Let's dig into some of the many reasons why you may want to see the world as a family. These reasons can vary widely depending on what your family wants. Explore some of the reasons in part one of this two-part episode.
Hosted by Susan Whitehead, a wife and mother of 6 children who has spent a substantial amount of time living and traveling overseas. Her family has lived in Costa Rica, Mexico, and the United Arab Emirates. They have also explored France, England and Spain during a 3-month road trip.
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Show transcript:
Let's talk about why you want to travel. I think before you set off on some wild, crazy foreign adventure with your kids, it's important to take a step back and think about the reasons why you have this desire to travel. Some people travel just for travel sake, but I think there's an importance, a value to knowing the why behind your desire to travel. Usually, that "why' will have a huge influence on how you travel and where you go once you arrive somewhere.
One of the first reasons people want to travel, especially as a family, is to teach their children and themselves a second or third language. It's not a big stretch to say that it's really important to know another language. Some of the most widely spoken languages and, therefore most desirable, are Spanish, Mandarin and Arabic. If you're in North America, there is a huge and growing population of Spanish speaking people. When you go south of the border, it's pretty much nothing but Spanish with a few exceptions of Brazil and French Guyana. Spanish is very widely spoken and, where we live in Florida, it is almost essential to be able to speak at least a little bit of Spanish.
Mandarin is another one if you're doing anything in Asia, especially if you or your children have any natural bend towards international business. Obviously, the Chinese are a huge economic force, so mandarin is very valuable to learn.
Of course, Arabic is tied to a very powerful region of the world. Much of the Middle East speaks Arabic and it's a very difficult language to learn. Traveling and living somewhere where Arabic is spoken is probably one of the best ways to learn it.
French is also another big language spoken all over the world.
If you want your children to learn any of these languages, it's really important to consider where to go. It is easier to pick up a second language if that is what is widely spoken wherever you land.
Another reason to travel, is learning about other cultures. I remember many years ago before Facebook, I was in an old Yahoo Forum. It was a homeschool group and a mother was asking for input. I think she was a little scared about sending her daughter on a trip to Italy, unaccompanied with a group of peers. The mother was really asking about the value of going on this trip for her daughter. What was so shocking to me was the number of comments that this mother got about how her daughter could gain just as much value by reading books about Italy and eating at local Italian restaurants as she could by actually going to Italy.
Now, I don't remember exactly what I said, but I just tried to emphasize the importance of the experience of the sights and the sounds and the smells and the tastes and the feeling of walking down cobblestone streets in an old Italian village and how they were far superior than anything her daughter could even begin to imagine from the pages of a book. There's something that just really transcends the written word when it comes to being immersed in a culture that is not your own.
You just can't really grasp it until you're there in the streets with locals going about their day all around you. There's nothing that can compare to that. Learning about other cultures is a really, really big "why" in terms of why you would want to travel with your family.
One thing we were very fortunate to do on our travels is meet distant family members. That wasn't necessarily a goal that we had when we embarked on our trip to Costa Rica, but it was kind of a backup for us. We knew that my mom had cousins and extended family there and, even though we weren't planning on living in the area where my mom is from, Turrialba, we knew that if there was ever an emergency situation, there was family there that could possibly chip in and help us out.
Meeting extended family was a bonus. We got a chance to meet my mom's aunt and her children and got to see that side of the family and get to know them. We actually became really close with them and it gave us a deeper understanding of my mom and my grandmother because I was able to step into their shoes in their native culture.
It was really neat for my kids, too. We got to participate in the "desfile de faroles", which is part of the Costa Rican independence celebration. Schoolkids and adults really get into this celebratory parade that they do and make "faroles", which are luminaries. My Mom's cousin, Lola, helped my children make little luminaries out of little plastic strawberry pint containers. We glue tissue paper around it, tied strings to it and they had to stick so they could carry them with a little light inside.
Some people go all out! We're talking probably months of planning and designing and preparation to participate in this parade. It was really neat because my kids were able to connect with something that my mom did as a child, two generations later. It added a real richness to our experience in Costa Rica by connecting with family members. It all ties together with learning about other cultures. That parade is a treasured memory for our children.
Another reason to travel with your family is to expand your world view. There's a ride at Disney world called It's a Small World. When you start to travel, you realize that it really is a small world, especially with how easy the Internet makes it to communicate with people all over the world in real time. It's more than just something nice to expose our kids to other worldviews. Of course, I think the best way to do it is through travel.
A lot of people look at the emerging and dominant cultures of the world and travel to those areas. It's really easy to see how the Latino culture has influenced the United States and will continue to do so for quite a while. Being able to give our children some time to appreciate those cultures is becoming extremely beneficial. Being able to speak Spanish as an American is a very valuable asset to companies because they're looking for bilingual employees to help fill the need for their bilingual customers.
Also, we have seen a huge rise in the influence of Muslims in the world and it is not as bad as everybody in the media would like you to believe.
I feel as parents, it is our duty to expose our children to people who are extremely different than we are and not live in the fear that is perpetuated by propaganda that we see in the media. When we spent six months as a family in the United Arab Emirates, it was a huge thing to dispel myths and misunderstandings in our kids and in me, if I'm being honest. I have heard my children shutdown ridiculous statements made by kids who would speak about Muslims in total and complete ignorance. Even though we were really ready to come back to the states after our time in the UAE, we have a very deep appreciation for Muslims and the Arabic and Emirate culture that we really never ever would have had just by ordering books and especially not from listening to today's media.
Another reason to travel is learning about world history. Most Americans know about the pilgrims by learning about it in elementary school. A few people even go to Plymouth, Massachusetts to explore that area and to learn about the colonies. But even fewer will venture across the ocean to Plymouth, England and visit the Mayflower steps, which is the spot where those pilgrims climbed aboard the Mayflower on, what I now see, was an absolutely insane journey across the Atlantic Ocean.
I have to insert here that my husband and I were watching a docu-drama on PBS called Jamestown and it's basically a dramatization of what happened when England would send unmarried women to marry the men who had been building up Jamestown. The men would have to pay for the women's passage and these women would travel across the ocean. Many of them would die on the way over just to meet a future spouse in this new world. We were watching the first episode together and I looked over at my husband and said, "Do you think we would've done that? Do you think we would have taken our family and gotten on a boat from Europe, crossed over the Atlantic and come to this new world?"
He kind of thought about it for a minute and said, "Yeah, I think we would have." Whether I would have survived the trip, I don't know because I get terribly seasick. But it was neat to think about that. These people, whether you agree with their reasons for coming, it's interesting to think about how similar your path may be compared to people like the pilgrims or even the pioneers who left the safety of the east coast of the United States and went to try to get land in Oklahoma or out west. (I know that not all of them came for religious reasons. Many, I'm sure, came over for financial reasons. They had gold in their eyes.)
When our family stood on the Mayflower steps and we found the name of Thomas Rogers, who is my 14th great-grandfather who was on the Mayflower, it makes history come alive in ways that are really beyond explanation.
Knowing that our family was going to be going to Omaha Beach in Normandy, France, we watched Band of Brothers. They had watched movies like Narnia, which was a somewhat gentle way to introduce the kids to World War II. Being at the French American memorial there, we were able to watch actual video footage, listen to recordings, see artifacts and read the stories of those who lost their lives or managed to barely escape with their lives. Then we walked down the cliffs where the Germans were waiting on the shore and where so many young soldiers lost their lives.
We then walked down and landed on that beach. It was a rainy day. It was cloudy. There was hardly anybody else there. It was a very solemn event for me to realize where I was standing and what had happened on that sand. Then we got to walk through the cemetery. It was overwhelming to see so many gravestones. All the crosses there for Americans who had died to help liberate Europe from the Nazis. I don't think anything like that can be said in a book that could compare to that experience that day. My kids will never forget it.
Volunteer work or mission work is often an introductory way that a lot of people begin to travel. Whether you're religious or not, I believe that we are spiritual beings who have this inner desire to help others, to help animals and to help our planet. There's no shortage of volunteer or mission opportunities through your church that can bring a whole lot of meaning to your travels.
We have not gone on official mission trips or done official volunteer work. That was not the reason we bought our plane tickets, but we've had the chance to teach English to Mexican students. We've had our oldest girls volunteer at a Mexican animal shelter taking care of cats and kittens, and our oldest got a chance to volunteer at a veterinarian's office in Costa Rica. So whether you want to participate in cleaning up beaches in Costa Rica or maybe helping women escape the cycles of poverty by teaching them how to sew in Zambia, you can work towards the greater good as a family. That is a wonderfully powerful bonding experience. On our next episode, I will share a few more reasons why you might want to travel as a family, but I want to encourage you to do is to take a few little action steps.
Take some time to sit down with your family and listen to this podcast together. Listen to the next one as well, and look at the different reasons why you want to travel and figure out which reasons really resonate most with your family. It's probably going to be more than just one. So for us, it was learning about other cultures, expanding our world view and learning about history. Also, it included bucket list items, which we'll talk about in the next podcast. Think about those kinds of things.
After the next podcast, I'll have another little assignment for you. It is a way you can bring all of that together as a family and have one solid travel mission statement for your adventure. Until then, think about these things and see if you can come up with a reason why you want to travel.
