Amy

What are We Doing About Health? …the details

Staying healthy can be a challenge no matter where you are.  Maintaining your health on the road presents it’s own unique challenges.  Here is the list of items we considered when looking at a year long trip.

Medicine Kit.
I have a friend who has used essential oils for years and now sells dōTERRA oils. She has many stories of times she and her family have used essential oils either topically or ingesting them to cure everything from diarrhea to achy muscles. So far I have peppermint, lemon and lavender. I think lavender will be useful to soothe bug bites and inhale for motion sickness, lemon added to honey to soothe sore throats and when used with peppermint, to cleanse our toothbrushes. Peppermint will be useful for upset tummies, mouth rinse when used with the lemon, and to soak our feet after a hot day. I am also planning to get Oregano essential oil, as it is a natural antibiotic and immune booster. My friend recommended the book Modern Essentials as a comprehensive, travel friendly guide to using essential oils.

We will try to eat yogurt in each place we stay to get the local good bacteria as well as take a daily probiotic. I anticipate one or all of us will get sick at one time or another but at least these things can help give us a fighting chance.

We are bringing a travel medical kit that is stocked with Band-Aids, ointments, pain medicine and such. We liked the kit itself because of the pockets and storage uses.

** update**
I ended up purchasing the Physicians Kit from dōTERRA. It came with a slew of digestive aids, immune boosters, sore muscle concoction and many more. I have been testing them out. I woke with a headache one morning and put a swipe of peppermint oil across my forehead and it took the headache away. I have used the muscle rub and that has also helped. I am becoming a believer. I purchased some liquid coconut oil to use as a base and plan to get a few small bottles to dilute the oil to use in ways that were recommended. Such as oregano oil diluted in the coconut oil to rub on our feet as a way to start boosting the immune system.

Travel Clinic:
We went to the travel clinic and had a 3-hour appointment with the travel physician. She spoke to us about travelers’ diarrhea, mosquito borne illnesses such as malaria and Dengue Fever, vaccines, and health clinics abroad. She gave us a list of travel references and a website to locate “Certified Travel Health” physicians around the world. Here is what we chose to do:
• Yellow Fever Vaccines for all (ouch, those are not so fun) many countries will not let you enter without it.
• Typhoid pills for me, Jacob, and Mackenzie (getting Mackenzie to take a pill for the first time is a whole other story. Not by best mommy moment)
Quinn got the Typhoid shot because of her age.
• Hepatitis A/B vaccine for me and Jacob. We will not have time to finish the Hep B vaccine (it is 3 shot series. Second shot a month after the first and the third 6 months after the second) in the US so we will figure that one out later.
• I had to update my TDap vaccine
• We were given prescriptions for an antibiotic, preventative malaria medication and medication if anyone shows signs of malaria.
• Japanese Encephalitis: we held off on this one for now. It will cost about $600 each if we get it in the US. Our travel doctor said if we wait till we get to Bangkok we can get it much cheaper there and it will be just as effective. We will need dental cleanings by then anyway so we will take care of that then too.

Health Insurance:
Jacob researched health insurance that will cover us in case of an emergency. It seems to have all kinds of bells and whistles. It covers everything from emergency evacuation to trip insurance including lost luggage insurance. He found it through World Nomads.

What We Are Bringing

As the items start rolling in, we have to make some tough decisions about what we are bringing. The list is long right now, and will likely change before long!

We ordered a Kindle Fire for one of our daughters when Amazon was having a sale. Jacob had another one that he got from credit card points a year or so ago and never used. We will use them for school purposes for the girls. They have already discovered the math and reading games and love to play them. The cases they picked out were part of the “stuff” that came yesterday. Here is a list of the other stuff:

Parachute Cord: We have read over and over that having some kind of clothes line with you is helpful. My friend told me never to dry anything flat while in Costa Rica because it will immediately start growing mildew. You can buy a “travel” clothes line but the reviews indicated that is was sometimes too short and the material started breaking down right away. Another blogger raved about parachute cord because it can serve many purposes and is a fraction of the cost of the “travel” clothesline. So, we’ll see.

Packing Cubes: Ok. These definitely have mixed reviews. Some people hate ‘em some love ‘em. Jacob was on the fence but I like the idea of pulling out one cube of clothes or electronics or whatever instead of rummaging through the pack and disturbing the organization. Plus they are purple, can’t go wrong with purple. ☺

Plugs and adapter: I think we will have more electronics than anything else in our packs. 4 kindles, one ipad, two laptops, two phones, electric toothbrush, and a Bluetooth speaker. “Holy Christmas” as my good friend D’ would say. That’s a lot of electronics. For this reason, we decided to purchase a travel power cord. It has multiple USB ports. It seems pretty bulky but I’ll make Jacob carry it. 😉 Jacob discovered that all of our electronics are made with an internal electricity adapter, meaning they will automatically convert the watts necessary for power so all we need is the different plug adapters.

Flash drive: Video and pics take up a ton of memory so probably a good idea to have extra storage.

Sleep Sheet: Oddly enough, I already have one of these and my mom had two silk sleep sheets from when my sister and I were kids. She made our down sleeping bags from a 1970s Frostline Kit, I guess the sleep sheets were part of that kit. I bet she didn’t anticipate them going around the world with her granddaughters! We have been told and also read that some hostels charge extra for sheets and we may also want these for other situations where we want a layer between our bodies and the bed. (yikes).

The Home School Switch

Whew or “Peweph” as Mackenzie pronounces it. The home school switch is proving to be a tricky transistion. Trying to get my daughters, mostly oldest, to buy that I can be mama and teacher. I am getting A LOT of flack. “uugh, I don’t want to do school” and “I don’t know how to write”. Man. How do we do this?

I am struggling today. Feeling irritable and trying to figure out what is going on. The girls would have started school today. We ran into the mother of one of Mackenzie’s friends from school.   She had only supportive words to say, but reminded me that school started. My girls were rambunctious all the way through the store and have been picking at each other for the last few days. It feels like the end of summer. It is like they have an internal clock that says, “we are bored, time for school”. It happens every year at this time. Maybe it is me? Maybe I am bored; maybe I am ready for some space from the kids and they from each other. This makes be feel anxious about our trip. If they are sick of each other now, what are we going to do on the road?   And then I think, we will have structure. We will do exercise in the morning followed by 2 hours of reading, writing and math. Here are a couple of the texts we are using to help guide our year, What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know
and What Your Third Grader Needs to Know.
We will have structured quiet, reflective time in the afternoon to draw pictures of our day or write about the adventures we had. I need to have faith that this will help us all feel more grounded, get along better. I know that part of my irritability is not enough exercise. I am naming the intention to make the daily structure, healthy eating and exercise happen. We all need it.

The other part of my irritability, I think, is the judgment that I am feeling from family and strangers today. The cashier in the grocery store gave me a look of displeasure when he saw me walk up to the line with my two kids. “didn’t they start school?” he says. “not yet” I said in a sing-song-ey voice, trying brush it off and skip to the part where I confirm I have found everything I need. “what school do they go to?” he continued.   Uugh. I could lie and say the name of some random school but some how I feel obligated to explain why they aren’t in school yet and then proceed to have an awkward conversation about our trip and defend our “dangerous” and “crazy” decision to travel around the world for a year. To endure the lifted eyebrows of an older man who clearly does not understand what we are doing or why we would choose to travel with our kids in this dangerous, scary world. I don’t think this would have bothered me so much if I had not just spoken with my mother a few hours earlier who was sharing gossip about our extended family “gossiping” with each other about our decision with the same emotional tone. “dangerous” “risky” “Irresponsible”. It makes me think about the culture of fear in which Americans live and about our media’s talent of hooking our attention through catchy-fear based headlines. The trans-generational message that you must buy a house, have 2.5 kids, a dog, and follow gender roles that have been laid out before you by previous generations. I’m not saying this is a bad life. I have been living it. It is a beautiful life. I have found much happiness in watching my kids learn to ride their bikes in our street, in taking them to their first day of school. I am likely to return to this life AND I want to experience an adventure. I want to see the world, the different cultures that I am suppose to understand from reading about them in text books starting in kindergarten through graduate school. I want to live in different countries to really expand my understanding of what diversity means.

Believe me, I am not naïve about what we are doing. I understand the inherent risks. I also understand the amazing ways we are all going to change. Develop a better capacity for patience and adversity. Gel as a family in ways we could never do living this life of running from place to place, school drop off to school pick up to swimming practice to gymnastics to a quick dinner before homework and bed, only to do it all over again the next day, each of us working ourselves into little islands under the same roof. Just because we are making a choice in our lives that others view as different, does it make it “wrong”? I believe you make your own happiness and the only thing limiting you, is you. If you hate your job, who says you have to stick with your original job decision? I think it is only yourself, or some obscure cultural norm that you follow.

The Overwhelming Stuff

It’s 2:30 in the morning. I woke because of pain. I had to have dental work done yesterday that requires me to sleep in a chair with my head propped up. I am thankful to my mother for bringing me her antigravity chair, I am really very comfortable except for the ach in my front teeth. Gum Grafting. Being awake at this hour my mind starts to wander, spin really. It’s been doing that for the last several weeks. I am sure I will not get a good nights rest till we leave. There is so much to do. I look around this house, at all our stuff! How have we accumulated so much? Jacob and I went through 5 boxes of books that are being stored in the garage. Got it down to 1.5. Mostly sentimental pictures and trinkets from our youth and a few special books. This doesn’t even put a dent in things. We need to have a garage sale ASAP. Our realtor suggested we try to clean out the garage, to make it look bigger. Our poor one car “garage” is pretty tiny with our shelves of shit that we barely even look at. Deep breath. This is the hard part, the letting go. Minimizing our stuff to a few boxes. We don’t want to pay a monthly storage fee so are asking our mothers and my sister to store our belongings. It needs to be a reasonable amount but as I look through my kitchen, my clothes, all the stuff I think, how in the world can I sell it all? Won’t I just have to replace it upon reentry?I wish I were watching a time-lapse video that shows our stuff disappearing one by one. It feels like there is so much work to do to sell off our things, pack the few items we are saving and finalize our plans for the first three months of travel.

I guess this is the lesson; the lesson of non-attachment. Once I get rid of the stuff, will I really feel a need to replace it? After embarking on this journey we will all be changed. We will all have different priorities, I hope. Maybe I won’t feel the need to fill up a house with stuff but rather fill up a life with adventure—EDVENTURE.

The Inspiration Hangover

Ok. So today I’m freaking out. Woke up 15 minutes ago and my mind immediately started spinning. We might never come back to this same life. Likely we won’t. If we leave, we will lose our spots in a really good school for our girls. One that has a great community, which we just started getting into. We may never be able to live in this neighborhood again. One that is also just starting to take off; it may become the neighborhood we envisioned when we moved here. Am I ok with that?
Shit just got real yesterday. We met with a realtor to “just get an idea” about what we can get for our house. The number is exactly what we had in mind, maybe a little higher. Oh shit, this could really happen. There are definitely other ways to make this adventure happen that doesn’t include selling your house and quitting your job. Many people have found a way to earn an income while traveling, especially those in the tech industry. For us, we want to push the reset button. We are not satisfied with our current employment and want to use this trip as a way to discover our passion a way to earn money for our family that fills us up instead of depleting us. I am especially interested in the process of “non-attachment” (pretty sure my freak out this morning is a symptom of the anxiety that occurs when you “detach” from your attachments”). Ok, fast forward to dinner at Noodles with the girls. Should we tell them? Of course, here comes my therapist self, “it would probably be best to include them in the process. Let them feel like they have a voice in where we go have time to ask all their questions”. Quinn, of course can only hear that she will get to see monkeys. I have talked up Costa Rica for years so she is just excited for that. She is 5, she will be fine with leaving but what about socially? She can be shy (or is that my projection because I was?), she still sucks her thumb (will she get super sick in southeast Asia?). Mackenzie was not so excited at first. “Will we never come back?”, “Will I be able to bring all my stuffed animals?”, “what about our house?” then….”can we go to Africa?” . That’s another country I have also talked up for years. I put it in their head that we would go when Mackenzie is 11 and Quinn 8. Well, we will just move it up 2 years. In our initial look at the globe and tickets, I was willing to hold off on Africa to be able to see Greece and Turkey but is it fair to tell her “no” when we told them they could be part of the decision making process? Why do we have to tell her no? Seems like this is a trip of a lifetime so better hit those once in a lifetime places. This trip is going to have to be longer than 6 months … but will she be ok? She is the one who is settled into the school community. But as I write that fear, I realize she will be fine. She has always been ok. She is my emotional being. Wears them on her sleeve. She’s a Pisces. I had a friend who once told me that Pisces are sometimes overwhelmed by their emotions. It has helped me to be more open to her emotions, to name them and comfort her more. There’s the therapist again.

As I process this risk, all of the chapters in my life that are coming to a close I try to quiet myself and listen. The word that comes to me is trust. Trust in the Universe. Trust in your ability to see your future. Do not try to alter things, just trust. I think the therapeutic work I have been doing to heal the caretaker in me, was in part the catalyst for the conversation at our anniversary dinner. Let’s let go of it all, push pause. So at 6:15 this morning I am filling that buzzy place in my body with the word trust. Trust in the Universe. Step into the flow. “Let it flow, let yourself go, slow and low that is the tempo” – Thank you Beastie Boys. I have carried that verse with me through my teenage years and into adult life and it is a perfect reminder right now. Flow…

How it Began

My husband and I are turning 40 this year. We celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary last Friday and during dinner finalized the idea of “cashing it in”. Selling it all, house, car, stuff. Let go of my private counseling practice, quit jobs, and take the girls out of school and head out into the world. For the last year we have talked about relocating to New Zealand. Neither of us has ever been there but it looks beautiful in movies and everyone I have ever met is super nice. It’s not crazy right? We started looking at New Zealand.gov website and posted our resumes on New Kiwis.com hoping for an employer to fall in love with us and offer to move us out there. “Hmmm, we might need to take the bull by the horns”. This was how the conversation began during our anniversary dinner. “What if we put our house on the market and use the money to travel for 3-6 months with our final destination in New Zealand”. Could this really work? Could we really make a dream of “globetrotting” become reality? Could we really do this with an 8 and 5 year old in tow?

There are so many endings happening right now in our lives. Jacob finished 5 years of a double master’s degree. Our best friends are “cashing it all in” to move and make their dream of operating a ski-cat business come true in British Columbia. My father and his siblings are selling our family home in Breckenridge so they can move onto their next chapter, retirement. Our youngest finished pre-school and is going into kindergarten this year. So many endings, so many signs pointed us to have this talk: “What do WE want for OUR lives?” “What do we want for our kids’ lives?” No doubt, this is it. A global experience; a test in non-attachment. A journey and adventure. Yes, I can close a practice I have spent the last 2 years building. No problem. If it means we get to travel the world, I’m in.

What about our daughters? I had a rough social experience growing up in school. Lots of teasing and feeling alone. My oldest is happy, making good friends. Will this be a mistake? Upsetting her sense of belonging, of stability? We are switching schools for my youngest so that she can be in the same school with her older sister. We have “talked up” this school to her over and over to make her comfortable. What will this decision do to her? These are valid questions and worries. As my therapist self would say, important to acknowledge those fears. But that is all they are. Fears. This experience will shape them in ways I might never know. This will give our family a chance to bond in ways I can’t imagine and may even provide a better chance to survive adolescence for the girls and for us. Nope, screw the fear, I’m all in.

So today we are chatting nonstop about ideas and plans. Reading blogs of other families who have done this. Looking at “round the world” tickets (apparently they have been given the acronym of RTW). Talking about destinations. Today they are:

Costa Rica (at least a month in that region to learn Spanish), Portugal/Spain, Greece and Turkey, Thailand and Indonesia, Australia and then finally to New Zealand. These RTW tickets force you to return to your country of origin. If we love New Zealand and want to give living there a shot, we will be able to visit family and friends one more time before moving to “the end of the world”. Literally. Ok. So what is step one? Find out how much we can get for our house. Without that, we don’t go. Ok. Housing market in Denver is CRAZY right now. It is in our best interest to find out now. Ok, made the call to a realtor. Nothing like ripping off the Band-Aid. … and panic ensues… only to change to pure excitement!