Thanks to our never-say-die friends on the ground in Kenya and the generous contributions of our family and friends all over the world, the playground at Solio Public School in Nyeri, Kenya has begun. As you can see above, the heavy equipment has moved in and work is progressing very quickly. The first picture shows…
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Coming Home – Part 1
We are on our way home, sitting now on an Air Canada flight from San Jose, Costa Rica, where we have spent the last 6 weeks of our journey, heading back to the comfort and familiarity of the home in Toronto we left almost 12 months ago. We munch on chips, sip our drinks and…
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My Hippie Life in the 21st Century
So here I sit in a bamboo yoga studio, surrounded by the Costa Rican highland jungle. Across from me a 20-something with dreadlocks and piercings in her lip stretches to the tunes of The Who. A young man with a long blonde ponytail and a beaded necklace greets us as he walks by, offering hugs…
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Ecuador – Our Routine Life
As we settle in for a month in our new home-away-from-home in Ecuador, I realize how much we like our routines. Since leaving our stay in Thailand in February, we were pretty much living out of suitcases as we toured through Phuket and Borneo, and across the ocean to Quito and the Galapagos. Not a…
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Back to the Future
Written on March 16, 2012 by Linda in Air Travel, Ecuador, Galapagos, Photos, Singapore, Transportation
I feel like I’ve stepped into a time capsule. After traveling in one direction for 8 months, we have arrived back to the same time-zone we departed from but coming at it from the back-end. In fact, by flying eastward and crossing the Pacific Ocean, we gained back the day we lost when we flew…
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Uncharted Territory – Southeast Asia
I don’t know why exactly but for some reason the Asian leg of our journey was the one I was the least excited about. I’d always wanted to go to Africa and South America, the Middle East was intriguing to me and of course Europe is always a fun destination, but Asia, hmm. When, as…
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India – what a bargain!
Yes India is fascinating and exotic and chaotic and exasperating and everything I thought it would be but I hadn’t counted on it being so cheap! Where else can you book a driver for a day for $30.00? Other bargains…. Pop or water, 20 cents Bag of groceries – veggies, fruit, bread, milk, eggs, $3…
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Christmas in South Africa
December was our month to sadly say good-bye to Petra and Sammy and all our wonderful friends in Kenya and move down the continent to South Africa. Read below to see what each of us remembers and catch the slideshow at the end: Linda: We had already confirmed that we would be helping out Paul…
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The Greening of Kenya
At the end of this blog post, please click through to our Christmas appeal! I’ve always known trees are important. In Canada, one of the greenest countries in the world, we’re constantly defending our forests from overzealous logging, urban encroachment and evil developers. In Toronto, you can’t even cut down a tree on your own…
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What I Learned About Jordan
People are friendly “Welcome to Jordan!” We heard it from everyone we met, our hosts, taxi drivers, shop-keepers, the man who made the pizzas at the bottom of our street. And Jordanians truly mean it. They are very proud to serve you and show their hospitality. Our hosts, Dima and her parents Bashir and Abla,…
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Homeschooling Headache
I’ll get straight to the point. Homeschooling Melissa and Chris has had its challenges. Our travel plans in September were to settle, once again, into a home-away-from-home for a full month, this time in beautiful Tuscany Italy. But unlike our month on the farm in Ireland in July, September was also the start of…
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Staying With Friends
Traveling around the world, hopping from port to port, is exciting but tiring so landing on a friend’s doorstep for a brief respite is like finding an oasis in a desert. It’s a time to put up our tired feet, talk in English with people who understand what we’re referring to, catch up on email…
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Pump Up the Volume in London
Never thought I’d complain about going to visit London, England, and I’m not really. But going from the slow-pace of living in the Irish countryside to the congestion and hordes in London was a bit of a shocker. We met up with Tony’s family (10 of us in total) for a whirlwind week of touring…
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Saying Goodbye to Ireland
It’s hard to express how sad I’m feeling leaving Ireland. I can’t remember a time that I’ve felt so attached to anywhere else I have traveled but I’ve come to the conclusion it has to do with many things. First of all, it was our first stop on this risky venture around the world and…
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Vikings, Normans and Those Bloody English
It’s amazing how Monty Python jokes are all making sense now. We’ve watched the movie trilogy again (Holy Grail etc.) and downloaded a lot of the classic skits from Flying Circus and find ourselves appreciating them all over again but from an Irish point of view. The Irish are a very modest lot, never boastful,…
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Getting Dirty
My nails have never been dirtier but I’ve never felt happier. There’s something extremely satisfying about taking a tiny seedling, unearthing it from it’s birth-pot, burying its little roots in a small hole on top of a big, mulchy, earth bed and watching it grow. And then eating it! We spend our days at Carraig…
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Happy Canada Day!
A beautiful purple sky as night descends in Dublin and we have yet to see any form of July 1st celebrations. Ah well. We heard rumours of a pub crawl but not quite something you drag the kids along to. We had a mini-celebration of sorts with our good friend Ellen and her adorable daughter…
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We’re here!
We’ve arrived in Ireland and it is only now that the enormity of this trip is sinking in. Jet-lagged and sleep-deprived, we meandered around Dublin’s leafy streets yesterday impressed with how old many of the buildings were and how fast the traffic moved, barely remembering to look right when crossing the streets! We’ve done it!…
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Paying for the Privilege
One of the first questions people ask (or are too polite to ask but are thinking anyway) is how can you afford to travel around the world? We asked the same thing! We have the usual North American expenses – mortgage, children, education, car care, etc. But in reading about the many other RTW families…
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Losing our Best Friend
Sadly, we had to put down our dog Tilly today. 13 years old and sweet and loyal to the end despite struggling with an intestinal tumour that was making life very difficult. She was the first dog Tony and I owned together – always sweet-natured and long-suffering in a big, noisy family where she patiently…
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Renting, Renos and Rain
This is a picture of our yard sale in the rain! I can’t imagine anyone really wants all this junk but at least it’s out of the house and will never return! Why am I telling you this? Because this sale is a result of a year of purging to get our house ready before…
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Home Away From Home
When I started seriously researching for this trip two years ago, my first task was to figure out where we were going. We sat down as a family and all came up with ideas of possible countries we thought sounded interesting or activities we wanted to do or sites we wanted to visit. Then we…
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Getting Shot
Fortunately, I had read a long time ago that you need to get vaccinated for world travel very early on in the planning process. You need to get some shots as early as 6 months ahead of departure. Also fortunately, we have a great Travel Vaccine Clinic here in downtown Toronto that figured it all…
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Canoe Trip Adventure
Now that Melissa (8) and Chris (9) were old enough to paddle with enough power to make a difference, we moved on from RV road-trips to canoe tripping. I love camping in Ontario but I always feel the best part is being able to get away from crowded campgrounds and finding the perfect piece of…
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RV Cruising Again – Quebec and PEI
At this point, our daughter Melissa had joined the family and we were kinda getting twitchy for a little summer traveling. Our older three were all at camp in August so we packed up the younger two into a much smaller version of the RV we had driven south eight years earlier and headed east….
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Space Shuttle Launch, Florida
At exactly 6:22 a.m., March 1st 2002, the Space Shuttle Columbia took off from the Kennedy Space Centre and we saw it happen! We now had Christopher, age 3, with us along with his big brothers Briar (12), Thomas (10) and Dawson (9). Back to Florida again but this time squished into our mini-van. This…
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Go RV or Bust!
I’d always thought that going on a family vacation by motorhome sounded like such a fun idea and so easy – essentially just packing up a mini-version of home and taking it on the road. My only hesitation was the whole idea of staying in trailer parks – concrete pads, nosy neighbours and patio lights….
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