words of wonder over the roar of massive waterfalls; followed Incan footsteps in Machu Picchu; learned greetings in Thai; rang the bells at a Buddhist shrine; rode the bus and the train and the plane and the boat. We washed elephants in the river and rode bikes through vineyards. We grew older and closer and maybe even wiser.

And as different as each place was from another, we found a universal thread: the kindness of strangers carried us along.

In Cambodia, we were invited to the home of a tuk-tuk driver who had motored us around town. The language barrier kept us from exchanging many questions (my favorite: “What do you eat in your country, rice or bread?”), but we all spent hours smiling at each other as more and more curious neighbors emerged from their ramshackle doorways to get a glimpse of the visitors from America. They served us a meal that probably cost a week’s wages.

In Argentina a very old lady overheard us talking on a bus and invited us to stay at her home.

My elementary school friend who lives in Alice Springs took us along to a rollicking Christmas party on the Australian outback at a cattle station. We were welcomed there as though we were family.

The daughter of our innkeepers in Bangkok drove us into town for a tour of her favorite restaurants and volunteered to take the kids to a movie.
Vineet, our guide around India, bought sweets for the children and spent an extra afternoon for which he would take no money helping us find good bargains in the shops.

Wherever we went, it was always the same: hello, welcome, be our guest. Even when we were in a countries still bruised and traumatized by brutality or poverty.

And then we came home. To our almost mythical small town. We reconnected with friends and the life we’ve built here.

The time away, in retrospect, was over, as things are, in a flash. And we hadn’t given up a year. We’d taken one back.
The James family documented their round the world trip at www.thewidewideworld.com.