Jalbert Family Adventure

Preparations

Preparing to leave was hard.  Harder than the actual travelling.  It was very unnatural and disconcerting.  There isn’t a lot written on how to prepare to travel around the world for a year and especially not much on the subject including children.  What we did find was extremely helpful and what follows explains how we prepared for our adventure:  

Books

There were two books that we purchased that explained the essentials:

The Practical Nomad

The Rough Guide to Traveling Around the World

These books are written with a backpacker orientation – young and carefree. Little spent on the logistics of houses, children, schooling, and family. We also researched on the internet and found some sites where folks had done this and some of the sites were quite detailed about all of the considerations including families. We got some useful and essential information for us to begin exploring. One by one, each obstacle was overcome until we were able to say, “We can do this”. Following is how we handled each aspect of our detachment from our existing world. We needed to work quickly as we had only first discussed the prospect of traveling extensively at the end of March 2007. We didn’t actively start researching until mid-April. If we left September 1, that would only be 4.5 months to prepare. Some folks prepare a year in advance (except for the backpackers).

Airfare

We first looked into airfare knowing it would be a major expense. We came up with a list of places that we would like to visit and organized them sequentially so that we would always be travelling in warm weather. Southern hemisphere November through March and northern hemisphere the rest of the time. We opted not to include South America as that seemed a more feasible destination in the future due to its proximity to the U.S. The rest of the countries we wanted to include were those countries that we did not anticipate traveling to in the future either due to its far-flung location, expense or inability to visit adequately within a normal vacation time-frame such as New Zealand. For example, we didn’t include Spain because we anticipate making a dedicated trip to Spain in the future whereas, we included Cambodia because we would like to see a few things there but wouldn’t make a special trip there in the near future. The books recommended some agencies that specialized in “round-the-world” travel. We contacted them and had to work within certain parameters such as 1) staying within a specific total mileage 2) travelling in a specific direction 3) limiting ourselves to a maximum number of flights and 4) travelling within a 12 month period. We finally found an alliance of airlines called OneWorld (www.oneworld.com). With this alliance, there is no maximum mileage (most were 39,000 miles counting land travel and we were planning on 55,000 miles) and they were comprised of an alliance of 10 airlines that had flights to most of the places we wanted to go to. Their main carriers are American Airlines, British Air, Iberia, Quantas, Malev, and Jordan Air. They had a specialized “round-the-world” customer service desk and an online program that allowed you to download the flight schedules and create your itinerary including actual flights. You look online to view the flight patterns and create/customize your itinerary based upon where the airlines fly to. For example, we started out in Paris because you can go from Boston to London, Paris or Madrid. We are travelling from Turkey back to Budapest because the alliance only flies to Egypt out of Budapest. Most of all, their prices were one-third of those quoted by other agents. Plus, kids fly at only 75% of the price. Once we figured out the approximate price of the flights, we determined that it was affordable and then moved onto the next major consideration.

House

Having someone rent our house was a key item because of the expense of maintaining a mortgage. It was never a consideration to sell as some other families we read about had done. We talked to a rental agent who advised us that it would be difficult to arrange for a rental several months in advance as most renters, because of relocation, don’t make arrangements to rent until about a month or two in advance. We didn’t want to put our stuff in storage but didn’t want to share our furnished home with strangers. It dawned on us to approach friends of ours who were already renting and were busting out of their apartment partially due to the arrival of their new baby – a nice addition to their existing 2 boys. They agreed to move in and they anticipated only needing to rent for 11 months which is exactly when we expected to return. Destiny at work.

Jobs

Peter had left his job awhile back as a result of his department’s relocation and decided to pursue his Certified Financial Planning designation. Since he was self-employed, leaving for a trip would not disrupt a job but simply delay starting his business. Peter had recently qualified for the designation and we didn’t want to jeapordize losing it but the CFP board confirmed that the designation is valid for five years without active work.Laura worked for a private bank in Boston and was willing to leave for a year and hope to pick up where she left off or pursue something else upon her return if things changed after the trip. Her employer was supportive. AutomobilesWe decided to take the cars off the road. We kept one car in the three-car driveway while our friends generously offered their barn which had enough room for the other car. InsuranceHomeowners – If we rented our house, we could no longer carry homeowners insurance but instead needed to switch to a fire policy.

Autos

Since we took the cars off the road, we didn’t require insurance.

Medical/Dental

We were able to maintain our current medical and dental plans. Since doctor visits were considered *out-of-network*, we would simply have to lay out money and make claims when we return to the States. Property – We took out a policy that would cover the possessions we would take with us since, without homeowners, our property outside of our home would not be covered.

School

We spoke with the superintendent and the principal of our school and explained our situation. We let them know that we wanted to homeschool but would return next year. They were very supportive and advised us that we would be able to use the school’s existing curriculum since it was for only one year. If we wanted to homeschool permanently, we would have to subscribe to a private curriculum. Also, lucky for us, the school was upgrading their math curriculum so a stack of reference and workbooks from the current version were made available to us. The expectation is that the boys would complete 1st and 2nd grade on the road and move on to 2nd and 3rd as they would have had we stayed in Marblehead.The boys were still assigned to teachers and Laura met with each of them a few times to understand the objectives and get ideas on how to deliver the material. The teachers were very excited to incorporate the boys’ trip into the classroom. Lucky for us, again, that the 2nd grade curriculum includes mapping and letter-writing – which we would obviously get a lot of exposure to.We took with us a duffle bag full of books. We had hoped to scan some of them and print them as needed but simply ran out of time. So, we are carrying 4 math workbooks, 2 phonics books, 2 handwriting books, 2 journals (specially formatted for drawing and writing), 5 paperback books of the chosen author for 2nd grade, 3 mapping workbooks and 2 drawing workbooks for art/entertainment and several paperback reading books.

Greenlight

Those were the big ticket items that were potential show-stoppers if we couldn’t resolve them. One by one, we realized that we could really do this. The following items are the major items that we needed to take care of once we had the “green light”.

Vaccinations We needed lots of shots. The books we had generally explained what types of shots we would require for the different countries we planned to visit. Extensive details were found on the Center for Disease Control’s website (www.cdc.com). We brought our itinerary to our physicians who then told us which vaccinations they could adminster and which ones we would have to go to a travel clinic to get. For example, the average physician does not have yellow fever vaccinations on hand so you have to go to a travel clinic. We each received diptheria, hepatitus A&B, polio, typhoid and yellow fever. In addition, we got rabies and japanese encephalitis shots which consisted of a course of three shots over a 30 day period. So, we received 6 shots the first day, then 2 more shots 7 days later then 2 more shots 23 days later. Believe it or not, the initial 6 shots were easier for the boys than the remaining shots because they knew what was coming after the first time. They were troupers. Lucky for us, there were no side-effects which is sometimes the case.  The travel clinic also armed us with prescriptions for malaria, diarrhea, and conjunctivitis which we are still sometimes susceptible to. We got all of the prescriptions filled before we left – we didn’t want to try filling them on the road.

2 bras

4 pair of underwear

1 micro-fleece pullover shirt

1 rain jacket

1 pair of Keen Newports

1 pair silk lightweight pajamas

1 bathingsuit

1 pair of socks (only for malaria areas or cold nights)

1 bandana (multi-purpose – hat, hankie, bandage, sweat-wiper, pirate hat, lapel pocket-stuffer) 1 large towel1 water-resistent watch (with timer/alarm)1 pair sunglasses1 pair spare eyeglasses

5 Stories by single school-preferred author

5 Books for children to practice reading

2 Art books (Drawing)

15 pieces of construction paper

2 Pencil Boxes (contain 10 colored pencils, 8 regular pencils, 8 erasers, 2 dice, 1 pencil sharpener)

2 sheets of “Good Job” homework stickers

1 Guidebook for next destination

School Book Duffle weight = 15 lbs

Peter’s Backpack Clothes4 short-sleeved shirts1 long-sleeved shirt2 shorts (with zip on pants)1 short (doubles as bathingsuit)

1 rain jacket

1 fleece pullover shirt

1 baseball cap

4 pair underwear

1 bandana

1 pair socks

1 pair sunglasses

1 pair Keen Newport ShoesToiletries1 Toothbrush1 Toothpaste1 Deoderant30 Q tips

1 pack of Uno cards

1 pack playing cards

1 Hackysack ball

1 blow-up globe beachball

1 pack of president flashcards

2 magnifying/explorer glasses 

24 Crayons

2 swimming goggles

2 plastic “juggling balls” 1 stopwatch 1 mini-puzzle (bought in Croatia)1 superball (found in Paris)3 good skipping rocks (found in Croatia)1 walking stick (found somewhere)

1 walking stick (found somewhere else)

1 Chestnut (found in Budapest)

(following items always kept in daypack)

2 kid’s sunglasses

2 kid’s binoculars

1 bottle of water

Blackberry

(sometimes laptop)

1 mini first-aid kit

1 Guidebook 4 extra batteries for cameraCamera (carried separately)2 school workbooks (subject depends of day)Peter’s glassesUsually some postcards to write/mail