Great to meet fellow travelers

I connected with Jason on Families on the Move, a fantastic Facebook group for families that travel long-term. As I love meeting fellow travelers and showing them around Holland, I immediately responded when I read his post that they were in Amsterdam. Luckily we could match our schedules and they were able to come to Haarlem. It was great to meet them!

The grass is always greener…

When you live somewhere you often don’t appreciate it as half as much as you would when visiting as a tourist. Haarlem is actually a great town and still we don’t want to be here long-term right now. There was some debate a while ago on Families on the Move that it’s because of the routine and obligations you have when you’re back home. It gets boring, regardless of where ‘home’ is. People who are infected with the travel bug generally don’t like routine that much I think this is certainly true for us. Jason and his family felt there were worse places to get ‘stuck’. And they should know, they’ve been around!

Inspiring plans

It was inspiring to hear about the Marshall’s plans. They’ve already extended their travel plans once before and are now planning to travel a whole extra year! And next year they want to settle in Bolivia. How cool is that?! Their son James has his own travel blog called Round the World Kid and is writing a fantasy book with a friend back home in the US (they take turns writing a chapter, what a great way to stay connected!). Michelle is a photographer and visually documents their travels. Listen to this great podcast on An Epic Education where Jason explains their reasons to travel and the way they managed it. We look forward to follow them as they continue to explore the world!

Booking.com

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When I first heard about Studio Everywhere I was so inspired! What an amazing idea to travel and learn this way. I ‘met’ the family through the Families on the Move Facebook group and was very happy when they wanted to do this interview for our blog.

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Who are you and where are you from originally?

We are Michael (Mike), Gabriela (Gaby) and Elena Orwick and we call Beaverton, Oregon, USA home.

Mike is a fine artist – michaelorwick.com. An Oregon native, he’s enjoyed international travel on and off, and has built his career upon the pursuit of beauty and colorful expression. He loves the water, hiking, and photography.

Elena turned 11 in Costa Rica, shortly after we started our round-the-world trip in August 2015. She is also an artist (elenagraceorwick.com) who paints mostly abstract and loves fashion. She is being travel-schooled for 6th grade and will be returning to the Arts and Communications Magnet Academy in Beaverton, OR next year.

Gaby comes from Bulgaria. She is a business consultant and program manager by trade. She came to the US as an exchange student a long time ago, and has always been drawn to explore – being leisure travel, business volunteering, or the outdoors.

We are inspired to travel and learn, and the spark that made the trip happen is what we’ve come to call “Studio Everywhere” – our family’s ambition to experience and learn more about how ART empowers, connects, and inspires across boundaries. Every country we go to, we try to do an art project, inviting children to paint and draw self-portraits, expressing “how they see themselves in the world.” At the end, we’d love to put together a photo book that tells the story of that journey.

What do you want to achieve with your blog studioeverywhere.org?

• Document our round-the-world StudioEverywhere trip
• Share our adventure with our friends and family.
• Promote our global art project – StudioEverywhere – working with children to paint self-portraits about how they see themselves in the world, to create a tapestry celebrating the special connection art fosters.
• (Hopefully) Inspire others to pursue their ambition.

What does travel mean to you and your family?

• Freedom
• Breaking routine, inviting discomfort, stretching our imagination, questioning the norm
• Learning about other cultures and people, learning about ourselves
• Making new friends, and reconnecting with old ones, around the world
• Exploring new places | Experiencing new food, climate, sounds and smells
• Pursuit of beauty in its many different forms
• Realizing and living a dream
• Ultimate family togetherness

How long are you planning to travel?

We plan to travel for ~10 months, in lieu of a school year.

What your top 3 favourite places you’ve visited and why? Insider tips welcome!

It’s very hard to choose “favorites” as each place we’ve visited holds a special place in our hearts. Below is a short list of places we’d definitely like to return to and explore further, if that’s a way to pick:

1. Cusco & Machu Picchu – a place that truly embraces its heritage, stunning architecture, rich Inca history and gorgeous sites (Sacred Valley!), delicious food (lomo soltado, anticucho, lucuma shakes, chicha morada, pisco sours, and more), lamas (yes, we have an 11-year old in the mix), and a tremendous family achievement completing the grueling and rewarding 4-day Inca Trail to Machu Picchu.
2. Costa Rica – offered a charming glimpse of “what could be” in a place committed to education and the environment; great adventures zip lining, traversing handing bridges and dodging deadly spider and vipers in the Arenal jungle (recommend Tangara Hotel); the colors and beaches of Montezuma (stayed in CasaColores and loved it) and Guanacaste.
   Recommend renting a car but beware of GPS directions and road conditions.
3. Rio de Janeiro’s energy and feel was rejuvenating; the golden sands, sun and water inviting; loved watching people playing volleyball and foot volley on the beach; biking everywhere (get a SIM card and take advantage of the free rentals all over town); awe-inspiring vistas from Sugarloaf and Corcovado (be sure to go on a clear day though); and just so much to do and enjoy.

How do you determine where to go and how long to stay?

Given we only have 10 months, we thought long and hard where we’d like to go on this first (of hopefully many) round-the-world journey. We wanted to visit South America, Asia and Europe for a start, shying away from places with high political or weather volatility, as well as considering safety and cost of travel and living. Some places made the list so we could visit friends and family.

We made a dream list of placed we’d like to go to, and each picked a pillar experience. Did some research on optimal times to travel to each target region, and sought an itinerary that offered us spring/summer-like climate to facilitate minimal wardrobe changes and light packing.

The StudioEverywhere “how you see yourself in the world” self-portraits art project being a centerpiece of our trip, we targeted areas where we’d be able to more easily acquire art supplies and get help (contacts, translation, etc.) connecting with the community and arranging the project. It has been a gift as without it, we wouldn’t have gotten to know real people and connect at such a personal level, in such a short time.

Deciding how long to stay each place came at a balance of how many places we wanted to visit. We scrubbed our initial list over and over to narrow the “sampler platter” itinerary to less than 20 countries… and from there made sure we had 2-3 weeks in each, prioritizing the city / region / places we’d visit. We opted to see more in less time so that we’d be more informed about our future trips, when we’d likely want to spend several months in any one area and really get to know a place and connect with the locals.

What do you do to generate income while you travel?

We saved for the trip, and are (mostly) travelling on a budget – mostly staying at hostels, Airbnb, and such; cooking and eating local as much as possible; and balancing free experiences and tours / entrance fee attractions. It is easy to overspend, so suggest considering a contingency beyond the emergency fund and travel insurance.

Mike is an artist (michaelorwick.com) and tried to stock up his galleries prior to setting sail, so that his collectors would have access to his work while we are away. He’s preparing for a new body of work inspired by our travels when we return and suspect will be very busy back in the studio.

Gaby is taking a “sabbatical” from her consulting job in Portland, Oregon, and will be looking for a new client engagement upon returning home.

For the StudioEverywhere art project, we launched a gofund.me/StudioEverywhere site and are blessed with generous support, making it possible to provide and donate art supplies, and often food/drinks, to the orphanages and schools we work with.

What are the most important life lessons you’ve learned while traveling?

• Leave the expectations at home, and embrace the experiences as they come.
• Approaching the new with an “open mind, open heart” attitude gets you a long way.
• Art IS an universal language, and all kids like to paint and draw.
• Making time to reflect, share and be grateful keeps us connected and energized.
• Travel is an ultimate way to learn and feed our child-like curiosity

What’s the one piece of travel advice that you wished someone had given you before you left?

We had great encouragement and help planning for the trip and are grateful for the advice we did get and the network of wisdom available to us as we go – e.g. TripAdvisor, BootsnAll, Families on the Move have been wonderful resources. The best part has been not only learning to adapt but thriving on the new and different, while appreciating the familiar.

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Mike, Gaby and Elena, thank you very much for taking the time to share your amazing story with us. I hope to hear lots more from Studio Everywhere in the future!

The post Interview with the Orwicks from StudioEverywhere.org appeared first on FlipFlopGlobetrotters.com.

So far:
We traveled by plane, train, car, bus, boat, motorcycle, scooter, horse carriage and becak, 
visited 5 countries,
went to 16 destinations,
took 11 flights,
and stayed in 20 hotels, apartments and bungalows and 1 night on a boat.

And some more general things we love about this trip:
being able to spend so much time together as a family
discovering new places together
watching Jace try loads of different types of food and loving most of them
meeting lots of new and inspiring people
being outside so much and seeing Jace run around and play with everything he finds
watching our little boy grow and learn and seeing him so at ease wherever we are

Of course it’s not always easy. Like all young parents we struggle with raising a very active and stubborn toddler, but we’ve added an extra hurdle by doing it while traveling. Also we’re still adjusting to this new way of traveling as a family. If you’ve read our post about traveling with a child, you’ve noticed that there’s quite a few things that change when it’s not just the two of you anymore. That being said, we’ve had so many amazing experiences, met so many fantastic new people and seen so many great places, we wouldn’t have missed that for the world!

Jace is generally a very happy child and it’s a lot of fun to watch him discover all these new places, new people, new tastes, new animals… He smiles a lot and is constantly running around checking out his new environment. He loves to go exploring with us We know he won’t actually remember this trip, but we hope this sense of discovery, the idea that anything is possible, all the impressions he gets and the foods he tastes will stay with him when he grows up.

We’re very much looking forward to our next 6 months on the road!

The post Six months on the road… appeared first on FlipFlopGlobetrotters.com.

Having traveled a fair bit as a couple and before that solo or with friends, we both have our fair share of travel experience. Based on that, we thought travel with kids simply meant taking things more slowly and staying in one place longer than we normally would. In practice, it’s a little more complicated… Check out these 7 steps to adapt to family travel and this advice on how to get the best vacation experience with kids. There’s definitely a bit more to international travel with kids than we initially thought.

Of course, since we’ve taken a year off to travel, we have the luxury of letting our son set the pace and take our time. It’s a bit different if you’re on a family holiday and want to make the most of your three or four weeks abroad. We’re very lucky that our little world traveler likes to see and do new things, loves to go exploring with us and generally is a very good natured and happy child.

If you’re interested in traveling with kids, also check out:

• 10 tried and tested tips for flying with infants & toddlers
• 5 tips for a succesful city trip with kids
• Best strollers for traveling
• Best toddler travel beds buying guide

Travel with kids, a new dimension

We’re now in the fourth month of our journey and are still adjusting to our new way of travel. Some people think their traveling days are over when they have kids, but we’re discovering quite the opposite. We’re saying goodbye to a lot of things we liked about being on the road, but we’re also welcoming lots of new experiences. It’s truly amazing to travel with our little one, to see how happy he is, to see him grow and develop and discover all these new places, new people, new foods, new animals… We’re so happy we’ve made the decision to go travel with our son! If you’re considering long-term travel with kids, here’s what you need to know.

What we found out about travel with kids

1. More planning & more luggage

There’s a lot more planning involved when you travel with kids. What to bring, where to go… We’ve never been so stressed and overpacked as when we started this trip (tip: check out this list of things to leave at home!) and take a good travel toiletry bag and packing cubes to keep things organized. We prefer that have at least one big backpack, but you need to figure out what luggage configuration for your family. Check out this post which compares different types of backpacks. But, while trying to be more organized than we ever were when traveling as a couple, we try not to have a set itinerary and keep the freedom to decide fairly last minute where to go next. Make sure to update your phone with these must-have travel apps. Mobile internet often works better than the hotel wifi.

2. Predictable is better

Whereas the most unpredictable situations were always the ones we enjoyed most when we were traveling with just the two of us, now predictable is definitely preferable. Somehow getting stuck behind a religious procession after going out for dinner just isn’t the same when you’re trying to get home quickly so your very tired 2-year old can go to bed.

3. Your accommodation requirements change

Finding suitable accommodation is much much harder. Before, we just booked a plane, bus or boat ticket somewhere and always managed to find a place to stay when we got to our destination. Any room that was moderately clean would do. With a child a two bedroom accommodation is so much easier. Sneaking around in the dark so you don’t wake up the little one when you go to bed really gets old after a while. But even if we do share a room with the tree of us, our demands have changed. It needs to be clean, have a hot shower and either have a child’s cot or be big enough that we can use our own travel bed without tripping over it constantly.

We’ve definitely become fans of Airbnb. If you’re new to Airbnb, why not use this link and receive a €30 discount on your first AirBnb booking.

4. Researching new destinations takes more time

Deciding where to go next can be stressful. Even though we travel with a toddler, we still don’t like to set our itinerary in stone. For us travel is about flexibility (as much as possible with a little one of course). But deciding where to go next is more difficult then it used to be, especially because of accommodation (see point above). We spend much more time then expected researching destinations and accommodations. Obviously certain locations are off-limits until he’s a bit bigger, no tree huts, rainforest shacks or floating bamboo bungalows for a while.

5. More contact with locals

When you travel with kids contact with the locals is even easier than before. A child doesn’t know language barriers. And in all the places we’ve been so far they really appreciate and welcome kids, much more so than back home. Everybody wants to know his name and age and they love it when he waves to them. The waiters in restaurants spontaneously pick him up and take him to see the kitchen. He loves the attention

6. Traveling with kids is intense

You’re much more active and yet do a lot less exploring. Since we follow our son’s pace and try to be home when he needs to sleep, we can really only do stuff in the mornings. He’s really active and inquisitive, so the hours he’s awake are very intense, with us constantly watching him. Fortunately, he naps 2-3 hours after lunch, which gives us some time to relax. But nap time also it means at least one of us needs to stay ‘home’ with him.

7. No nights out together

We’re always home around 8PM. Not that we were such party people when we traveled together, but there was always time for a few drinks after dinner. Now we need to be back home around 8 so that the little guy can go to bed. And of course one of us needs to stay at home with him in the evenings. Out of solidarity the other one usually stays home too. We’re not comfortable leaving our little one with a babysitter.

8. Dinners are more ‘interesting’ than before.

While family dinners can be a bit of a ‘thing’ with little children, now that we’re traveling we’re eating out a lot more than we normally do at home. We’re lucky Our little world traveler is fairly easy, but still, dinners can be a bit frustrating. He gets distracted and our little one who used to eat anything and everything now has the pickiness of an almost two year old. At the moment he’s on a diet consisting mostly of white rice and chicken. A quiet dinner is definitely out of the question.

9. You meet less other travelers

In large, this has to do with us not going out at night, but also with the accommodations we stay in. We immediately notice that it gets easier to meet people when we stay in a bungalow type place. We do talk to people at dinner. Usually they comment on the Totseat travel chair our little one sits in But they’re not the RTW traveller or backpacker type people that we’re used to. It almost seems like travellers who don’t have children are afraid to talk to you when you travel with kids. A shame because we really get a lot of energy out of meeting new people and sharing stories with others.

10. You phone home a lot more

A short txt when you’re moving to say where you’re going next and that everything is ok isn’t enough anymore. Jace’s two sets of grandparents want to see him and talk to him at least every few days, which makes us spend a lot more time on FaceTime and Skype.

If you’re considering travel with kids or are already on the road, the Facebook group Families who love travel is a great resource. Families on the move is also a great group, but it’s a closed group that you can only join if you’re planning to travel for more than 6 months.

The post Travel with kids: 10 major differences appeared first on FlipFlopGlobetrotters.com.

I was a bit worried about the 8,5 hour flight on day 2, but he was very relaxed and flirting with all the flight attendants. When we arrived at the apartment in Bali however he collapsed, too tired to sleep and over-stimulated. We spend our first night in Bali trying to help him get some sleep.

Our travel schedule:

Day 1:
– Got up at 05:00
– Dahab to Sharm el Sheikh by car
– Sharm el Sheikh to Cairo by plane
– Sharm el Sheikh to Dubai by plane
– Arrived at Dubai airport at 17:30 then spend over an hour trying to locate our stroller and find the shuttle to the hotel
– Arrived at the hotel in Dubai at 19:30, had dinner and went to bed too late

Day 2:
– Got up at 05:30
– Dubai to Bali by plane
– Arrived in Bali at 21:40 local time and were at our apartment by 22:30

Even though we had a rough first night, this morning we were sooo happy to be back in Asia! The apartment we rented through Airbnb is comfy and clean and it’ll be great fun to go exploring our new environment. We’ve never been to Bali before, so it’s a new experience for all of us.

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Obviously it’s not as easy as it sounds… or maybe it is. Once we found someone to housesit our apartment the decision was actually really simple. The only difficult part was leaving our friends and family behind… and cleaning our apartment. It’s amazing how much you collect over the course of a decade, even in such a tiny apartment.

Our reasoning?

Our son is now 17 months old and if we want to go on a longer trip, we need to do it before he has to go to school. We’ve both been dreaming about a long trip or even living abroad for a while since before we met each other. Somehow the timing never seemed right. But since I’m between jobs and my partner is a self-employed carpenter, now is actually the best timing ever!

Digital nomad and dive instructor

I’ve decided that I want try to become a ‘digital nomad’ to add some $$ to our travel budget. Never before did I have the courage to work for myself instead of for a boss, but this is the perfect opportunity. We’re both scuba divers and my partner is a PADI Divemaster who has wanted to become an instructor almost as long as he’s diving. Since becoming an instructor is mostly a question of money and a few weeks of training, we now just have to find a good place for him to do his IDC (instructor development course). Dive instructor is also a great job to do while abroad! Of course, like any job hunt it’s not going to be easy to find a job as a rookie, but hopefully our combined skills will be interesting to a potential employer.

Our plan

The past three months have gone really fast, but at the same time really slow. Our first stop will be Dahab, Egypt where we own our own holiday house. We’ll stay there for about two months or until we can’t take the heat of the Sinai summer anymore. Since we have our own house there it will be fairly cheap and an easy transition. After Egypt we plan to fly to South-East Asia and travel around there for the rest of the year. Surprisingly, with all the dreaming of the past 12 years, our bucket list is completely empty. But we’re sure we’ll be inspired again once we’re on the road!

Sooo… the moment to leave has finally come… We’re off!

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