Round the World?

Before we began our current adventure, I was deep in the throes of planning another adventure, a round the world trip for an entire year.  My thinking was that we would take this trip between our last job and the next, when the boys were far along enough in school that they could read independently (so I could attempt road schooling without wanting to kill myself), and we could take off some time while the husband was job hunting.  I also believe very strongly in the "if you build it they will come" mentality, so all my planning was my way of assuring that we actually did this, took this trip at some point in the future.

And then we moved to the Middle East out of the blue.

And at first, I thought this just meant we were going to change our timetable a bit, go on our trip a bit later, when the boys were a bit older.

And then I had an epiphany!

My main goals for taking an extended RTW trip were traveling to many exciting destinations and educating the kids about life in other climes and other cultures without breaking the bank.  I could buy into the backpacking ethic because it appealed to my "travel light" upbringing and my love of frugality, but I wasn't enamored of the idea of trekking across the globe in hiking boots.  (I did that once, actually, backpacked through Europe in college one spring with absolutely zero preparation beyond borrowing someone's backpack, and it was fun and all but doing it with kids seems...less fun.)  But how else could I accomplish my goals?

How indeed?  Now we find ourselves living in Qatar, smack in the middle of a new-to-us culture, home to many other cultural traditions, peoples, and foods, all of which we meet almost daily.  Eradicating cultural myopia?  Educating the boys about the world beyond?  Check, check!

And while Qatar is in many ways an exciting destination in its own right, and we are exploring more every day, my epiphany is this: I can take the family to all sorts of fun and exciting places from here, using our new home as a home-base, keeping them in school at the same time, taking advantage of both their copious vacation time and our location in the center of the globe AND the wonder that is family adventure touring, which I have only just discovered.  So we WILL be traveling around the world, just in short legs, usually one country at a time.  And we will be traveling light, with just our backpacks as carry-ons, my favorite way to go anyway.  We will get to see new parts of the world, and I will only have to plan part of it sometimes and let the tour companies do the rest.  AND, best of all, we will be able to try on a small scale what what we hoped to do on a large scale and see if it is really for us.

So, after I shared my epiphany and my research with my husband, we sat down to decide where we want to go.  And here's where the husband's ideas crashed into mine. You see, I have traveled some already in my life, enough to know there are whole regions of the world I don't need to (re)visit.  My list includes various countries, but I'm not very particular about what I see there.  For example, I want to visit Greece, India, Morocco, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Australia/New Zealand, Spain, and perhaps somewhere in Southeast Asia.  The husband, on the other hand, has the following on his travel list: motorcycling and golfing in Scotland, scuba diving with whale sharks, rafting down the Snake River, and hiking the Incan Trail, all of this with the boys.  There are more, but you get the idea.  A bit specific, no?  I'm so glad I asked!  We did determine that many of his wishes can only occur at some point in the future, after, say, the boys learn to swim...and get scuba certified...and learn to play golf...and drive!  Fortunately, he also has a complementary plan that he and the boys will go on summer adventures together starting when J is 16, so several of these ideas will become those summer outings, which let's me off the hook for the time being.

In the meantime, we are scheduled for our first trip in April, to Frankfurt, Germany!  I know, I know, it's not really that sexy of a destination and it's on neither of our lists, but the husband has never been to Germany though his whole family lived there for awhile AND we happen to have an LDS temple there, so we are killing lots of birds with one stone and starting our travels the easy way, by going to Europe.  I'm planning this one and so far we have a boat trip up the Rhine, trips to multiple zoos, a ride on a funicular, and multiple museum visits on the schedule, including a visit to a pharmacy museum (but of course!).  It's like dipping our little toe in the vast travel ocean.  I think it's going to be fabulous and just the first of many fun family trips.  Stay tuned!