Big step today - all four of us have officially applied for Global Entry. My application was accepted a couple weeks ago, and I wanted to wait for that to happen before I went through the process for the kids. M filled out his own, and I did the applications for S1 and S2. Weirdest part? I couldn't figure out a way to start applying for the kids without providing a separate email address for each of them. Luckily, I already have email accounts set up for them through gmail, but in order to do that I had to lie about their ages to Google. (Sorry, Google!)
So, the U.S. government requires even infants to have their own email addresses, despite the fact that you have to be 13 to get a legit one (unless you have a school account, in some cases). And by the way, even infants have to be "interviewed" for this process, which I'd love to see. "Little baby, could you please tell me how long you were employed at your last place of business?"
Well, whatever. The applications are filled out. Now I'll wait and see if the rest of my family has made the cut, and hopefully then we'll get to the interview process. Siiiigh.
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
A Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins With...
...a shit ton of planning. Since the earliest days of our relationship - I'm talking '98 or '99, way before kids or even marriage - M and I have had a plan to do at least a year of worldschooling at some point before our kids leave the nest. There wasn't even a word for it back then, but we met this lovely family in Teacapan, Mexico who was doing just that. We were camping in our VW Westfalia, and they were doing the same. They were a family of five, with the kids' ages being pretty spread out (high schooler to kindergartener or something like that). We were smitten with the family and the idea of their life. The kids were happy and engaging. The parents were interesting and fun. We asked a lot of questions, and they were more than happy to share. We tucked the information into the back of our brains for future use.
So here we are, 20 years and 2 kids later, and we're finally gearing up to take our own similar journey. Over the past couple of decades, as we've traveled more and gotten to know our kids' personalities, we've narrowed down which year(s) would work best for us. Our son (S1) and daughter (S2) are 5.5 years apart in age, so the timing is a little tricky. We want the little one to be old enough to really grasp and remember what we're doing. And the big one can't be so big that he's bored by the idea of traveling with parents and a little sister.
We also want to disrupt their public school educations as little as possible, because we plan to put them right back into the system when we get back. In doing my research on that, I've realized that temporary homeschooling is quite different from long-term. Long-term folks can kinda go wild with any number of curricula, but we'll need to stick pretty close to at least the math and science bits they'll be missing, so when they come back it won't be difficult to keep up. I'm not at all concerned about the reading, writing, history, and geography parts, because they'll be experiencing those in a very real way every day. And I'll discuss the rest with principals and teachers as we continue to plan.
The kids will be in their 8th and 3rd grade years when we're traveling. S1 will be in his last year of middle school, so he'll come back to start high school with all of his buddies. This will also allow him two full years of the bilingual program at his middle school (6th and 7th grades) so I'm hopeful that will allow him to get some real world practice in Spanish-speaking countries. S2 will be in the middle of elementary school, and we've been a part of that community for 6 years already. So sneaking out and back in after one year shouldn't be too disruptive. The school's teachers also happen to be really, really supportive of stuff like this. We're very lucky to have an amazing public school as our homebase.
I'll be blogging here occasionally as we do the initial planning. And my hope is to have at least three of the four of us blogging daily or weekly when we're actually on The Big Trip. Expect a lot of brainstorming and flip-flopping regarding our plans, because we're learning more every day. But maybe you'll read this and be inspired to try a big adventure of your own!
So here we are, 20 years and 2 kids later, and we're finally gearing up to take our own similar journey. Over the past couple of decades, as we've traveled more and gotten to know our kids' personalities, we've narrowed down which year(s) would work best for us. Our son (S1) and daughter (S2) are 5.5 years apart in age, so the timing is a little tricky. We want the little one to be old enough to really grasp and remember what we're doing. And the big one can't be so big that he's bored by the idea of traveling with parents and a little sister.
We also want to disrupt their public school educations as little as possible, because we plan to put them right back into the system when we get back. In doing my research on that, I've realized that temporary homeschooling is quite different from long-term. Long-term folks can kinda go wild with any number of curricula, but we'll need to stick pretty close to at least the math and science bits they'll be missing, so when they come back it won't be difficult to keep up. I'm not at all concerned about the reading, writing, history, and geography parts, because they'll be experiencing those in a very real way every day. And I'll discuss the rest with principals and teachers as we continue to plan.
The kids will be in their 8th and 3rd grade years when we're traveling. S1 will be in his last year of middle school, so he'll come back to start high school with all of his buddies. This will also allow him two full years of the bilingual program at his middle school (6th and 7th grades) so I'm hopeful that will allow him to get some real world practice in Spanish-speaking countries. S2 will be in the middle of elementary school, and we've been a part of that community for 6 years already. So sneaking out and back in after one year shouldn't be too disruptive. The school's teachers also happen to be really, really supportive of stuff like this. We're very lucky to have an amazing public school as our homebase.
I'll be blogging here occasionally as we do the initial planning. And my hope is to have at least three of the four of us blogging daily or weekly when we're actually on The Big Trip. Expect a lot of brainstorming and flip-flopping regarding our plans, because we're learning more every day. But maybe you'll read this and be inspired to try a big adventure of your own!
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