The Germination of a Dream
Our family has wanted to live outside of the US for a while now. I studied in Mexico in 1997 and 1998 and then worked there the fall of 1999. Chris and I then had a chance to go abroad together in 2009, when I accepted a job teaching business English in Kobe, Japan. What that blog post doesn't capture is that the day the official paperwork arrived is also the day I found out I was pregnant with Shelby. Of course, that changed everything. I couldn't imagine moving to a country where I didn't speak the language or have a support system, all while navigating pregnancy and childbirth. So that particular opportunity died, but the idea of living abroad did not. It has stayed very much alive.
When I finally pivoted my career into the corporate world in 2014, I did it with a hope that perhaps I could eventually arrange an international assignment. I've now worked for two global companies with plenty of international presence, but nothing has panned out, so we started thinking about how we could just go on our own. Along the way we navigated the Covid pandemic and, as part of that, I homeschooled the girls for a year. Not just Zoom school; we did our own thing outside of the system. And, while I didn't have adequate time to invest the way I would have really liked, I realized that schooling on our own was a viable alternative. I also discovered the concept of worldschooling, where families use the world as their classroom, traveling internationally and helping their kids learn as they go. Yahtzee. That sounded amazing. Traveling on our terms, wherever we wanted, whenever we wanted. And using the opportunity to learn firsthand about the people, cultures, languages, and histories of those places. The catch, of course, is that we needed enough resources.
So, for the last ~2 years we've been shoring up assets. I've also been following other people's worldschooling adventures, learning about how they make it work and where they've enjoyed being. We still have a lot to learn and some of that (okay, probably a lot of that) will come as we take the leap forward and just figure things out as we go. There's no one way to prepare for worldschooling or even to worldschool once on the journey. Every family's goals and realities are different.
As to where we'll go, we have some ideas, but we'll probably figure out a lot of it along the way. Come along for the ride!