THE BEGINNING IS A GOOD PLACE TO START

“Oh, wow”

“I’ve always wanted to do that, just been to scared to take the leap”

“What about Charlotte’s schooling?”

“ Really? Cool! But what about work, your house…?”

These are some of the reactions we get when we talk about our 2018 for family world tour to friends and family (If you've read this before January 2017 you note a change from 2019 to 2018 see our blog for your reasons why) . We absolutely understand their reactions and, the slightly scary but exhilarating part is we don’t have all the answers (we are not even sure if we know all the questions!) right now and that is why were are planning so far in advance, well we think it is far in advance.

We have a very settled life here in Cape Town, a home we’ve lived in since 2008, we recently been lucky to acquire a holiday home 2 hours out of Cape Town. StJohn has a senior corporate job (don’t worry his boss knows about our plans!) , I have my own business and most importantly we have a child, Charlotte, who is still very much at school going age, she is in year three this year.

Our first challenge has been getting Charlotte on board with getting excited about this trip – StJohn and I have spoken at length about this trip and had many late night conversations over a bottle of wine about the places we’d love to see, some again and others for the first time. Charlotte has not had as much time as us to get into the idea and her first reaction was “uh uh, no way”!

She was 7 when we really started speak seriously about this idea last year (2015) and I think her reaction was driven by a few things:-

• that ‘the world’ is such an abstract concept for an adult to get their head around, never mind a 7-year-old. She has been fortunate to have travelled to a few countries in her short life however I still think it’s hard to grasp,

• time is relative, she has only been on the planet 7 years and to her a year is a lifetime, and then we say we are going to travel around the world for 1 year!

• She’s discovered the world of true friendship and has amazing set of very special friends her in Cape Town

Then of course the questions came, amongst others I can remember now:-

Q: “What about school?”

A: Daddy and mommy are going to teach you

(This response is meet with a ‘whaaat?!’ face, she’s warmed up to the idea now)

Q: “Where will we live?”

A: “Well where ever we are in the world, we will find places to stay, we won’t be in one place for ages and ages”

Q: “What about my friends”

A: “Well you can have your own v-log for your friends to see what you are up to, email them and maybe someone might even meet us somewhere in the world during the year”

The questions about the trip pop up now and again and we have always been very honest that we don’t know everything however that we are going to make sure it is the most amazing family year ever. That we are going to lots of exciting things and see lots of incredible and interesting places! We try and involve her whenever we can, so if we read about a place to go, or talk about our route or even how we are travelling between places (more about that in a later post) we talk to her about over dinner, in the car etc.

StJohn and I are both of the visual school so images work well for us, to get us kick started and to make this real for Charlotte (and us!) we had a world map laser cut in cork by Get Cork here in Cape Town. We’ve put it up on the wall on the landing. It is along a wall that leads to our bedrooms so it’s a daily reminder. We’ve started pinning places we’d like to go to on the map and hopefully by late this year we will have a clear route of where we are doing and the direction we are travelling in, seasons and visas have to be considered!

There are lots of things we need to think about not only financially and logistically that requires planning, research, discussion and debates and decision making. Some aspects look daunting and not so much fun, however this is a family adventure of a lifetime. Very few families in the world get the opportunity to experience and so we are taking it on with both sets of hands, and the internet!

Until next time…

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