Poverty for Christmas

This December, over 2.1 billion Christians will celebrate the Christmas season.  Children around the world will wait with baited breath for brightly colored packages under the tree. A huge majority of the Westerm parents will spend more money than they can afford, buy more unnecessary garbage that will clutter their homes, and will kill more trees and natural resources on gift wrapping that will end up in the trash the day after. We won't.

 Why? We have a deeper agenda for Christmas 2011.

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The Ying Yang of Living Without

Life is all about ‘living with’ and ‘living without’. Have kids or don’t; eat healthy food or don’t; travel the world or don’t. Live with, live without. Each path has its definite perks and downfalls. So, we’ve chosen to travel the world, we’ve chosen to stack our cards and organize our lives in a way that has enabled  long-term nomadic family travel. It’s the cosmic ying-yang of our life choices.

Has it been easy? No. Have we had our doubts? Often. Has it been worth it? Absolutely.

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La Lucha de la Tigra, Costa Rica- June 20

You never fall in love for the first time, again. This was our first taste of Latin America: strong, sweet, and now, bittersweet. La Lucha de la Tigra, Costa Rica. (I can't say it without a sigh).

A loving glimpse back at a simplier life, one that was ours not that long ago; and yet, it feels like a lifetime ago. The following is a touching entry from my personal journal on Monday, June 20th, 2011. Then, we were living life as volunteers, life as locals, life in a rural school, life on the ranch. Ahh. Teary-eyed as I read it.

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Wednesday Wanderers- Roger the Panamanian Taxi Driver

Meet Roger. He's a 60 year old taxi driver who's madly in love with his country. He likes to talk economics and politics and reveals the secret to a good life-rum. Roger is one example of the goldmine of amazing people we are meeting along the way, people who are really teaching us (and our children) that the world is fully of remarkable people; and when you open your heart, when you turn to people with genuine curiosity, they will tell your their story.

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My Biggest Travel Mistake

We all make mistakes, and I'm pretty much at peace with mine. OK, so when I enthusiastically whipped out my camera to take a picture of those armed soldiers who didn't smile back at me, and Kobi (with rich military experience) told me sharply, "They have silencers on their M16's. Put the F--- camera away now!" Ok, so that was a little mistake. And when we pushed our kids through 40 hours of hell travel to save $1000- we could revisit that. And that time we went to sleep at a total stranger's house when we arrived at 12:30 am to a scary town, and we kept whispering to each other in Hebrew, "If he doesn't murder us, it should be quite nice!"

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What Would You Put Your Family Through To Save $1000?- Part One

Looking back, we would never have done it this way. But, hey; we're all geniuses in hindsight, right?

As we enter of third continent in our world travels; our nomadic family experienced the longest, hardest journey to date. This journey, lasting two never-ending days and nights was from Panama City, Panama to Cartagena, Colombia. It entailed a taxi, a plane, two boats, a minibus, a bus, and one final taxi. Total en route time of 40 hours, in which 30 hours of it was in motion.

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