Thoughts as we leave gap year

We got a surprising number of family pics. Always accompanied with a bribe. Saying that, we got about 2 in Tanzania, everyone was over it!

We are dinosaurs when it comes to photos. The Insta generation take SO many photos, so much posing and fancy outfits. We are more rock up and grimace!


– can we talk Harry Potter! I’ve literally spent the last 6 months rereading them. C smashed through them in about a week, and what started as a lovely bonding thing has meant I’m just trailing behind, haha!

– I knew this already, you do after 22 years together, but T hates sitting. So our beach time is torture for him, haha!

– we are glad we didn’t do a year. I think it would have been too much

– T has enjoyed doing home school – he is good at that kind of thing. C has had much more stuff to get through which has been hard for her to get her head around. H finished his curriculum a few months in. So now he works on a year 3 English and Maths workbook thing. C is still trawling through core maths curriculum. Function numbers at the moment (what is the point of them?!)

– T has been our trip planner extraordinaire. Its weird, I am a control freak but when it comes to travel, I’m a bit more go with the flow. I’m also a maximiser so I cant choose hotels/ restaurants/ anything else for toffee. In my home life. At work, I am on it!

– I’ve reeeeeeally enjoyed not shopping/ meal planning for 6 months. You cannot underestimate the mental liberation it gives you! We are broke when we get home so will be meal planning to the nth degree when we are back!

– It’s funny, I don’t think the kids have any idea about how amazing these experiences are. But we hope it’ll lay down a sense of adventure/ worldliness in them both. C does talk about her own gap year.

– It has been a gap year of two halves. The first half less tourists, more travellers. More cultural experiences. The second half has been more beaches/ Western tourists

– plastic & global warming. Here comes my high horse. Everywhere we’ve been, rubbish has been an issue. People who are on the breadline don’t have any method of doing anything with their rubbish. And the government certainly isn’t providing it. So of course people will simply burn it. Leave it in big mounds on the outside of town. They are trying to feed their families rather than thinking about the Western world and *their* emission targets. And its not realistic to expect anything else.

I’m also surprised that all travellers are using water bottles. Not caring what happens to them. What’s good is some places eg Malaysia, Indonesia provide free filter water from the huge 20l bottles. Which definitely makes a difference. It makes me quesy thinking about how many water bottles we’d have gone through on this trip. I’d say we will have used about 2000l of water over 6 months. The only time we used plastic bottles was on Komodo islands when we didn’t have a choice.
I sound holier than thow, we were not. We used SO much disposable plastic in Japan, Thailand, Malaysia etc for all of the takeaway meals we got, despite having tupperware. We’ll call it Ts tupperware, he treasured them, haha. God forbid when they broke or got cracks 😄

– People ask how we have managed to not kill each other, spending 24 hours together. And I’m surprised too! I have a much higher need for alone time than T, for example. Sounds crass but TBH we’ve just all bonded and come together. We each own our behaviour and apologise for it. And we’ve been understanding of each of our needs. Snacks and water also help! We have of course all been annoyed with each other but we’ve never shouted shouted at them, or hit the kids. The same can’t be said for vice versa! It got so bad, we started a rule where they started with 20 chewing gums. Every time they hit (either of them), then one was taken away! The deadline is when we get home. I think they have about 9 left!

– I can’t wait to have a toilet be a toilet and a shower separate. Showering over the loo for 6 months loses its shine! Every time you pee in the middle of the night, you get manky wet feet! Obvs my flip flops broke really early on in gap year! Also, strip lights. Ugh. Can’t wait for mood lighting and a light switch near the bed.

– there isn’t a moment when we aren’t grateful for doing this and having these family experiences. It has laid down bonds that are so strong. And we know each other so well, its crazy. And awesome. So we know and understand when each of us is acting in a certain way.
We planned this since H was born and created a life where we had the time and means to do it, and I’m so happy we did. Lots of people know our up and down IVF journey (to say the least!), so doing this is something we would never have dreamed of 10 years ago *heart*

Pizza – can we have a word on pizza. Good lord, the kids have eaten more pizza on this trip than ever in their life! T and I obvs choose the local food option. Luckily. When I met T, he wasn’t really a foodie. I’m not sure he grew up in a foodie family but for us, food was a central part of our lives! So we are quite adventurous now, which is great. It has always been the go-to when we don’t know what to give the kids on a menu. But it’s always crap pizza!

– “Treats” – if the kids had their way, this would be a holiday with ice creams everyday! So its a constant battle of treats vs fruit & veg! Henry, halfway round Mount Kinabalu walk said “gaaad I’m never having carrots again!”. We laugh about it now. But our only healthy food has been carrots, apples and bananas so I feel his pain! Sometimes a mango, avocado or whatever is in season.
The annoying thing about treats is the kids came up with an arbitrary rule about me having a drink! At one point it was me having to say no to five treats for one drink. Yikes! To be fair, I’m happy to take that hit, I’m not that bothered by sweets etc on this trip. But its been a bone of contention throughout. Which is crazy because I didn’t have a single drink until Nepal or maybe Japan. And even then they’ve been few and far between!

– Liverpool FC seems to be the international team of note at the moment. Ie everywhere you go, people will mention LFC when you chat football

Costs
We haven’t worked it out but for sure we spent way less than if we were living at home. Our flights were cheap – around 12k between all of us. Given we visited 7 countries and did loads of internal flights, i was surprised. Our most expensive was Indonesia to Tanzani, via Doha, at just over £1k each

– Bite relief cream was our most used medicine cabinet item. By a country mile!

– T was the snack and water kween! He could sniff out an apple to purchase from a 2 mile radius. Thank goodness. If I’d been in charge, the kids would have eaten white bread and fanta for 6 months. We also had minimum 5 litres of water, even for the smallest of jaunts!