Happy Birthday, Carter!

After another rough day yesterday, most of which Carter spent lying in bed and glumly watching videos on the iPad, he nearly bounced out of bed this morning. He was ready to go and was even hungry. We were incredibly relieved, especially since today was his 5th birthday. We'd been keeping our fingers crossed that he wouldn't have to spend his birthday sick and miserable.

After breakfast (his first actual meal in a week!) we asked him what he most wanted to do on his birthday, and he said he wanted to ride the double-decker tour bus. And so we did.

We left the hotel!

Carter is finally starting to feel better. Yesterday was his fourth straight day of vomiting, and we decided to call a doctor to make sure there wasn't something bigger going on that we'd missed. The doctor's conclusion was pretty much the same as ours, that it was either a virus he picked up on the playground or it was food poisoning. It was good to have reassurance though. She also gave us something prescription-strength pedialyte-type stuff, which I had no idea existed, and he started bouncing back very quickly after drinking that.

First round of trouble.

We spent a lot of time planning for this trip, and one of the things we planned for was getting sick. We bought private health insurance and had to work out what we'd do if one of us needed to go to the doctor. We packed a good supply of over-the-counter medicines and got prescriptions for multiple rounds of antibiotics for each of us, should we get food poisoning.

The surprise was that we'd have to deal with it so quickly. Very early in the morning after our first full day here, Carter threw up in the middle of the night. And then he proceeded to vomit every couple of hours for the next day and a half. He's only been sick while traveling once before, and that time it ran through him fairly quickly. This doesn't seem to be as intense as before, but it still means we've spent the last two days holed up in our hotel room taking care of him. We're still not sure if it was something he ate (the last thing he had before getting sick was chicken nuggets at Ruby Tuesdays) or if he picked up a bug while playing in the park. It's starting to seem like the former, since Doug and I are totally fine.

Happy New Year!

Doug had been watching the availability of frequent flyer seats in business class from Dallas to Santiago and saw that some seats opened up on the flight on December 30.  We had originally planned to leave on the 31st, but we were packed and ready to go, and so -- why not?

The flight went smoothly and we landed in Santiago on the morning of December 31. It's summer here, and oh, this place is gorgeous in the summer! The temperatures are in the 80s and it's not humid at all, so it feels lovely outside. We checked into the hotel and changed clothes, then headed over to one of our favorite local restaurants, Tiramisu, when has fantastic pizza.

And after that we spent some time hanging out on a local playground, one Carter has played at many times before. But it's been cold every other time he's been here!

Doug and I sat on a bench in the shade and watched him and realized: Wow. We're here. We're really doing this, for a whole year. Our phones weren't working yet, so we could do nothing but sit there and watch Carter play, and it was a strange feeling to be disconnected. We've spent so much of the last six months planning and stressed out and trying to cover every detail. It was very strange to just sit there and realize that we had nowhere in particular to go, nothing in particular to do.

We thought it might be fun to spend New Year's Eve in Santiago instead of on an airplane. We thought we could go out for our traditional New Year's Eve dinner of teppan yaki, and there's even a great teppan yaki restaurant in walking distance of the hotel. But it turns out that in Santiago, they roll up the streets on New Year's Eve. Everything is closed -- every restaurant, every bar. Apparently people stay home and go to private parties! We finally found a single open restaurant, which added a 50% surcharge to the bill. It was full of Americans who were apparently just as desperate as we were. It was a good dinner, but crazy expensive.

After that we spent our evening in the hotel room. Doug had bought some wine for us earlier in the day, and we watched a movie and just hung out. Carter finally passed out around 11:00.

Everything is closed today as well, so we'll be eating room service, going to the park, and maybe swimming in the hotel's pool later. Serious sightseeing will have to wait another day, but honestly, that's okay.

And we're off!

Doug got us on a flight to Santiago tonight (American opened up some frequent flyer seats in business class, woot!) and since we're ready anyway, we're leaving a day early.

In a couple of hours we'll drive the rental car to Dallas and then hang out at DFW until our flight to Santiago leaves around 9:00 tonight. So now we'll be ringing in the New Year on our big trip!

Michelle and Carl (our house sitters) will be moving in tomorrow. We completely emptied the closets and cabinets in the master suite for them. Check out our closet:




It hasn't looked like that since we moved in more than ten years ago. We gave about half of our clothes to Goodwill and packed the other half in boxes. Carter's bedroom is now being used for storage, basically.

I have to say there is something really cathartic about getting rid of so much stuff. I went through every item of clothing I own, and if it wasn't going to get packed, I had to think, "In a year, will I want to take this out of a box and wear it again?" If the answer wasn't a definite yes, it was put in the charity box. And honestly, I think that about half of what I did keep will be given to charity in a year anyway. I still kept too much stuff.

And so, off we go!

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Packing

One of the questions we get a lot is: How do you pack for a year-long trip?

The short answer is, you don't. You pack for a week and do laundry.

Of course, it's a bit more complicated than that. On this particular trip, we have to be prepared for all seasons, everything from Antarctica to the Amazon, so we needed to have quite a variety of clothes. In the end, we actually packed for about ten days. Most of our time in the first half of the trip will be spent in warm climates and most of the second half of the trip will be spent in cold climates, and that makes it a little easier. We were able to pack mostly warm-weather clothes; we're planning to replace them in Australia, after which we'll be in cold weather for the rest of the year.

We each have one suitcase and a backpack. It's not very much for a whole year!

Doug and I have both spent a year traveling before (we were both in Up With People, though in different years) and so I've done this before. But it's interesting that it's a LOT more complicated to plan to be away from home for a year now than it was 20 years ago. When I was 21 and left for Up With People, I basically just packed my suitcase and went. But this time, we had to organize a house sitter and make arrangements to pay our bills and set up our insurance, and so on.

These next few days are our last at home before we begin our adventure. We're excited, but I have to admit that the idea of leaving our comfortable home and living out of a suitcase for a year is also a bit daunting. The things we do every day and take for granted will be a lot more complicated. We'll have to find a new rhythm, new ways to spend time together as a family and keep ourselves entertained without 1000 TV channels and constant internet access.

Perhaps most significant is that we're taking Carter away from his playroom full of toys for a year, as well as away from familiar foods and places. We're going to ask a lot of him in the next year, but based on previous experience, I think he will grow and thrive. I think we all will. :-)

Update 12/29: It looks like we're leaving home a day early and may even get a flight to Santiago on the 30th instead of the 31st. So we may be celebrating New Year's Eve at the Ritz Carlton in Santiago! Stay tuned...

Planning the itinerary

When I've talked to people about this trip, one of the first questions many of them as is, "How did you decide where to go?"

We decided early on in the planning process that we wanted to circumnavigate the globe, because, well -- why not? At that point we had already planned to take a cruise from Buenos Aires to Antarctica in February; that was going to be our big trip of 2013. We talked about canceling the cruise in order to use the money somewhere else (we'd booked a very nice room), but then we realized that this might be the only chance any of us will have to go to Antarctica. How could we not go? After that, the idea of visiting all seven continents came up, and that became the theme of our trip.

It's amazing how short a year really is in the scheme of things. You might think that you could see an awful lot of the world in a year, and perhaps you could if you stayed in a different place every night. But that wasn't what we wanted to do, and we thought it would be easier on Carter if we stayed in most places for a week at a time. In our previous travels with him, a week in a location has been a perfect amount of time. We all get adjusted to the place, figure out where the grocery store is and where the park is, we have a chance to explore the area at a leisurely pace, and then we move on. The excitement of packing up and going to the next place, of continuing the adventure, is something that I've always loved. It's going to be amazing to know that this time, we won't be going home again after 3 weeks!

We decided to spend 6-8 weeks on each continent, and we began by looking at a map and listing the places where we wanted to spend time. Many of them are places we've been before and want to visit again, and others were places we've always wanted to see. We quickly realized that we could only go to about half the places we wanted to visit, so our list got pared down to what we regarded as the essentials -- for us, anyway. Others might disagree, of course!

The timing of the cruise meant we'd start in South America, and we decided to begin the trip with two weeks in Santiago, a city we've spent a fair amount of time in and really love. After the cruise we will head to Asia (trying to visit there before it gets too hot) and then we'll spend a couple of months in the South Pacific, Australia, and New Zealand before heading to southern Africa. We'll be in Europe in the fall and will finish our trip in the Middle East (again trying to avoid too-hot weather).

We thought at first that we might just go to a place with no preconceived ideas about where we'd go and what we'd do, just go exploring. But honestly, that idea lasted for about ten minutes before we rejected it in favor of planning the entire itinerary as thoroughly as possible. I think we both felt more comfortable with the idea of knowing we'll be staying in good hotels that are safe for us and are kid-friendly, and near the places we want to be. We've done the back-packing and winging-it thing when we were younger, and the idea of searching for a hotel in the middle of the night in a seedy part of town by the train station with a whiny and exhausted 5-year-old in tow is just not that appealing. In addition, we didn't want to spend a huge chunk of our trip trying to figure out what we were going to do next and worrying about where to stay and how we'd get there. The more we thought about it, the more stressful that sounded, so we decided that we'd plan it out in advance as much as possible.

So Doug has spent countless hours booking flights (using up the million or so frequent flyer miles he's earned in the last decade) and researching hotels. We're trying to stay in places with kitchens wherever we can so that we can save money by cooking for ourselves, but in some places that just isn't possible. Whenever possible we're staying in places with kid-friendly amenities like swimming pools, or close to parks with playgrounds. Reviews on travel sites like Expedia have been invaluable in this process. There's nothing like looking at what people who've actually stayed in these places with kids have to say about the experience!

The last part of the trip (Europe and the Middle East) is still being planned, and it's likely that part won't be fixed until we're well on our way. We have some ideas about what we want to do, but it's far enough away that we're not all that concerned about getting it done now.

I'll post more in the next few days about other aspects of the planning process. If you have any questions, please let us know!