Travelling Slow with Mozart: Interview with Jeanne from SoulTravelers3 (Part 2)
This is the second part of an interview with Jeanne from SoulTravelers3. Read the first part here.
What are some of the challenges of travelling with a kid?
It is really best to travel slow with a kid or as a family, so some would call that a challenge, although we find it a benefit. Kids need time to play and self direct in between touring, scheduled events and museums. Actually, I think everyone benefits from having the luxury of time, but kids will force that issue by getting cranky if pushed to go too fast or on too rigid a schedule. We are big believers in self directed, free play time and feel one of the great benefits of family travel is doing ordinary things in extraordinary locations.
That said, if it is planned well, we have found Mozart to be a real trooper with some fast travel or long hauls that were necessary. She thought getting up at four in the morning to take 2 buses, 4 taxis, a trans-continent ferry and six hour train into Africa from Spain, was just the cat’s meow! I worried about t this long journey before hand, but it was easy and went very smoothly. The key is always schedule down time before and after more stressful jaunts. Getting up early allowed her to do a lot of sleeping along the way. (Read more on her blog: Long Day Into Africa)
We also once did three museums in one day in Paris, but it was extremely well planned, with lots of rest, playground stops, leisurely lunch and snacks in between fairly quick, child centered museum stops. So children can do faster travel, but one must prepare well and leave time before, during and after for the down time that children need. I think we took a few days off after that more intense one. (Read more: 3 Museums in a Day)
Adults can skip meals or go without sleep, but kids need to keep healthy routines. Again, this has been a challenge that has benefited all of us. We always have snacks and food with us when we roam or tour, so we are always prepared to have healthy choices available rather than high costs, non nutritious foods that fill tourists areas. Mozart might be the motivation, but we all benefit and eat the good food and snacks. Sometimes there are no places around or everything is closed, so good to have food and water with you at all times. We almost always have raw almonds or walnuts and have been known to make a meal out of them once in a while out of desperation!
It is really best to travel slow with a kid or as a family, so some would call that a challenge, although we find it a benefit.
Schooling could be thought of as a challenge, but we enjoy taking that time and learning together. Our life is like one big field trip and we are the type that enjoy learning as we go in fun, hands-on ways. Our homeschool supplies are portable enough that we find it easy to do the basics like math and reading where ever we are, be it ferry, RV, train, hotel, or outside in a park. We even take our homeschool supplies with us when we tour for a month or more without our RV like we did in parts of Greece, Turkey and Croatia, even though we only carry a small daypack each and her small violin.
Mozart was a really good reader when we began our journey when she was five and that has been extremely helpful. “Grab a book” is one of our many common expressions. It allows our extremely active child to have an outlet when she is confined in the RV while driving, in a bus or on a train, when waiting for food in restaurants or when adults need quiet time or adult conversation. One of the advantages of traveling in an RV, is we can carry many books with us as we travel and most of them are for Mozart. We have bought some as we go as well. This challenge of self entertainment has led our book lover into a wonderful lifetime habit in a way that would probably not been as conducive had we maintained our previous life.
Keeping enough reading books at hand (she is a voracious reader) and maintaining her music lessons and practice for violin and piano are probably are biggest challenges. The violin is easier because of size, but we have managed with a very good digital piano that we bought in Europe when we arrived and carry with us in the RV. We make a stand for it when we pick our winter home, usually out of the local bricks or on a table. We love our piano teacher who uses Skype webcams to teach her (while he remains in Chicago).
What do you think have been the hardest things for Mozart about travelling the world? Does she miss the comfort of home?
Mozart does not miss the comforts of home, because we literally and figuratively bring our home with us and have all the comforts of home and sometimes more (like pools, water slides, fancy playgrounds at almost every campsite). Our life is like one big vacation for Mozart, an endless summer full of friends and lots of adventure, so she has not found much that is hard for her. It is funny, how a tiny space like our RV can be home, but it is, we just move it from time to time, so our “backyard” changes!
The main thing that children need that is the ultimate in “comfort of home” is their parents loving attention and Mozart gets more of both of her parents time than any child around. We are attachment parents, so we feel parents are most important (rather than peers ) and like many homeschoolers we want her bonded to us and the world through us, instead of through peers just her age. She makes friends every where of every age, but her foundation stability comes from her parents. Thus our “home” which is about the love we share, is always with us, it is just a free mobile kind that allows us to have the whole world as our home. I have been amazed at how we have not missed our dream home at all (that we were once very attached to). I suppose that is because “home” is not a house, but where the heart is.
We have been conscious of keeping a consistency to her life even with the travel. We go back to the same village in Spain every winter so far, where we rent a home and she goes to the local school. She has bonded with the kids there and does things like play-dates, flamenco dance classes and sleep overs with friends. Our seven months of travel and five months of rest, reflection and deep immersion works well on many levels.
The hardest thing for Mozart has been not being able to hug or grandmother, aunties or favorite “best-friend” cousin.
She also keeps up regular contact with her grandparents, relatives and friends at home through free webcam Skype calls. This has been very beneficial and solves many of the problems that could be a challenge for a child living at a distance. Today’s technology makes such a difference and we have not dealt with any homesickness yet. Todays extended traveling family is very different than say a missionary family in China in the fifties where snail mail and expensive calls made one grow up in isolation. I find Mozart can immerse with a new culture while maintaining her own. She goes to festivals in Spain talking Spanish, but then can come home and talk to her cousin about it in English, face to face via webcam and catch up with what is happening in California.
There are so many common kids icons around the world, like McDonalds, Subway or playgrounds even in remote place and I think that helps too. We are a 3 laptop family, so part of our life is connecting with real friends, web2.0 friends and friends we have made along the way. Mozart has emailed friends and watched DVD’s with kids around the world as well. They might be from many different cultures, but they share some of the same “kid culture” as it is so omnipresent in todays world. There are moments when we forget that we are not in our home country! That has been true in Morocco and Turkey as well as Europe.
Being in countries where we do not speak the language well (she is only fluent in two) can be a little hard on Mozart. I notice she lights up when she hears Spanish or English and is ready to converse with child or adult. Still, she does play well with kids who do not share a language, if there is no choice. She might see this as a challenge, but i think the exposure to different languages and appreciating the usefulness of her bilingualism, has been a great value. We heard lots of languages at home, but she never would have been able to experience what life is like in a country which has a dominant language unlike one of her own. Living in Spain has taught her to respect her second language much more than she ever would have in our English dominated home country.
I suppose the hardest thing for Mozart has been not being able to hug or grandmother, aunties or favorite “best-friend” cousin. She can talk to them over Skype and do show and tell with things like her latest creations, songs on the piano or show missing baby teeth, but they have yet to invent a hug machine from a distance!
How has travelling together bonded you as a family more than staying at home would have?
Little did we know that the bonding factor might be one of the greatest benefits of extended travel for families! I had read that before from other families that had done world tours or long sabbaticals in foreign countries, but I am not sure that one can truly appreciate just how deep such an experience bonds, without experiencing it. It is sort of like the whole parenting thing, you can not really understand it fully until you are doing it.
I am a freedom junkie, so the more we do this, the more I am convinced that this is the way we were meant to live.
We were very close before, so I did not really expect our journey to have such an impact on our bonding. We have so many shared experiences, both very enriching and some of the more negative moments like being left in the middle of nowhere by a bus in Turkey. Sometimes I feel like we do about twenty years of profound experiences every year on our travels. You can not see and experience as much as we have and not be impacted and changed. We do it together like a well oiled team with lots of laughter along the way. We learn much about working as a team and cooperation.
As full and rich as our life was at home, there is just no comparison to the daily input that we get on this journey. At home, we had very predictable lives and now our whole life is a “wing it” experience of living in the now. The reason companies take employees out on ropes courses and such things to help in bonding is because adventure increases the opportunity for working together much more than a routine existence where it gets fairly easy to sleep walk through years and relationships.
I am a freedom junkie, so the more we do this, the more I am convinced that this is the way we were meant to live. I think we are all much more alive now, thanks to this journey. We are also all much closer and cherish the time together and seeing, experiencing the world together. It has been great for our marriage as well.
We live in a extremely small space for seven months of the year, especially compared to our 4000 square foot home with three acres. Our RV is only van size with a bed over drivers seating area. I was quite concerned about that before going because I like my space and alone time. We all adjusted very quickly to that and the high cooperation that is needed for living in such tight quarters has helped us bond and grow. We use to have to yell to someone who was in a different section of our house, now we can pretty much touch almost anything with out hardly moving.
I agree with this doctor’s view of the benefits of extended travel (from Transitions Abroad):
“It is never too late to build family foundations,” says Dr. Nicholas Levy, a pediatrician affiliated with the Univ. of California, San Diego, who advocates traveling sabbaticals for families. “Travel, particularly international travel, exposes families to different lifestyles that intrinsically bring families together.”
“Adaptation and accommodation are probably the most valuable lessons that we can teach our children,” Levy says.
Often, when people do something like sell their house and head out to travel the world, people around them can be quite critical. Did you find this?
Yes, some people were very critical, although many were also supportive and “got” the dream we were setting out on. Many said they wish they could do it and you would not believe how many people proposed that we adopt them!
It is funny, but the people who thought we were most nuts when we decided to do this, now think we are so clever! A few of them are now considering a similar course. We had a very special home that we had worked very hard on and in our area near Silicon Valley, houses of that quality are almost impossible to find. This made everyone think we were out of our minds for selling it. Deciding to sell our dream home was probably the hardest part for us. We thought the housing market would crash, but few saw it coming in 2005 and it was a risk. It turned out that we sold it right at peak and was absolutely the best decision of our lives, but there were no guarantees when we did it in 2005.
Both sides of the family had some trouble adjusting to our leaving, which is understandable. Once they realized we were serious and determined, they came around and have been extremely supportive. Thankfully, in today’s world with blogs and webcam free calls on Skype, we can actually stay in better contact than when we lived twenty minutes drive away. Sometimes we forget that we are so far apart and only miss out on hugs. My mother, who recently turned eighty had to learn to use a computer, but finds now she knows more about our lives than when we lived close by!
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Posted by Eric on November 18th, 2008 in Interviews.
