Seven continents, 102,000 miles, 13 months and countless lessons you wouldn’t learn in school

By Terry Ward, CNN

(CNN) — Imagine this: you pull your kids out of school for a year, stash your stuff in storage, rent out your house, put your career on pause and set out into the wide world, bound for all seven continents as a family.

You serve up lessons the kids would miss during the year in their American classrooms in a different way in places like Cambodia, Nepal, Namibia and Antarctica — through books by local authors and in-the-wild history, geology and geography lessons.

Then you come back home ready for the next school year without missing a beat.

For American couple Andi and Randy Almond, from Lafayette, Colorado, that more or less describes how they spent the 2022-2023 school year when they went on the family adventure of a lifetime with their two children, Finn and Aria, then ages 13 and 10.

In her new book, “The Everywhere Classroom: How One Family Turned Wanderlust into Worldschooling and How You Can Too,” Andi Almond, 45, shares the trials and tribulations, field science projects, harrowing boat rides and obstacles to preparing that she and her husband, Randy, encountered during their family’s journey around the world. The trip was a whirlwind that covered more than 102,000 miles, seven continents and 400 days (and only one scary insect bite).

It was back in 2017 that the idea of leaving home behind with their kids for an extended learning vacation first occurred to Andi and Randy, experienced travelers who embarked on a round-the-world trip together in their 20s when they spent six months in South America and six months in Southeast Asia.

Shortly after Andi’s 40th birthday, she found herself searching for travel inspiration on the shelves of her local library, and stumbled upon the book “One Year Off: Leaving It All Behind for a Round-the-World Journey with Our Children,” by David Elliott Cohen.

“That was when we first started conceptualizing our trip,” she says.

The couple, who both had full-time corporate jobs, met with a financial planner to discuss how to prepare for their eventual trip — including ways to save money in advance and while on the road, as well as how to handle the financial implications of taking a year off from their careers (Andi was able to take a sabbatical but Randy had to quit his job to leave for their trip).

The Almonds decided they would rent out their home to generate income while they were gone, and began cutting everyday expenditures to save for the trip.

Andi bypassed expensive salon treatments by dying her hair at home, she says, and the family turned to Goodwill for clothes shopping. When the kids would ask for expensive drinks from a coffee shop, they discussed how far that money could go in some of the countries they planned to eventually visit.

“We’d ask the kids, ‘should we spend the money or save it?’ And they’d go, ‘Oh yeah, let’s save it,’ so they were a part of the process, too,” she says.

The dream of their big trip lost steam during the pandemic, but the family had always planned to leave when Finn would be in eighth grade and Aria in sixth grade.

“In our heads, that would be old enough for them to be able to do a lot of adventurous things, old enough to be able to remember a lot of the experiences, and young enough for our oldest to keep high school intact and maybe not mind traveling with their parents,” she says.

Since they prepared the kids for the trip years in advance by talking about it and researching some of the places they wanted to go, it didn’t come as a surprise in June of 2022 when the Almonds said goodbye to their friends and family to board a flight to Morocco.

The lead up

But before they left, their biggest concern about the trip centered on schooling and how the kids could keep up their studies from the road without falling behind. Both Finn and Aria insisted they didn’t want to repeat a grade because of the year of travel.

Initially, Andi says, homeschooling was out. She and Randy had gotten their fill during the Covid-19 pandemic and vowed never to do it again.

They looked into so-called “world-schooling” programs, an educational movement with hubs in various countries that equip families with shared teaching resources to educate their children while absorbing different cultures through travel (Boundless Life, for example, has programs in places like Italy, Indonesia and Spain, among other destinations, that range from three weeks to nine months).

And while Andi says “world-schooling” is a good option for people who don’t want to take on crafting their kids’ curriculum, she and her husband decided against it for a few reasons, including the cost and a scheduling commitment that usually requires students to stay in one place for longer than the family had planned.

“We really wanted to travel to a number of different countries and expose our kids to a number of different ways of life and cultures and of being happy in the world. And so we knew we’d be traveling at a bit of a clip,” she says.

The Almonds approached teachers at their children’s schools in Colorado to craft a curriculum together for the year (initially public schools, but they later switched to private). The teachers were excited to partner with them and think about it.

“We actually met with the public school district administrators to understand … the regulations around bridging a year, and each state has different regulations,” she said, adding that Colorado was pretty lenient.

“We decided we would embrace homeschooling without the home, and that’s how we would define ‘world-schooling,’” she says.

In the months before they left, the couple collaborated with the kids’ teachers to look at subjects like history and geography that would naturally intersect with the experiences the family would have during their travels.

“I met with their English teachers to explore what the texts were they’d be reading but also the themes they’d be covering,” says Andi.

From there, they were able to pair texts written by local authors or set in the countries they were visiting to make sure the education at home and abroad dovetailed. They paired each country they visited with books that mirrored the themes their kids would have explored in their classrooms back home.

“For example, instead of reading “To Kill a Mockingbird” — which delves into justice and moral courage — we listened to Alan Paton’s classic “Cry, the Beloved Country” and Trevor Noah’s “Born a Crime” while exploring South Africa, both of which explore themes of race, identity and justice in a deeply local context,” she says.

Andi also tapped into family travel groups she found online, including the Facebook communities Traveling with Kids Worldwide, Worldschoolers and We Are Worldschoolers, among others.

The world as a classroom

The Almonds approached their trip much like a school year, focusing the first half in Africa, the Middle East and South America before finishing the year in Asia and the Pacific.

They kicked off their journey in June 2022 in Morocco, when they flew from Denver to Casablanca on the cheapest routing they could find (it involved two layovers, in Charlotte and New York).

Soon enough, they found themselves being served mint tea in carpet shops and hiking up towering sand dunes in the Sahara desert for sunset views, as they reveled in the sensory overload of the country that was Andi’s top choice on their itinerary.

In Zanzibar, which is part of Tanzania, Finn and Aria studied books poolside to get their PADI scuba diving certifications, including lessons on atmospheric pressure and scientific laws like Boyle’s Law and Charles’ Law that would have played out differently in their classrooms back home in Colorado. The kids completed their first open water dive in the Indian Ocean alongside their parents and celebrated becoming a family of divers together.

In Brazil, the country where the family stayed put the longest, they all took a Portuguese language class that involved interactive lessons at local markets, pharmacies and stores for real world learning in practical situations.

In Argentina, they donned blue and white jerseys alongside the locals to cheer on Lionel Messi and his team during the country’s 2022 World Cup victory over France.

They enjoyed real-world marine biology lessons in the waters of Komodo National Park in Indonesia while learning about creatures like pygmy seahorses and the spotted octopus called a wunderpus that can transform its shape to look like a sea snake to ward off predators.

Staying flexible is key to success

A benefit of world schooling, says Andi, is that you can fall into different rhythms depending on where you visit, but it’s important to stay flexible.

In Greece, she says, the family set off on a road trip through the Peloponnese region and listened to Homer’s “Iliad” in the car along the way.

“So often, we’d be visiting ruins in the morning and doing adventure stuff in the afternoon. Depending on each different place, each day was completely different,” she says.

Early on, the family learned they needed to be more intentional about carving out down time for the kids in their busy travel schedule, balancing their desires to see so many new things in each place with the need to relax.

“We didn’t have set times, but we definitely built down time into their days and were careful not to overschedule, too, so they would have time between exploring to do their reading or journaling or math assignments,” she says.

Although the kids weren’t on social media during the trip, they caught up with their friends back home using WhatsApp and Facetime.

Highs, lows and takeaways

As with any trip, there were low moments along the way, among them a scorpion bite Randy endured at a desert camp in Jordan that landed him in the hospital for a few harrowing days.

But the highs far outweighed them, including the chance for the family to take a dream cruise to Antarctica when a last-minute cancellation allowed them to book a deeply discounted cabin. The kids kept field journals for wildlife sightings and learned from onboard scientists about climate change during evening talks.

Aria undertook a nearly two-week trek in the Himalayas that finished at the Annapurna Base Camp.

“Seeing her be able to advocate for herself and push past pain to the summit was really kind of amazing,” Andi says.

Finn even spent a month on his own during the trip in Taiwan, where he lived with a local family during a Mandarin immersion course.

“He calls it definitely a pivotal life experience and one he was really proud of, even if it wasn’t always easy,” Andi says, adding that her son will probably never forget stepping on a live rat in a communal shower.

The family had the chance to scuba dive again during their last stop before returning home, in French Polynesia, where the kids read their final world schooling book, Thor Heyerdahl’s adventure classic, “Kon-Tiki.”

In the end, says Andi, the family’s 13 months away ended up costing them less than what they spend during a regular year at home between their mortgage, groceries, the kids’ sports and all the other assorted costs of an American life. They spent much of their time in less expensive (than the US) regions where the US dollar went far, including Southeast Asia and South America and made a point, too, to visit places off the typical tourist trail.

And what they all gained, of course, has no price.

Finn says he missed his friends and playing regularly on a soccer team, but realizes he has a deeper understanding of how the world works and also how lucky his family is to live where they do.

Aria would love to keep traveling and says she feels “comfortable in a bunch more places and my geography is better.”

Sometimes people ask Andi if she’s seen a huge transformation in her kids after the trip.

“If you met them, you might say, ‘Oh, yeah, they seem really articulate and well-spoken.’ But most of the time, they’re just a normal teen and tween,” she says.

That said, she believes travel changes people — and changed her own family, too — for the better.

“The more that you can push yourself out of comfort zones, adults and kids, I think you get so much more out of it,” she says, adding that a trip doesn’t have to be all or nothing.

And there are many ways to incorporate learning into travels, no matter how long or short (among them language lessons, cooking classes or a few hours with a locally-hired tour guide).

“I just think that it helps us all approach the world in a little bit more of an inclusive, empathetic way. And it’s really rewarding to see the kids gain confidence and learn tons of practical skills, like flexibility and resilience,” she says.

“The ability to just get by in the world on their own is pretty amazing.”

Terry Ward is a Florida-based travel writer and freelance journalist who also believes some of the most valuable life lessons happen beyond the classroom and out in the world.

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