Sixintheworld is a family of six, ranging in age from 38 to 4, on a yearlong round the world adventure. This blog tracks their preparation and travels from May 2006 through August 2007.
Contact us at thesix@sixintheworld.com
We’ve spent the past two months answering questions about the trip, editing videos from the trip, writing about the trip, and speaking to groups about the trip. Our trip-related activity hasn’t slowed down, but to the contrary is gaining momentum. We spoke to one group last night, received a request to speak to another today, and are addressing yet another tomorrow night. We’re engaged in running conversations with media folks, both print and television, and answering emails from other family travelers. But has all this focus on our recent travels prevented us from reassimilating to life at home? Probably. Is it the only reason we’re finding it tough? Absolutely not.
As we gain a little distance and perspective from our year away, one thing is becoming clear: we’ve changed. The extent to which we’ve changed seems to be directly proportional to our age, with Tom and I being the most affected and the kids less so. Dax and McKane are embracing high school and middle school with renewed gusto, sending about 782 text messages per day, and generally glad to be surrounded by hundreds of people their own age. They like to talk about the trip with their friends, if and when they’re interested, and appreciate the insight it gives them into their world history classes. Kieran and Asher operate the same way they did on the road, taking whatever comes their way and turning it into a party–school, music class, soccer practice, free time at home. They like to watch videos of their adventures but seem just as happy to ride Big Wheels through the house as they were to ride elephants through the jungle. Tom and I are glad to spend time with our friends and neighbors but long for the freedom and togetherness we had with the kids on the road. We spend our days contemplating and working toward our still uncertain future and our nights juggling the kids’ homework and activities. Periodically we’ll think about what we were doing a year ago (today would have been surfing in Caloundra, Australia….aaaahhhhh) and wistfully imagine ourselves back on the road.
The bottom line is Tom and I are broken. Not in a temporary, bad way, but in a permanent, positive way. Many of the things we let consume us before now seem trivial and our vision of our future has changed. Above all right now we want to preserve our new perspective and avoid getting sucked back into a complicated, overscheduled lifestyle. We now have one less year with the kids than we did when we set off on our big adventure, and though it was an amazing one, we can’t rest on our laurels and stop building the memories. We’d love to find a way to incorporate a few annual stints of extended travel into our lives (and are actively working on it) but have to juggle this desire with the kids’ need for a home base replete with friends, drum teachers, and tennis coaches.
The journey we thought ended on July 21st has really only just begun. Give us a few more months to sort out our feelings and we might be living in a lean-to in the forest, working a sailboat in the Caribbean, or following Asher to an Olympic soccer training camp. Now that we’ve opened our minds, the possibilities are endless.
It isn’t very often that you get to take a year and travel around the world. It therefore stands to reason that it is equally as rare that you get the opportunity to adjust to being home after spending a year traveling around the world. It turns out going is the easy part. There is a lot to like about being back in the United Sates and a special comfort attached to residing in one’s home, but there continue to be daily tugs on our hearts and backpack cords to remind us about all we experienced. It would be impractical and boring to list all the things we miss, however there are a few that stick out to me.
1 Geographic Diversity - I miss deserts, I miss mountains, I miss oceans, and I miss waterfalls. Wait a second. What am I complaining about? We may be in Georgia, but we are in the middle of a drought which has made our yard look like a desert. There is a hill about 25 miles from here people call a mountain (Stone Mountain), though to someone from the Rockies it looks more like a bump, and our neighborhood has a waterfall.
2. Open Air Markets - Shopping in the US is so antiseptic. Walmart and Costco have taken all the adventure out of buying groceries. There is nothing like the sickeningly sweet smell of cow carcasses wafting through a Bolivian market, the cacophony of aromas rising out of a Vietnamese one, with flowers on one side of the aisle and dying, flapping fish on the other, or the adventure of getting to know one Thai dessert food vendor out of a hundred and then frequenting her stand each day to purchase whatever homemade delicacy she has on offer. I enjoy chatting with the clerks at Quik Trip, but I know they didn’t awaken in a grass hut at 4:00 am to prepare my hot dog nor does the dollar I fork over mean as much to them.
3. The World as Our Playground - At home we watch Kieran and Asher torment bugs, jump off rocks, and play with animals, but it’s just not the same as seeing them leap off ledges at ancient Khmer temples, set up ant fights in the middle of a Roman colosseum, or chase llamas through the ancient Incan ruins of Machu Picchu. They didn’t have an understanding of the significance of these places but were simply kids enjoying life in their given surroundings. For me, however, their oblivion helped the settings come alive. I imagined that the children who grew up in these places were equally immune to their histories and played with just as much abandon as did our little ones. Kids breathe new life into old places and ours taught us to see them in a new light. Now we can’t imagine visiting another UNESCO World Heritage site without them!
4. The Uncertainty of of Tomorrow - For a year we approached every morning and every corner as the beginning of a new adventure. With this attitude we were never bored and regularly surprised by what each day brought. When you have to find shelter, food, and entertainment in places where you don’t speak the language, predictability ceases to be a factor. Every interaction and task is a new experience offering untold insight, pleasure, and sometimes frustration. As I look back I often can’t believe how many surprises we had on any given day. The shock of our 1950’s era apartment in Bulgaria and disappointment of a daytime visit to the underwhelming fortress ruins were countered by the discovery of a cheap, delicious pizza restaurant where we dined with fascinating fellow travelers and an evening stroll to the edge of town where we watched the ruins come alive courtesy of a world class sound and laser show.
Other times our days were just one exciting adventure after another. When we were driving from the east coast of South Africa to Zambia, we stopped for our first night in a city in northern South Africa. The city was the last big point on the map before Botswana and the last outpost for 200 miles. As we pulled in there was one nice hotel but it was out of our price range, and we were ready to camp. Rather than give in and spend the money, we decided to drive around and look for camp sites. As dusk approached the bustling city started to change. People disappeared and police in modified tanks emerged. We decided to drive out of the city and look for a more remote place, assuming in-town camping would be questionable at best. We started by driving west, but it quickly became obvious this was the wrong direction. Somewhat shaken, we turned around and found a lovely campsite about 10 miles to the northeast of town. It was dark by the time we pulled in so we sent up our tents, made dinner, showered, and went to bed. We were completely unaware of the wonderful red rock, turquoise blue lake, and mischievous baboons that would be there to greet us in the morning. Over the course of the next day we were chased by wild elephants, pestered by panhandlers, and had an argument which ended with me throwing a french fry at the wall of a Wimpy Burger. Asher teases me about that incident to this day.
Togetherness - Togetherness is a gift that is difficult to achieve in the modern world. As a traveling executive, I had little opportunity before our trip to spend significant chunks of time with the kids. For one fabulous year I was able to spend every minute of every day with the five most important people in my life. Not only was it fulfilling simply to be with them, it was truly amazing to experience the world through six different lenses and discuss and share our many experiences as we lived them. By contrast, with the exception of weekends, we now spend more hours apart than together and I have to prod the kids to find out what’s happening at school. When they’re not in school, the older two are occupied with homework or socializing while the younger two have to go to bed so early we only have a few hours with them each afternoon. Time is passing much more quickly now than it did on the road and Anne and I fear our time with our kids is once again slipping away.
6. Food, Food, Food - You knew this one was coming. You can go to an international food court at home. You can go to ethnic restaurants, but 90% of the time what you are getting is a dumbed down version of a native cuisine. I have been to many great Chinese restaurants around the US, but it was in Chengdu that I finally ate hotpot (fish heads and all) so strong it left my mouth numb, almost dentist numb. The food in Vietnam is different because it is fresh, as in breathing hours before you eat it fresh. I wake up with teeth marks on my hand as I dream about the steaks in Argentina. As an example, I picked up a hibachi chicken and rice bowl yesterday. The food was good, but instead of the traditional light soy or ginger sauces used in Japan, they dropped in about a cup of mayonnaise mixed with ketchup. This was my dipping sauce? It was fry sauce! Ughh. I like mayonnaise as much as the next person, but combining a light Japanese rice bowl with fry sauce is unnatural and should be prevented. When I lived in Japan almost twenty years ago, I actually had my grandma send me a recipe so I could make “American style” mayonnaise as it wasn’t even sold there. After my meal, I was sorry for the other patrons, sorry for the sweet little Japanese couple who can’t serve their native food in its lowfat form, and mostly sorry for me because my food was so dry I actually had to use my fry sauce.
There is so much we want to tell you, yet we’re trying to be judicious as we sort through our muddled emotions and ongoing post-travel shock. For today, we thought we’d share something someone else has to say about us. Carly Blatt interviewed us a few weeks ago for a piece she wrote for Matador Travel, an independent traveler’s online haven. She was spot on in her representation of what our trip was all about and even went so far as to post her story in the Innovators category of Matador’s Traverse Magazine. If you’re interested, check it out here at Matador Travel.
Carly is a passionate traveler herself and called Dax last night to find out more about his various adrenaline exploits around the globe. She was particularly interested in his South African bungy jump, of which we realized we never posted video. How could this be? You might recall it is the world’s HIGHEST commercial bungy jump–a whopping 709 feet–and the intrepid Dax faced it without hesitation. While I wish you could all be at the Bloukrans Bridge on the breathtakingly beautiful Garden Route to witness the jump yourselves, for the moment you’ll have to settle for the footage below. Check it out and let Dax know what you think! He hasn’t found anything to rival it in our Atlanta environs just yet.
We were all looking forward to returning to our favorite foods after almost a year away from home. For months Dax craved Backyard Burgers, McKane dreamt of Tollhouse cookie dough, and the little kids pined for Oreo ice cream. While all these delicacies are still here, we’ve discovered that some of our favorites have changed, and we’ll have to fly across an ocean or two to get them. It turns out nothing’s better than an Argentine steak in the evening or Vietnamese pho (noodle soup) in the morning.
Barring any immediate international travel, I realized it might help to look for some new domestic favorites. The key for me with food has always been ease and portability. Hearth and home are wonderful, but I’m impatient and would rather do almost anything than cook. (Fortunately for the kids, Tom compensates for my deficiency.) So, much to my foodie friends’ chagrin, my perfect sustenance can be held in my hand and eaten while in transit or performing other tasks. This is why in the past I relished the convenience and tastiness of Quik Trip’s 99 cent beef taquito. Alas, as with most things I like, my beloved taquitos were 86′ed in favor of a spicy version which left me sputtering. It was therefore with the highest of hopes that last week I purchased a new 99 cent alternative, the stuffed breadstick. I had my doubts, namely that nacho beef and Italian herb bread could make a good flavor marriage, but I figured it merited a one dollar experiment. I immediately regretted my choice. I’m not sure who decided these two things belonged together, but Quik Trip might want to consider moving him/her to a different job. Come to think of it, the stuffed breadstick creator might well be the same person who thought it was a good idea to leave the “c” out of quick, though he may simply have lifted the idea from Nestle and their chocolate-loving bunny.
My experience with the stuffed breadstick was an unpleasant reminder that some things should simply never be. Upon further reflection and a week of my children attending Georgia public schools, it hit me: maybe Quik Trip’s problem resides in its utter disregard for the rules of the English language. Their most excellent soda fountains are the source of much delight for our family, but according to McKane’s English teacher, Quik Trip has little hope of succeeding in this life. You see, my 12-year-old, frighteningly high-IQ son was required to complete a 20-question worksheet which claimed it could predict with 80% accuracy his future income and occupational level. Having inherited his Ivy-league father’s poor grammar gene, he managed to score in the second lowest bracket and thereby was promised an annual income of $10,000-20,000 and an occupational level of “unskilled” (a few more points off and he would have found himself “unemployable”). Tom, who earns quite a bit more than this, didn’t score much better. I, who currently earn nothing, score in the highest bracket and should apparently be a top executive earning more than $150,000. The teacher, who could probably match my performance, undoubtedly earns much less than this unless she runs a business on the side. So far that’s 0% accuracy.
What really irks me is not the silly worksheet–they’re a fact of life where we live–but the fact that the kids were made to raise their hands when the teacher called their category so all their peers would be aware just how hopeless their futures are. Fortunately McKane has seen and experienced enough in the world to recognize the inherent absurdity and shrug it off. He’s met brilliant people who work for free, poor people whose intelligence far exceeds their income, and children with no material possessions who are happy just to be alive. I only hope the other students who fell short don’t need a trip around the world to bolster their self-esteem.
