Happy kids!

With direct flights to Liberia, Costa Rica, from most major cities in North America, a family trip to Nosara is easier than ever.  Nosara is a family-friendly beach town on the Nicoya peninsula where you never need to convert your dollars or habla espanol. Unless you want to.  As a blue zone, the peninsula has attracted more and more travelers to the “American Project”, a development project begun in the 1990’s. The beach is actually called Playa Guiones so don’t be confused when “Guiones” and “Nosara” are used interchangably. Our family of five had the privilege of spending six weeks in this gem of a town, enjoying the warm Pacific waters and these are our greatest hits.  See our travelogue here:

Sunset

The major “to-do” on your Playa Guiones agenda will be the sunset.  The entire town comes out to watch it go down. Most of the photos on my phone were the sunset miracle.  There are horses, a bubble performing guy, some belly-dancing ladies, Instagram photos shoots and my personal favorite – sunset surfing, boogie boarding or swimming. (Be warned that there are rumors of more and more burglaries happening at this time.  With all the gringos communing on the beach, it can be a great time for burglars. So make sure to lock up!)

Lots of action on the beach every evening. There’s a collective pause as it finally goes over the horizon.

Nosara Kids Camp

There are two daycamps for kids in Nosara: one is called Nosara Kids Camp and the other is Nosara Day Camp.  We loved Nosara Kids Camp and I couldn’t even get them to try the other one so I cannot comment on “Day Camp”, but I do know that “Day Camp” does get full and they were in town first.  Our “Kids Camp” has daily surfing and an activity, like: cooking or baking a local treat, visiting the climbing wall, arts and crafts, ocean study, beach clean-up or jiu-jitsu.  Activities rotate daily and the schedule is on their website.  They slather the kids with zinc and require a sunshirt for surf. My kids adored the counselors, learned some Spanish and the 4.5 hour break was perfect!

Hard to say goodbye to Paola, who ran the camp.

Mariposa Popsicles

These are locally made by an entrepreneurial mom and available at most local grocery stores: Delicias del Mundo, Super Nosara and Organico.  Sugar free, vegan, full of superfoods AND kids can’t get enough of them!  All parts of the popsicle are compostable so there’s no plastic trash.  Each one comes with a beautiful, reusable sticker too.  We just wish they were available back home.

The Mariposa fridge stocked full at the Organico grocery store.

Family Nosara Surf and Boat Trips

We used Natalie’s Family Nosara Surf to plan two outings for us. Natalie takes the guesswork out of the logisitics: she organizes the transportation, communicates to the local operators and sends and invoice by paypal so we don’t have to always pay with a wad of dollars.  Contact her before you arrive in Guiones and she will organize as much or as little as you need.  And she’s a wealth of local knowledge. She helped to organize a four- hour trip with another visiting family on a fishing boat to snorkel around a pink sand island and then went chasing the pods of spinner and bottle nose dolphins.  We had social dolphins playing in bow and breaching along our sides.  She also organized a stand-up paddle or kayak tour on a nearby river.  Family Nosara Surf also organizes horseback riding, and surfing lessons and beach bonfires.

Standup paddling on the local estuary. Once we heard there was a local crocodile, we were very happy to spring for the guide.

Surfing

You will be amazed at how much easier it is for your kids to surf than you. There are loads of places in town to teach, but find one that specifically caters to kids. I recommend Nosara Family Surf. If you’re already competent, it’s still smart to start out with an instructor to point out the personality of the break, the beach and the tides.  Sunset surf?  Perfect!

Family surf sessions in the evening are the best: no sunscreen worries and it’s not too hot.

Aerial Yoga

Surprisingly, it’s a big thing down here.  It combines the “silks” aspect of circus classes with regular yoga and you get to soar like a super hero. Try it. The cocoon-like moments can get a bit hot mid-day but it’s great to try out. You can check out their schedule and website from their facebook page: or look at the schedules from these two local studios: Bodhi and Harmony House.

Hanging around at the Harmony House’s aerial yoga class.

Zipline

Behind surfing, this is my kids’ top recommendation.  The guides for Miss Sky Canopy Tours are fantastic and they will ham it up and do tricks. We always felt safe – kids younger than 12 or extra small need to be attached to an adult for some added mass.  There are 13 segments of line spanning  11 kilometers.  Half of the fun is loading up with your gear and riding in the truck to the course.  The ziplines are open for kids ages seven and up.

Getting ready for the zipline! Little kids were fine if they were attached to us.

Coconuts from the Cat in the Hat

The friendly rasta man on the corner pushes “pipas” or coconuts for $1. They are the perfect thirst-quencher and hydrator – a daily activity for us and don’t get a straw please, says my nine year-old.    There’s a whole ocean that will thank you.

Beach Bonfire

Nosara Kids Camp does their own beach bonfire each Friday, but if you can swing it, make one yourself on a low tide sunset.  All the grocery stores sell marshmallows (with wacky flavors, like chocolate-filled) and chocolate bars. We used local the local Tico “Maria” crackers instead of graham crackers.  We prepped our s’mores on the surfboard under a blue moon.  I hope you get the same stroke of luck.

With all the dead driftwood on the edge of the beach, the beach bonfire is a cinch!

SIBU

There are two wildlife sanctuaries in town and they are both doing great work. We chose to go to SIBU and it was one of the highlights of our trip.  The founder, Vicki Coan, is a passionate protector of the area’s Howler Monkeys, fights against the local government to rewire the area’s power lines to monkey-friendly wiring, and tells stories of waking in the night to wrestle boas off of her baby monkeys.  She is a fiercely protective and passionate conservationist and it’s always worth the price of admission to support her endeavors and show your kids an inspiring role model.

Learning all about the effect of tourism on the local Howler Monkeys from founder Vicki Coan.

Golf Carts

If your kids are young or you want the ease of carting around kids and boards, there are numerous places to rent golf carts.  They are expensive, but the kids sure are having fun!  Our kids are all more than nine years old and we like walking, but it did mean walking home from dinner in the dark and there was definitely some golf cart envy.  You can rent from Paradise

Everyone loves a golf cart!

Favorite Eats:

10 Pies for pizza, salads and regular Tico faire.  Call ahead for a reservation. +506 2573 3236

Robins Cafe in North Guiones has fresh, healthy food.  It’s reasonably fast and fairly-priced.

La Luna is the only beach-front restaurant around and has incredible food. The waitstaff are notoriously grumpy, but for us, it was part of the charm and great entertainment.  You can take the trail from Guiones, drive or plan a cab. (no website or email) +506 2682 0122 but reservations are a must!

Beach Dog Café has great margaritas and pickle-mole.  The live music in the evenings would be great if you didn’t have kids so go for lunch or a pre-sunset snack.  Service, food and T-shirts are all impeccable.+506 2682 1293

Enjoying the beachside restaurant, La Luna

The post Family Guide to Nosara, Costa Rica appeared first on Travels With Paradise.

Long, sandy beaches with a regular surf break make Nosara a perennial favorite

Will and the kids woke at 4am to eat some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and wait to watch the sun rise.  I, surprisingly, stayed asleep.  They found the beach and walked all the way to the end where they came upon a few other gringos in a circle.  There was a large turtle burying her eggs along the edge of the beach.  Dazed and disoriented, they didn’t realize that this was a sight most never see in Nosara.  This momma was seasonally very late and she was on a popular human beach, but not a popular turtle nesting beach.  When we told a few disbelieving people in the days to come, they all wondered if indeed we actually witnessed a nesting turtle.  Perhaps it was a collective dream?

Momma burying her eggs in March, Playa Guiones

It took us a few days to really feel like humans, knowing night from day and up from down.  We had booked a house in Guiones (Nosara) nine months before and were paid in full but in my first moments, I felt that we had made a huge mistake.  Sleep it off, everyone recommended this place; it will get better.  But it didn’t.  Guiones, is a gringo suburb of Boulder, Toronto, Vancouver and Manhanttan all rolled into one. We felt like we were back home.  Everyone was white except the workers, everyone spoke English to us, quinoa superfood salad was on the menu and shops preferred US dollars to the local currency, colones.

Homeschooling poolside, specifically drilling multiplication flashcards

Juan Surfo is one of the first local characters who gave us a glimpse of Tico- gringo relations.  As the only locally-owned surf shop, we took a lesson and rented some boards by the week – a real chance to meet a local, we thought.  Lorna and I walked our long boards about six city blocks to the beach in back of a water truck that looked to be spraying dirty water all over the road. And it smelled a lot like Christmas.  My flip flops were getting sticky and great black blobs were being flipped up on the backs of my legs.  Gosh that smells like molasses, I finally said to Juan.

“It is.  Most gringos break their flip flops on the fresh coat.  You guys actually did well.”

Most Ticos are much kinder but there is the sense of us vs. them.  And with most rentals costing way more than locals could afford, there was not much opportunity to meet a local unless they were somehow working in the tourism industry.  And so being the brunt of the joke in the molasses-flipflop fun seems a fair price to pay.

The trail to town, not a bad way to get around.

In our first week, Will, Lorna and I decided to head to downtown Nosara to check it out and visit the grocery store while the little ones were at Nosara Kids Camp.  It was only a few kilometers so we decided to walk.  It was hot and the dust was intense.  Trucks and bikini-clad ATV riders passed us with goggles and bandanas tied around their necks.  Where are we?!?  The jungle to the side of the dirt road was a muted-green with the dust free layer far to the interior.  After walking just ten minutes three cars pulled over to see if we needed help. Apparently, people don’t walk to town around here.  After lecturing Lorna that she should never do as we are doing by getting into a car in any country with a stranger, we accepted a ride with some of the kindest Ticos we met in our entire stay.  The driver was a tamale maker and the front passenger laid tile – if my Spanish was accurate.

“Just drop us at the plaza,” I said assuming that this was like every other Central American town.

“Where?” asked the tamale maker.

“The center of town.”

“But what do you need to do here?”

“Look around and then buy groceries.”

“We will drop you at the supermarket then.”

There really is no town center except the soccer field that never seemed to have soccer players.  After shopping, the grocery store delivered us back to Playa Guiones.  I sat up front and Lorna and Will sat in the back on a upside down milk crates that bumped and slid from the ride on the dirt road.  The supermarket has free delivery, even it’s mostly delivering the gringos back to their playa, but the supermarket trips were some of our most authentically Tico experiences during our stay.  And when you’re a gringo staying here, you are staying in Guiones, not Nosara, no matter what your AirBnb search tells you.

The best part of living in Guiones was to be near the wildlife.  Our AirBnb had a great garden with a resident iguana in the mohagony tree.  He sidled down the tree each morning and seemed to expect treats poolside.  He particularly liked watermelon and did a series of quick pushups in thanks.  And then the crabs came all at once.  Some said it was because we got the first rains and others said it was simply mating season, but our pool was an obvious hub for the local crabs.  Each day we would try to rescue between four and eight of them out of the pool just to see them run back in.  So we stopped swimming in the pool and started to use our pool for crab watching instead.

Christmas crabs rule the pool. They’re the most attractive crabs I’ve ever seen.

After we’d been in Guiones for few weeks, we began to relax into the groove of being a gringo.  I mean what were we so bummed about?  Yoga, surfing, easy English, quinoa burgers, and great camps for the kids.  Really, it was prep time to return to our life in Boulder, time to wrap our heads around homecoming.  Unplanned, we ran into friends from Boulder and also had great friends plan to come and visit us for their spring breaks.  We were no longer just our family unit experiencing the world. Our circle widened to include a social life beyond Paradise.  After being on the road for nine months, we have just three more months until we return to our previous yoga/superfood/social American life. This is a glimpse of what it will be like.  And the familiarity of life Guiones, was the culture shock.  We were expecting cultural immersion, but what we got was expat lifestyle.

In our last week, I went out for a run without my phone at about 6am. (I’m convinced that the best things happen in life when there’s no phone for photos. Maybe the universe respects the impulse for the undocumented mystery.) We had been in Guiones for five weeks and for some reason I looked down to see, what looked like, a tiny turtle scurrying to the surf. No way. Then I looked up and perpendicular to the water marched an entire highway of them. Bikes and other runners were zooming by looking out the horizon or out to the sea.  My momma bear impulse kicked in hard and I played crossing guard, slowing people down and asking them to pick their way carefully. Another runner from New York joined me and we spent the next hour doing duty. When we thought they were done, we walked up to their source and watched a whole new bloom bubble up from the sand and make their way toward home. Was this the nest that Will and the kids had watched on our first morning? As we traded details, we think it was. Perfect bookends to our time in Nosara.

These little coati, or pizotes, skittered around the jungle on the way to town, bigger than a raccoon.

We often talk of the difference of being a tourist versus a traveler.  The unscripted life of a traveler relies heavily on the luxury of time, the fluency of language and the insider connections. A tourist needs to go no further than TripAdvisor and the information kiosk.  Their path is well worn and marked by Birkenstock and New Balance imprints. What we missed is being a traveler. Would we come back to Guiones? Yes, but for a spring break or quick trip when you’re looking for all the comforts of home with great surf and iguanas in the garden, not for rich cultural immersion.  Sometimes, it’s perfect to be a tourist.

The post Travelogue: Playa Guiones and Nosara appeared first on Travels With Paradise.

Here’s a link to my travelogue about our recent trip.http://travelswithparadise.com/thailand-coming-home/

This list assumes that you will arrive into Bangkok but you can easily adapt the ideas if you land in Chiang Mai or Phuket.

Kai, 9 years old, drives the long tail boat in Bangkok on our first day in Thailand.

Do

Prepare For Jetlag

If you are traveling to Thailand from the United States, you are looking at over twenty hours in the sky and a twelve-hour time difference.  Prepare for it and even use it to your advantage.  On day one, stay up as late as possible and do these four easy, gentle safe activities.  1) Visit Wat Pho which is less hectic than the Grand Palace but will still wake you up to the fact that you are now in the Kingdom of Siam. 2) Take a canal tour – you can rent a private boat at the pier (Tha Thien) behind Wat Pho for less than $30 for two hours, taking you along the canals of this “Venice of the East”.  There just may be a floating saleswoman to sell you some snacks and the kids may be invited to drive the boat.  3) Get a foot massage near your hotel and 4) Grab some fruit at fruit stand and try some wonderful new fruit.  There will be some you’ve never seen before.  Some fruit sellers will cut it right on the spot. Fruit cutting is an art form here and is a mandatory subject in public schools.  If you find your family up at odd hours, go out and enjoy the early morning. Look for the monks on their alms rounds. It still happens between 6-8am.  (Please keep a respectful distance.) Or take a late night tuk-tuk ride. See below. Or explore mall life that doesn’t fade until 10pm. (See below) Don’t go out past 10pm with kids though – especially near Soi 21 or Patpong neighborhood where your kids may have a LOT of tough questions.

All of a sudden, I was the only one awake!

Splurge for a Pool

Thailand is hot and humid.  Your body will need some time to acclimatize and end of the day swim can be the difference between happy campers and cranky kiddos.  Many hotels or Airbnb’s have pools where your kids can cool down and meet some other kids.  Make you’re sure your accommodations look kid-friendly to avoid the annoyed honeymooners.  Or, if you don’t have a place with a pool, shower often.  The locals usually shower morning and night.

Prepare for prickly heat

“Prickly heat” is a skin rash that commonly happens to foreigners arriving here usually in the first few days before they acclimatize to the heat and humidity.  It’s a harmless but uncomfortable rash and kids are more susceptible. Again, get in the habit of showering often to help prevent this. I highly recommend buying some powder either before you leave or after you arrive.  And even if you don’t get the rash, the powder is fantastic after a shower. Here’s a link to the best one. Prickly Heat Powder

Renting bikes in Ayuthaya. It was hot and the brakes were iffy, but it was by far the best way to tour the ruins.

Find activity outlets

My kids have a hard time calmly listening to a tour guide without being able to move.  We enjoyed using bikes to explore.  My kids on a bike in a city of 8 million, what?I thought the same thing, but the bike tours are usually on safe, back alleys and not in the center of the city.  Many companies use tag-a-longs or child seats.  We especially enjoyed Grasshopper Tour Company.  Their Bangkok tours include a shadow puppet show and their bicycles and helmets are properly fitted and perfectly maintained.  On a Grasshopper tour, your kids will learn a ton with lots of physical exercise in between.  There are many independent cycle rentals at the ruins of Ayuthaya and Sukhothai but the maintenance may be dodgy at best.

Shopping is a cultural experience – embrace it

Thai people view shopping as something like a national sport. From local markets to megamalls, trade and commerce is alive and well here.  If you know the numbers or like to use a calculator for translation, anyone outside of a mall appreciates and expects you to bargain.  If you are in a modern mall with a price tag, it is fixed price. Our favorite shopping places are the weekend market, Chatuchuk, in the north of Bangkok, Terminal 21 (especially the food court on the top floor that has great a great vegan stall) on Soi 21 and EmQuartier on Soi 35.  EmQuartier has 2.5 million square feet of retail space and a five story waterfall.

Here is a build-your-own flip-flop shop in EmQuartier. These mega malls will blow your mind and great for ‘tween travelers.

Embrace the Eating

One of the best reasons to visit Thailand is the food. On the well-worn tourist path, you can eat pizza and pasta for every meal.  But I hope you don’t. Here are some local, kid-friendly options.  First, try pad thai for real.  It will probably taste different from the pad thai at home.  Second, try mien kam.  You’ve probably never seen this, but it’s super fun for adults and kids alike.  You put little pieces of toasted coconut, shallot, ginger, dried shrimp on a broad leaf; top it with some sweet sauce, then bundle it up and pop it in your mouth.  YUM. And the third must is khao niew ma muangor mangoes and sticky rice: mangoes ripen all year round now and I wouldn’t be bashful to buy these right off a street seller.  And lastly, kanom krok: a coconut dessert that is cooked on the street in a massive skillet with small half-moon divots, like a smaller sized egg poacher.  If you’re lucky, they will still hand it to you warm in a banana leaf.  If you start looking, you will see these treats everywhere. (All of the above can easily be vegan and gluten-free.)

Here is Mien Kham! Put the pieces you want into a leaf, bundle it up and pop it into your mouth. Kids love it and a great way to eat healthy food!

Visit a Thai temple like a pro (link coming soon!)

Take an overnight train

The best ones go from Bangkok to Chiang Mai or Bangkok to Trang in the South.  They are safe, clean and a great experience.  Definitely bring eye shades as they don’t turn the lights off and the top bunk can be intense.  You can buy tickets online from these two reputable ticket sellers.  www.asia-discovery.com or www.thailandtrainticket.com. You can book ahead, and they will deliver your tickets to you in BKK.  Definitely a highlight for my kids.

Plan down time

Thailand is a sensory experience and some planned down time will help your little ones digest all that they have seen and experienced. If you are at the beach or up in the mountains, you can just spend a day swimming, writing in journals, reading a book and eating great food.  Down days can include trying some Thai massage.  You should always be in an open room, fully clothed for traditional Thai massage.  It’s fun and kid-friendly.

Seek out alternatives to the packaged tours

This can be hard without someone who speaks the language, but you will see a more gentle, more authentic side of Thailand if you forego the packaged tours.  Find a boat driver and ask him to take you to some islands or find a private guide.  Maybe your hotel can help arrange it.  Thai people are their least charming on large packaged tours.

Our long tail boat to Railay and snorkel Chicken Island in Krabi. We paid under $100 for a …three hour tour.

Ride a tuk-tuk at night

Your kids will be begging you to ride a tuk-tuk and you should; they’re fun.  But stuck in traffic on a hot day, they are not fun.  Try doing this later at night when a good driver will make this better than any ride at Disneyland.  Be warned: there are no seat belts, nor helmets and kids should be on the inside, with parents on the outside of the tuktuk.  Do this at your own risk, but if you’re up for an adventure, I highly recommend you do it.

Count spirit houses as a way to pass the drive time

It can be a challenge to help kids with their boredom in a long car ride.  And with their nose in a book there is so much they are missing outside their window.  I started asking them to count spirit houses and it turned into a great game; one that the whole family could get into from both sides of the car / taxi.  Once you know what to look for, spirit houses are everywhere.  You may even pass spirit house stores and need to use some estimating skills as you zoom by.  Thai people erect spirit houses just outside their homes as a way to keep wandering ghosts from entering their homes.  They are made to look enticing and always have fresh water, flowers and food.  This is not a Buddhist tradition but one that predates Thai Buddhism.

This is a Bangkok spirit house with fresh offerings.

Don’t

Don’t plan lots of outdoor activity for the middle of the day

You and your kids will enjoy more of Thailand in the morning or evening. Mid-day is hot and sweaty.  Plan your day around it.  Do like the locals and use your umbrella to make your own personal shade.

Don’t try to drive a car

Driving is the most dangerous thing you will do in Thailand.  Accidents happen. Download the app, Grab.  It’s a Thai Uber. We took one all the way to Ayuthaya, an hour and a half from Bangkok for slightly more money than the train.  Take a taxi, train, skytrain, or fly.  Try to avoid the white van ridesand don’t drive yourself. Outside of the beaten path, signage will only be in Thai.

Don’t ride and elephant or pet a tiger

Read Lorna’s blog post.  Elephants perform because they are forced to perform.  Wild elephants don’t paint pictures with their friends in the forest and tigers don’t like to be pet like kitties.  Ask yourself if this seems like normal behavior for a wild animal before deciding to visit such places.  Do some searching on Youtube.  There are plenty of sanctuaries where you can enjoy and help the animals of Thailand at the same time.

Elephant Nature Park in Chiang Mai will let you get up close and personal to rehabilitating elephants. Kids will love to care for them and won’t miss the ride.

Don’t be scared of the Monsoon

School holidays will align with Thailand’s rainy season or “monsoon”.  In the past few years the season’s timing is less reliable, and you may miss it entirely.  Some link this variability to climate change, but who knows.  Bring umbrellas (or buy them there) and plan to get wet. It’s less crowded in monsoon.  It’s also cooler, more exotic and you can watch the ways in which this corner of the world adapts to lots and lots of water. Typically, the rain happens in the afternoon so plan your flights for the morning.  It won’t rain solidly, I promise.

Here is Lorna and OckPopTok in Luang Prabang. In two days and with the help of her private instructor, she made silk place mats on this authentic loom.

Favorite spots in Thailand

Bangkok – the best big city in the world!

Ride bikes Ayuthaya or Sukhothai

Krabi: find the boat pier and ask for your own three island long tail ride that includes Chicken Island

Trang Islands

Elephant Nature Park in Chiang Mai

Mae Hong Son

Nong Kai

Ockpoptok in Luang Prabang (actually that’s Laos but PLEASE include it in your itinerary)  You can catch a flight from Chiang Mai, BKK or Phuket, OR take the slow boat from Chiang Rai.

And finish in BKK on the weekend to buy your final souvenirs at the Chatuchuk weekend market and visit the vegetarian restaurant there run by the Buddhist community, Santi Asoke, just ask around.  We gave the kids each $20 to buy some fun stuff.  You can buy nearly everything you see around Thailand at -some say – this largest market in Asia…  Lots of blogs our there written about it.

The post Family Travel Hacks for Thailand appeared first on Travels With Paradise.

We’ve completed our eighth month on the road and “roadschooling” or worldschooling is not as I envisioned it before we left.  It’s morphed into something that is fluid and alive.  Our kids go to a Waldorf School and yet I taught traditional public middle and high school. So I’ve been trying to do a blend of the two, looking for a middle path that makes us both comfortable.  If there is one piece of advice that I got from three friends who have done their version of a year worldschooling before, it’s: don’t stress about school; they will learn a ton no matter what you do.  But I’ve got teacher blood in my veins and we like to plan, set measurable goals and make sure all the learning modalities are reached.

Daily assignments written on index cards. Usually come up with some great breaks and done by lunch.

Math

The idea that I am the “math teacher” makes me itchy.  I needed the crutch of a math workbook so we picked up some of those from Barnes and Noble.  They’re light, sequential and there’s an answer sheet for mom.  Most days we do math of some sort.  Lucy and Kai quiz each other with their flash cards.  And then I can riff off of their workbooks with fractions, measurements, word problems and the like.  Lorna is doing simple algebra and geometry, and with a little prep work on my part, I can make it work.  It may not be out-of-the-box creative, but we’re rocking the Pythagoream Theorem.  The hardest part has been to find a protractor and rulers that use inches.  (And that’s learning in itself – we are the only country that sells inch rulers.)

Lucy and Kai quizzing each other with math flashcards – Costa Rica.

Reading

The kids are reading a ton.  Lorna has read over sixty books since July; Lucy over forty and Kai over twenty.  They are keeping track of their books and doing some simple projects and book reports.  Lorna wrote a review of her favorite book for Amazon.  We have the luxury of time and space to read with our kids.  I’m convinced that reading aloud with an adult is the best way for a child to improve their reading skills.  There’s the actual reading itself and learning how the punctuation works, then there’s the predictions, the personal connections and shared delight in the written word.  Lorna read The Giver, by Lois Lowry with her grandmother over email.  When kids read with an adult, there’s no need for those formal comprehension worksheets, but instead comprehension becomes organic.  One of my top favorite parts of parenting is reading with my kids.

Nonfiction reading is also easily incorporated by reading the displays at museums, animal sanctuaries and national parks.  In New Zealand, we had access to a great English library and we made reports, with drafts, all ready to give to their teachers in Boulder.  We have also read history textbooks, as described below.

Kai presenting his shelter project to a gathering of visiting friends. He decided to build a traditional Sherpa home complete with clay yaks and potato field. And then fielded questions.

Writing

Ok, maybe writing is the most fun.  Most days when we’re on the go, we journal.  I use their writing from their journal to tailor their “writing lessons.”  I give them a card with obvious errors and they need to correct it.  Easily individualized.  We are keeping writing portfolios to show the writing process (prewriting and drafts), and all the different types of writing that we have done: postcards, thank you notes, Amazon book reviews, personal letters, formal letters, etc.  We also did a great poetry unit together which I will write up soon with a link.  We did group poems and memorized poems.  My seventh grader is writing five paragraph essays and my fourth grader did her first report on the lion.

Learning to make baskets and placemats with Ockpoptok in Luang Prabang, Laos

Social Studies / History

This really is the easiest subject for my kids to learn.  We learn through museums, monuments, place names, and shared meals.  All we need to do is recognize the teachable moments and be ready to expand on them.  It’s more improv than scripted.  But there are a few caveats to that.

• Through every country we have taken notes on pivotal historical events and plotted them into our 20 foot-long traveling timeline. Unlike a history class which moves chronologically, we arrive at history geographically.  My intention was that the timeline would hold it all together and make order and sense across world movements.
• Two history textbooks that are compact-ish and cover ancient humans the imperialism. I like the TCI books and you can buy them used on Amazon.

Science and Conservation

Science is still focused on farming, animals and the environment.  Traveling through national parks, the visitor centers teach so much. And instead of just learning about our global environmental problems, we are meeting people who working on a solution.  We have visited penguin, elephant and howler monkey sanctuaries to learn about animals and about that dangerous intersection between human development and wildlife habitat.  We will visit an organic farm in Costa Rica for three nights and have already dug potatoes in the Himalayas and tapped rubber trees in Thailand.

And then there’s foreign language, both tonal ones and flat ones, and the outdoor education and physical education and the art and geography.  Oh my.

Some lovely young Canadian environmentalists whom we took out for lunch to ask them what surfrider was doing to clean up the oceans. The kids had their questions ready.

As a “retired” classroom teacher, I can say that direct instruction time in a public school setting is less than three hours per day.  There’s the classroom management, the collecting of permission slips, the off-topic comments, the recess and the weeks of testing.  In schools kids learn so much more than state standards, like how to be social, how to work as a group, how to be a friend – than the actual lessons: I’m not dissing schools.  But if you can take a year to teach your kids, they will have oodles of time to do more than the traditional sit-in-a-desk-and-answer-the-questions kind of learning.  There will actually be more time to swim with the big questions before answering someone else’s.

I could go on and on, but that is a glimpse into “how is the teaching going?”

The post So… how’s the “school” going? appeared first on Travels With Paradise.

At 21 years of age, about to graduate from college, I remember taking my large envelope from the US Peace Corps up to my bedroom to open it in private.  A Spanish minor, I had applied to both top-up my conversational Spanish and to, idealistically, make the world a better place.  I was sure that I would go to Latin America.  But when I opened up the envelope, I was shocked to read that my invitation was to Thailand!  …partly, because I honestly didn’t know exactly where Thailand was. I remember sitting cross-legged on the floor of the local bookstore to wrap my head around this curve ball and thought the photos of Thailand showed the most foreign and exotic place on earth. Thailand felt like destiny and I accepted.

The floating market near Bangkok.

To make a long story short, I spent almost half of a decade living, working or specializing in Asia.  After three years with the Peace Corps, I worked as a guide in Thailand and Laos and later became the Southeast Asia Program Director for Where There Be Dragons.  Then 9/11 happened; student travel dried up; I met Will and started a family.  I hadn’t been back to Southeast Asia in sixteen years.

Spent the first few days in Bangkok with Pojaman and Patra, my old Peace Corps language teachers.

Arriving back in Bangkok on January 31, 2018 reminded me of the first time I set foot in Asia.  It’s a sensory place: the buzz of the tuk-tuks, the heat, the golden temples, the heat, the flashing lights, and the heat.  The humidity is like a coat you can’t take off.  In one block, you can smell cilantro, garbage, chili peppers, plumeria, and pollution. I watched my kids come to terms with the air, the smells and the chaos that is Bangkok.  I had arranged a van pick-up for all our stuff and surprisingly I chatted with the driver in Thai.  Boulder, Colorado gives very little opportunity to practice Thai.  The few Thai restaurants employ college students with little to no knowledge of Thailand beyond pad thai.  I have one Thai friend in Boulder, but after a few conversational silliness, we have always defaulted to English.

Tuk-tuks: one of their favorite parts of Thailand.

So the Thai just flowed out my mouth with the van driver.  Instead of trying to translate as I do with Spanish, I just got out of my own way and words just came; words I didn’t even know I knew.  And I could still read the basics too.  Who am I, that this side of myself was hidden even from me?  But my kids and husband weren’t shocked. To them it was just totally normal that I could blabber away in Thai.

After just five nights in Bangkok, we flew down to Krabi where I lived and taught for two years.  Some former students came to pick us up at the airport and brought us to another student’s restaurant. Then we spent two nights up near my site in Khao Phanom.  They threw together an impromptu gathering and others phoned in.  When you’re a teacher in Thailand, you forever have your “lug sit” which roughly translates to “children” but reflects the idea that you are always connected to your students in a familial way.  We were received by all my lug sit as family returning.  From there we spent a day in Laem Sak with a good Thai friend who has worked for various NGO’s.  He drove us all back to the Muslim Sea Gypsy village where I came to visit and help write grants.  The folks in the village hosted us for lunch and a chat.  Their dialect was admittedly tough but most of them can speak Central Thai also.  And there was plenty of time with my coworkers too.  There was laughter and lots of eating and even some tears.  But mostly, years washed away and there was affection; simply love and affection that spans hemispheres, language and decades.

Some of my old students and an impromptu dinner in Khao Phanom, Thailand.

I haven’t written much at all because this whole month has been so profound for me.  I can’t quite make this time into a listicle or a punchy blog post.  It’s my life looking back at me with my family as a witness.  I kinda “broke up” with Thailand when I moved back to the States to grow up, but first loves will always welcome you back and they’re especially happy to meet the fam.  Thailand still sees me as the twenty-something idealist who said yes to the unknown adventure and learned how to both dream and dance in Thai.  My Thai friends don’t know me as a mom.

In Nakorn Sri Thammarat with Ruay and her family.

Some days in Boulder, I feel down at myself for not putting myself – my “career self” – out there.  I can’t quite make the leap to do more than just be a mom.  Most days I seem to spend doing for others what they should better learn to do for themselves.  Perhaps, it’s more stagnation than fear.  But those days in Krabi, I heard over and over how my time there, and my actions, helped lives along: from doors that were opened by their English, to grants that were written.  Boom. Done.  My life has touched others – isn’t that what it’s all about?

More photos of Ruay and her family visiting the temple in Nakorn Sri Thammarat.

This year has been more than simply “roadschooling”; it has connected some dots that were left floating in our Boulder lives.  Lucy returned to her orphanage.  Will returned to Nepal.  We all stayed with Pasang (our adopted Nepali 24 year-old) and her family in Kathmandu. And now my return to SEAsia and the self-reflection it begs.

The post Thailand: Coming Home appeared first on Travels With Paradise.

This is an adoptive family at the sanctuary. They have all been rescued from different places, but now have formed a family where they communally care for their blind and baby family members.

Elephants by nature are very sweet and gentle animals with the exception of a few aggressive males, but the intense training and abuse they must go through in order to perform in any way shape or form traumitizes them so that they are essentially crazy. We learned from our friend that elephant tourism is very complicated. Elephants in the wild are captured and taken to circuses and elephant trekking companies, but first they must go through “The Crush” or domestication. For about seven days they are tied up, starved and beaten to such extent that they are terrified of humans, and easier to train. Since they know that they will be hit if they don’t do what they are told, they are scared into painting, performing, or learning how to be ridden.

Happy elephant. Lots of room to roam and loving to rehabilitate her leg injury.

Sanctuaries like Elephant Nature Park will buy them out of this situation and put them into a free habitat without being chained up or any type of restraints, just acting like a normal elephants. But, since these sanctuaries are paying big money for these elephants, they’re accidentally creating a market for elephant buying. People will smuggle elephants over the border from the Burmese wilderness, and sell them to the sanctuaries telling them if they don’t buy the elephant they’ll sell it to a circus. But if the elephants stay in the wild, they are captured by trainers and the males are poached for their tusks. Also in Burma using elephants for logging isn’t illegal, so that just causes a whole new problem. Me and my family decided that they best thing we can do is support the sanctuaries, because at least these elephants are living in Paradise.  And we can spread the word to discourage elephant tourism.

You can look up Elephant Nature Park, and there’s a good video that shows you the truth behind Elephant tourism. And, if you ever come to Thailand, DON’T RIDE THE ELEPHANTS

This is not normal. These elephants were ridden by tourists in Ayuthaya, central Thailand. Just common intuition tells you that they’re not happy in costume and walking down the highway.

The post Lorna’s Blog: Elephant Sanctuary appeared first on Travels With Paradise.

Surf Life Saving Club with Maranui on Lyall Bay. You’ve got to love the caps on the young kids, or “Nippers”.

Surf Life Rescue is a combination sport: open-ocean swimming to buoys and back, board surfing, partner rescue and tandem return, and also beach running and relays.  Some athletes excel at the land events, others the water.  It’s a superb athlete who can do them all.  The team events are massive relays with swimmers, boarders and runners that takes up 75 square yards of beach and ocean.

Lorna and her teammates waiting for their events.

Lorna, especially, loves to swim and was really eager to meet kids her own age. She joined the competitive group and trained four days a week.  Kai just came on Sundays and Lucy found the ocean a bit too cold.  Some days were glorious, sunny and postcard-worthy; while on others, the kids swam through clusters of jellyfish or maneuvered long boards in a fierce wind.  At the end of our stay we traveled up five hours to Hawke’s Bay for a three-day training camp and regional competition for Lorna.  The surf was much bigger than in Wellington and tested her confidence.  Lorna has begun looking into university in Wellington so she can continue her new favorite sport.

This event called “flags” is like beach sprint musical chairs, and was Kai’s favorite.

The practices include beach running, swimming through the surf out and around buoys (pronounced “boys” in NZ) and paddle/surfing on long fiberglass boards.  You’re not supposed to stand on the boards, but ideally to kneel on them or lie down while catching a wave.  Lorna, from Colorado, was very new to swimming in surf, let alone maneuvering an eight-foot board through it. But she was motivated to learn.  The little ones surf with foam boogie boards, instead.

Santa and the elves dropped in by inflatable boat to pass out Chocolate Fishes to the Nippers.

Our Maranui has been training lifeguards since 1911 and the programs for the teens and younger set (Nippers) is alive and well.  New Zealand needs well-trained lifeguards to patrol their coastline and help to reduce drownings each year.  With 9300 miles of coastline, drowning is a real issue.  Surf Life Saving is also a fun way to foster a love for their ocean and a comfort in all her moods.  The word “Maranui” is Maori for the area of Lyall Bay in New Zealand but has now become synonymous with the café upstairs from the club.  The unreal location of the club allows them to lease out the top to the café, the bottom to conferences, maintaining the club itself swimmingly viable.

Lorna’s competitive ocean swim at Waimarama. She’s in there!

For me, I enjoyed that universal parenting stance: standing on the sidelines, elbow to elbow with other parents while cheering for one another’s kids and chatting.  I realized how much I missed my friends back home, missed sharing the highs and lows, empathizing and laughing about being a parent.  The Maranui family gave me and my kids those daily rhythms we missed most.  On our last night in Wellington, there was a small, impromptu bar-b-que farewell.  We were so touched – the beauty of travel comes through these people we meet, witnessing real life not just ticking off landmarks. I hope we can welcome some Maranui friends back in Colorado soon.

The post Maranui Surf Life Saving appeared first on Travels With Paradise.

The beloved chocolate fish.

Chocolate Fish as metaphor.  Chocolate Fish are these super-sweet-pink-marshmallow-chocolate-covered fish.  They seem to be a Kiwi icon and they’re pretty gross by most standards.  Will won’t try one.  But to me they’re a metaphor for the laidback Kiwi living.  They’re the retro treat that can come with a cappuccino; Santa brought them to the kids’ surf life-saving club when he pulled up on the inflatable motorboat; and eating them as fast as possible was a step in the team relay.  But here’s the thing: no one asked if my kids could eat artificial colors, or gluten or sugar as they would back home.  They still give candy to kids here without permission slips.  It’s refreshing not to overthink everything.

Car Loan Offers came rolling in after staying in Wellington just ten days.  We were taking the bus, some ubers and a few car rentals.  After using public transport exclusively in China, we were trying not to revert to our default American suburban habits. But the steep hills and swim practices were wearing our resolve.  We had three offers for long term car loans from people we had just met.  They were leaving for the holidays and we were car-less – it’s that simple.  This wouldn’t happen in the States, I thought.  “It’s just a car,” was the Kiwi reasoning.  And it’s true; it is just a car.

The entry way to our local primary school. We visited their playground often.

Maori comes first in any government building.  The relationship between the indigenous people and those of European-descent appears to be one of more equality than anywhere else I’ve traveled.  The students all learn the Maori language, dances and culture in school.  Any government building has signage in Maori first and English second.  I’ve never heard anyone organically speaking Maori with one another, but at least the gesture and intention is legit.  By the time the bulk European settlers arrived in New Zealand in the late 1800’s, the US had done a pretty good job of destroying the lives of our Native Americans.  Perhaps the New Zealand timing was simply better to catch a global shift in perspective or maybe they’re just better humans. But whatever they reason, the Maori indigenous culture is truly held in reverence.

Female power is real.  New Zealand was the first country to give women the right to vote in 1893. (Colorado was the first state to grant the vote in the same year.)  Today they have a female prime minister, supreme court justice and governer-general.  Not only is the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, a young, feminine leader, but she is pregnant.  The public debate is not: are we ready for a female leader.  The questions are: is there a changing table in the Parliament Building, can a stay-at-home dad get the support he needs and are Baby Bjorns allowed through the security?  Good on ‘ya, Jacinda!

The bikes and sun hats are all provided by the cafe. No helmets, no waivers.

A “No Waiver” Mentality.  We never signed waivers here; not for glacier heli-hiking, nor kids’ summer camps nor the neighborhood Crossfit.  Frivolous law suits are simply “forbidden”.  Coming from a highly litigenous society to New Zealand, there’s a palpable mentality that everyone is simply doing their best.  When I dropped my nine and ten year-old’s off at a day camp, they simply wrote my cell number down in pencil next to their names.  That’s it.  No forms with the insurance numbers and sunscreen waivers.  Does this lack of paranoia contribute to the overall happy, community-mindedness?  I think so.

World Class Parks.  Every town seems to have a park.  Without worry of lawsuits, small towns reflect the local color and one even had a slide coming out of an old WWII era plane.  It seems that US parks are designed by lawyers, but Kiwis have a lot more fun in the planning process.  The city parks are truly state of the art and must be a purposefully large sector of the city budgets.  There are water elements and jumping pillows, skate parks and massive zip lines (called flying foxes).  The park in downtown Christchurch boasted that it was the largest park in the Southern Hemisphere.  I’d be proud too.

The largest park in the Southern Hemisphere, Christchurch.

Travel is an important part of an education.  Most Kiwis we met, had lived and worked overseas.  Many met their life partners while traveling.  They reason that New Zealand is so isolated down here that, aside from Australia, the rest of the world is pretty far away and a twenty year-old can easily get island fever.  Also, the commonwealth as global network, makes entry requirements and work visas easy to get.  New Zealanders never questioned our decision to take the kids to the road, but instead, most actively encouraged this crazy year.  That’s not a universal reaction, but definitely a solid stance in New Zealand.

The post New Zealand Life Takeaways appeared first on Travels With Paradise.

The major goal for the first week was to find outside groups and activities so the kids could interact with other kids.  We wanted to set the groundwork to find a short-term life here instead of seeing the sights and looking for the touristy things to do in Wellington.  We wanted to go from “tourist” to “traveler”.  We got library cards, bus passes, wetsuits and a swim membership at the local rec center. We signed the kids up for the neighborhood “Surf Life Saving” club –which we’ve learned is THE thing to do in Lyall Bay from some Kiwi-American friends from Boulder.

Surf Life Saving Club with Maranui on Lyall Bay. You’ve got to love the caps on the young “Nippers”.

Will toured the grocery and vinyl stores (favorite was Death Ray Records in Newtown) to get the lay of the land.  He thankfully did all the food shopping and cooking, so I could focus on schooling and organizing the kids’ activities.  We found gyms to work out and the perfect running route down along the coast.  I never found my yoga-home, but did my own thing in the morning.

This time in Wellington was also intended to be a time for traditional school sit-down-and-learn-work.  We dedicated three solid hours, five days per week, to school – some were autonomous tasks and others are direct instruction and help from me.  (Lorna is teaching Kai violin.) They worked on individual writing portfolios and we had a fun unit on poetry.  Lorna has written reviews for her books on Amazon and even a coherent, “polite yet deeply concerned” email to Trump.  We drilled math facts each morning for the Littles and then did half an hour of math per day from some grade-level books purchased back home. The kids have been receptive and enthusiastic for “school”.  Lucy made place cards for everyone and enjoys organizing the books.  And we decided that a 100% on spelling tests will earn them (and me) a Friday ice cream.  I can’t stump them: they all get words like “photosynthesis” and “rhythm” correct.  Ice cream is an excellent motivator.

The local rec center 50 meter pool, and Olympic high dive platforms. Their “inflatable” play time does NOT disappoint.

There’s been plenty to keep us busy here in Wellington.  We have typically spent the morning homeschooling, and then played for the afternoon.  When the weather is good, we enjoy the ocean with the boogie boards that Santa brought, walk the shoreline or visit one of the world-class parks.  And when it’s too cold or rainy, we spend days at the free Te Papa Museum, swim inside or find our way to the neighborhood trampoline park.

Maori carving at Te Papa. Love the Abalone (paua) shell accents.

We needed a home for Christmas: a tree, homemade stockings and a kitchen for baking.  We sang our carols at night; Santa came to eat our cookies; and the reindeer nibbled at the carrots.  We missed our family back home so these little traditions meant so much.  But we also got to incorporate some new, purely Kiwi Christmas traditions… pinkie bars and jaffas in the stockings, a brisk ocean swim on Christmas Eve and best of all, some wonderful new friends invited us to a family holiday afternoon potluck and gift exchange.  And it gets better – it was at their croquet club guesthouse!  So, we got to eat pavlova, drink champagne and play croquet all before the main events.  I will miss these wonderful Christmas twists next year.  The pavlova-champagne-croquet may need to a permanent addition.

Decorating our Christmas cookies in wetsuit.

Truth be told, I was humbled with sickness for a good two weeks.  I had a fever for five days and then had not a squeak of a voice for another week.  I’m still a bit Demi Moore-ish, but I’ve got my strength back and am thankful that it happened in a place with great, English-speaking medical care and access to Netflix.  It took a lot out of me and the rhythms and routines that we intended, went out the window for two weeks, but they rolled with it.

Wellington has been the perfect spot to hunker down.  I was feeling behind in the homeschooling department when we arrived, and now I’m feeling like we’re 80% finished for the year.  The kids have made friends and had play dates.  We have met so many lovely people and we all conclude that we could definitely live here forever.  We chose Wellington because we wanted more of the Maori influence than the South Island, wanted a city and ocean and all of that came within arm’s reach of Melanie.  She was our beloved babysitter when she went to CU Boulder and has moved to Wellington when her husband got a contract job to work on the government tax code.  Her first baby is crushingly due just the week after we leave but at least we hopefully distracted her a bit in this final trimester.

We will miss you, Melanie and Zach! So wonderful to spend time with our beloved former babysitter.

Goodbye Wellington!

The post Playing House in Wellington appeared first on Travels With Paradise.

• Swimming with the Dolphins
• Spontaneous play dates between our kids and the others of the campgrounds.  Our kids met penpals from New Zealand, China and the US.  Some campgrounds like the Top10’s have state-of-the-art play spaces and others have downhome, sweet ones.  But kids just love a playground and the ice, broken easily between kids, can build bridges to parents connecting and talking the way that parents do.  Parenting is universal.
  

  Our home for a month. Room to sleep six humans, a guitar, cello, violin and viola.

• Watching the Blue Penguins ascend from the Oamaru coast in “rafts”. Hundreds came in wave after wave of rafts – a mosh pit of tiny blue torpedoes.  They land, shake it off and toddle up the rocks, unknowingly on display in front of bleacher seats of spectators.  The hushed voices of the commentators, educate and make certain there are no flashes or loud noises… in English and Mandarin.
• Oamaru – coolest place we almost didn’t visit. There’s a hip retro vibe with the Steampunk HQ and the Michael O’Brien Bookbinders shop.  The pristine Victorian architecture and nostalgic museums lent an element of time travel to the journey.
  

  Oamaru and the wacky Steampunk World HQ. Sometimes mini blue penguins walk by.

• Glow Worm Caves We didn’t go for the fancy tour but instead walked through the mining tunnels of an old gold mine in Charleston, just south of Westport, on the West Coast.  In the early evening, we panned for gold and learned about the West Coast’s mining history.  (Roadschooling “mining history”, check!) With this price of admission we could camp in the parking lot for free AND the owner took us on a tour of the glow worm caves.  In a tour of just nine people, we held hips as if we were doing the bunny hop and walked through pitch dark tunnels save the glowing of the worms on the ceilings.
  

  Lorna communing with nature in Milford Sound.

• Milford Sound It’s the top destination in the South Island for a reason. The grand scale of its glacial bank cuts are humbling – Mother Nature’s perspective shift that cannot be captured in a photo, reminding us that humans are but a blip in the history of this earth.  We saw a sleeping whale, crested penguins and seals.
• Fox Glacier There are so many fantastic and fantastically expensive experiences in New Zealand that we didn’t do. But we did splurge on the heli-hike trip up Fox Glacier, reasoning that there’s a chance these won’t be around in another generation.  Maybe our kids will be spinning yarns to their grandkids about that helicopter ride up to the glacier to tramp around with crampons.  You can explain it to me scientifically all you want, but the color blue of a glacier just feels beyond logic.
  

  Exploring Caves on Fox Glacier with crampons. No waiver signed.

• Fern tree forests So many tramps and hikes through the dense forest of fern are awe-inspiring; the birdsong; the prehistoric riff on a rare rainforest; the moss and lichens catching the light just so; the peek-a-boo of the turquoise waters; the veil of sandflies when you stop to admire.  (You only notice them when you stand still – so don’t stop.)
  

  The Giant’s House in Akaroa. Great place to practice piano.

• We expected the natural beauty and the friendly Kiwi people, but we did not expect the quirky, lively art scene and rich culture. We loved the “Giant’s House” in Akaroa, the cardboard cathedral and public art of Christchurch, the Puzzling World and wines of Wanaka, the Scottish architecture and Cadbury factory tour in Dunedin and the shark boat and sheepdogs of Queenstown.

The post New Zealand South Island’s Greatest Hits appeared first on Travels With Paradise.