FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

1. How are you able to take a year off?
This trip has been in the works for about 5 years, although we’ve talked about traveling as a family since before our kids were born. After ten years as a high school teacher, Chris became an administrator in 2002. At that time two things happened – he got a significant pay increase, and he lost his summers off. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be an administrator forever, and we were all heart-broken about the end of family summers. So we vowed to save his pay increase, and planned to take a year off at some point in the future. While we didn’t save as much as we thought we might be able to (does anyone ever?!), we did save a significant amount over these five years.

We’ve always called this year our “sabbatical”. About a year ago we made passing reference to the sabbatical. Andy, who was just about to start middle school, asked when this was going to happen. He put in a request that he not miss sixth grade (first year of middle school), and not miss eighth grade (big year!). So he spoke it into being, and here we are, with Andy in 7th grade and Matt in 4th.

Chris is on a leave of absence from the school district, and while he was replaced as Principal of The New School, he is promised a position when we return. He is fully committed to being an educator in South Seattle, but what form that takes remains to be seen. Chrissie is also on leave from both Rainier Scholars, and Emerald City Bible Fellowship (our home church), and is able to return to both positions when we return. (Thank you Bob and Shawn!)

In other details, our house is rented to Pete, Kit, Cade, and Jack from The New School, Stephanie remains in the basement apartment, brother Doug is keeping our truck, and the worldly possessions we didn’t take with us are boxed away in our attic. [Thought: If everything we need for a year can fit in our car, what the heck is all the stuff in the attic?!]


2. How did you decide where to go?
We started by making a list of all the people we know in the world. This list has changed since we first made it two or so years ago. People have moved back to the US, or changed countries, and we’ve made some new friends. We connected [most of] the dots, and bought plane tickets. The beauty of going places where we know people is that we have personal connections to those places. It is much more difficult to travel totally on our own to places we’ve never been and don’t know much about. Besides, pulling out a world map and trying to decide where to go without some sort of plan or purpose is completely overwhelming.

We purchased Round-The-World tickets through the Star Alliance, which is the network that United Airlines is a part of. Check out their RTW Mileage Calculator sometime at http://www.staralliance.com/. Even if you don’t go anywhere, it’s really fun to play with! We were allowed 39,000 miles for our trip, and we are using 38,944!


3. What are you doing about school?
We are officially registered as homeschoolers with the state of Washington. Ask us sometime about our experience trying to get some help from the Home School Resource Center in Seattle – it wasn’t pretty!

The boys will attend “real” school here and there, as they can. Matt is attending Carey School in Waverly, Iowa for a week or two. Both boys will attend school in South Africa for a few weeks in November. But mostly, they are enrolled full time at the Drape Academy. (Chris is principal and teacher, Chrissie is lunch lady, counselor, and classroom volunteer.)

MATH: The boys have math workbooks. Andy is doing the workbooks he would be doing at Aki Kurose as a 7th grader. The District has all their math curriculum available on their website, which was a big help. He has about 8 workbooks to get through this year. Matt is using Singapore math, which we heard about on NPR once. He’s starting with 3B, which is a review of 3rd grade math, plus a few things he hasn’t learned yet. He will work his way through 4A and 4B this year. Andy is in charge of calculating the mileage for our road trips, and we’re all working on the family budget.

READING: Lucky for us, both boys are avid readers. We are actually a little concerned about how we’ll keep them in books while we are traveling overseas. Before we left Seattle, we read lots of books about the countries we are visiting. You can look up books on the SPL website, and search the Children and Young Adult sections by typing in country names in the subject field.

WRITING: The family is having journal-writing time most every night. Sometimes we just write about anything that comes to mind, and sometimes we have a topic or writing prompt. Theoretically, we hope to turn some of our journals into blog entries, or more formal writings. Maybe in the spring?

SOCIAL STUDIES: We read quite a bit about Native Americans while we were traveling to and from Yellowstone. The Nez Perce traveled through Yellowstone on their flight toward Canada. We read a few chapters from Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, and then watched the new HBO movie by the same name when we got to Iowa. We have read quite a bit of historical fiction about countries we are traveling to, especially South Africa and Cambodia. Our theme for the year is Justice. (For anyone who has taken a US History class from Mr. Drape, you will know the African proverb: Until lions have their own historians, hunters will always be glorified.)

SCIENCE: We studied “thermal features” in Yellowstone. Now we are into farming in Iowa. Matt wants to do a science experiment to see what effect drinking real Coke would have on him. We’ll see about that!

PE: Hiking in Yellowstone, Frisbee anywhere, basketball in Grandpa’s driveway, soccer anywhere, picking up rocks at the farm. What isn’t PE?


4. How do you know what to pack?
Many thanks to several travel books for help on this. (See our reading list!) One book suggested you pack a nanny, and another book suggested that you don’t really need to pack a change of clothes. So we’re aiming for somewhere in the middle. We all have travel backpacks, and that’s all we’re taking. It’s basically a suitcase that you can strap on your back. Lord willing, the piles of things we plan to take will actually fit into the packs. We hope to be able to send some things home too, so we don’t have to haul our souvenirs and gifts all over the world. And yes, we will be very tired of the few shirts we’ve packed by the time we get home. We’ll post some pictures when we are ready to leave the country!


5. Where did the rubber chicken come from?
A teacher at The New School, Libby Sinclair, gave it to Chris as a going away gift last spring. (Thanks, Libby!) We thought it was an excellent gift, and it folds up into a nice little ball, so we decided to take it along with us. Andy has always had a thing about chickens, Grandma Fran has quite a family of chickens (“the girls”), and we have an unintentional chicken theme in our kitchen at home. So it fits, both thematically, and physically.


Feel free to submit a question. We’ll do our best to answer. [Hit the “comment” button at the end of this post.]