Why We Left Suburbia

In late 2008 Congress passed what is commonly referred to as the Fiscal Stimulus Package. I haven’t read the act, but I believe that there is nothing in it that provides stimulus for the sagging spirit of the suburban American family.

Eight feet in the Andes: Lake Titicaca, Bolivia

There are swift and decisive actions in the Stimulus Package to reinvigorate a stale economy, but none to reinvigorate the day-in, day-out staleness of suburban life. There is plenty in the act to address the global financial crisis, but there’s nothing that addresses mid-life crisis. There are measures to get investors excited again about the American economy, but none to put more excitement in the lives of a suburban family from Marin County, California.

Just as the aforementioned legislation is geared to get the economy moving, our family decided to get moving…initially to Peru. Immediately following a family congress in April of 2008 we decided on the cornerstones of the first part of our Stimulus Package: volunteer, work and put down new “roots” in South America. We would later decide on the second half of this trip: a grand tour of the Mediterranean to trace the origins of western civilization.

Our principal goal was to find a sense of community in a completely foreign locale. We decided to try to find work and volunteer opportunities somewhere in the Peruvian Andes and have our two kids become proficient in Spanish. Since both kids are pretty good swimmers, we would also try to find them a swim team, to help build their language skills in a familiar environment and contribute further to a sense of community.

Certainly, the timing was right for an extended sabbatical. The economy hadn’t been this bad in decades and both my spouse and I work in cyclical industries (real estate and retail, respectively). With both of us professionally independent there was a good chance that we might not earn 6 months worth of income in the upcoming year. Some quick math showed us that continuing to toil in this manner left us financially worse off than renting out our house, volunteering and spending the next 12 months traveling the world.

This was easier said than done. Our strategy required renting out the house, home-schooling, or “road-schooling” the kids, finding a home for our dog, selling the car, canceling the cell phones and taking care of the myriad of details that go with an entrenched suburban life. We immediately launched into the planning phase and started ticking things off our list.

Although admittedly not the centerpiece of our Stimulus Package, we started to focus, like virtually every U.S. bank, on selling “troubled assets”. For example, we used Craig’s List to sell the lawnmower that hadn’t been used for 10 years, as well as the dust-covered wicker chairs that were purchased at a Williams-Sonoma sample sale 15 years ago. The government’s Stimulus Package was designed to utilize idle resources; the idea behind our Suburban Stimulus Package was to become more idle -- and less rushed -- in order to enjoy life.

This online journal will record how we made it happen and will document our progress.

A New Beginning

The New Year is here and our family is at the midway point of our travels.

Our initial focus on South America was to have our kids learn Spanish, allow us a significant amount of time to volunteer and to gain a sense of community in a foreign locale…reasons detailed in this blog’s very first entry. The remainder of our travels will be in the Mediterranean, tracing the origins of Western Civilization, learning about Egyptian, Greek and Roman culture and crossing items off our collective “bucket list.” The two mismatched halves of this year-long family adventure could be summed up through our kids’ educational experience: a six month Spanish language course and a six month Western Civilization seminar.

In May of 2008 we made the decision to embark on this journey. We held a family meeting to reach a consensus on what, when, where and how we would spend our time. Three years earlier, from March 2005 through August 2005, we did a similar trip, traveling for six months through most of Central America and Spain. On that trip we just gave the kids their marching orders and went, learning a lot along the way about what we liked and disliked about long-term travel.

During our family consensus meeting, each person wrote down their top five answers for the following three categories: 1) destinations they’d most like to visit, 2) the biggest dislikes from our 2005 trip and 3) the things they wanted most out of the upcoming trip. In the first category there was a fair amount of consensus regarding top destinations: Italy got 4 votes, Peru and Greece got 3 votes and Egypt and Israel got 2 votes apiece. In the second category, there was unanimous agreement that our 2005 trip involved too much packing and unpacking and moving too quickly from place to place. This led perfectly into the third category, where we all wanted to volunteer and enjoy a sense of community and feel like we really got to know a place instead of moving frantically around the country. While it's true that both kids stated this preference, number one on both of their “want to do” lists was seeing lots of exotic animals: dolphins, caimans, tortoises, camels, condors, and sea lions, to name a few. It should be mentioned that in planning this trip, everything was “on the table” except for one thing: learning Spanish. My wife was adamant that for at least half the time, the kids would be immersed in the Spanish language. For her, this was a deal breaker.

While consensus was achieved, the kids had some interesting answers worth mentioning. My daughter’s number one destination was the Galapagos, effectively guaranteeing that we visit those islands. Both my son and daughter expressed a desire to avoid “dirty and disgusting” places and both listed the very same Nicaraguan town as an example. In 2005 we arrived in San Carlos after an all-night, bug-infested ferry passage on Lake Nicaragua. San Carlos is located where the lake feeds the San Juan River on its way to the Caribbean. The combination of the river, the lake and a proposed canal to the Pacific coast port town of San Juan Del Sur very nearly replaced the future Panama Canal as the sole trans-isthmus waterway between North and South America. Because the US Congress preferred Panama over Nicaragua, San Carlos has remained a filthy, unattractive town that has left a collective scar on our memory.

We’ve also used these preferences from our meeting as a guide along the way. We altered our Bolivia trip to include a last-minute visit to the Amazonian pampas because of the kids’ preference for seeing lots of animals. Looking forward, we’ve thrown in 10 day Kenya/Tanzania safari (“en route” to the Mediterranean) so that we can experience some East African wildlife, as well.

That’s the plan, how it came about and now we’re halfway through it: Half a year volunteering in South America and the next six months touring the Mediterranean. Stay tuned.