The trip around the world was wonderful, interesting and exciting, but also quite challenging and at some points scary. We tried many new things as well and met many different people. I hope the memories will stay with me all my life. This world is changing really fast and we are so lucky that we saw it when we did. We had many experiences, (not all good) and I would not trade it for anything.

Before when went, though, I was totally freaked out. What if somebody died, or got kidnapped, or got an awful disease or something? I kept on thinking this isn’t really happening, right? Obviously everyone else felt pretty much the same by the way they were acting. Also we were told that our dad wasn’t able to join us as much as we had hoped. The only reason I wasn’t more worried was that I was actually super excited as well. I mean, the prospect of seeing the world is so cool. I couldn’t wait to get started and we would have a year off school.

The first day of our trip was not to great. We arrived and it was night, it was really dark, it was raining and we had no idea where we were. I thought the trip was going to be miserable and I was really upset, but then the sun came out the next day. The town grew on me and then it ended up with none of us wanting to leave and us actually having a dog. It was unexpected, but Sacha met this dog on the beach an then it “adopted” us. It was like a dream community. We stayed there for a month and went on to volcanoes and hot springs. Costa Rica was one of the best parts of our trip and if I had to live in one of the countries we went to I would live in Nosara, Costa Rica, because it’s such a welcoming community and everybody is friends with everybody. Also I know a lot of Spanish and so I would speak that.

I say that Ecuador is my favorite country because we went to the Galapagos and the Amazon and I learned so much about nature, and it is my favorite country but I would still live in Costa Rica.

Now not all of the trip was all so awesome and happy like that, there were some hard parts. and the hardest times were probably when Luke and I were sick in India and we were all sick in Thailand, or maybe when we were endlessly driving around New Zealand. These all had things in common; we were tired and our dad wasn’t with us. At those times I sometimes wished that we could go home and see all our friends and not do the trip and I know I sound like a dreadful spoilt brat but it’s true, because it was hard. Homeschool as well. People say we are so lucky to be homeschooled but they haven’t been homeschooled by my mom. She’s nice but isn’t really a teacher and she had to plan all the trip and figure out where to stay and where to do the laundry as well. She was very busy. Also, she’s not very good at math.  History and English were great; the rest, not so much.

If somebody I knew was going on a trip like this I would tell them, “It might be challenging but don’t give up hope. You will see and learn so much, and feel everything much more intensely.  Trust me, it’s worth it”.