When Blythe Berube Rowan ’92 and her husband, Christopher,  decided to travel the world for a year with their two young sons, age three and eight, they put everything they owned in storage and left home with no real plan or itinerary. Ms. Rowan, who has always had what she describes as a “deep and unyielding wanderlust” was excited to embrace the experience of traveling with her children, who were open to every experience. “Life just makes more sense to me out here in the greater landscape,” she wrote in an email for our interview series. Read more below about the family’s experience abroad, with all the joys and challenges that came with their decision.

What made you and your husband decide to put everything into storage and travel the world for the past year?

Ahh, a question with many answers. There were a host of reasons and life events that led up to this decision, but I’ll offer just a couple here.

I’d spent years longing to travel the world with my children. It was important to me to get to see the world through their eyes and hearts. People often wait until their children are older or feel that their children can just travel when they are adults…but then, like me, they are traveling with years of indoctrination and bias about the world and its people. I wanted to see the world from their innocent perspectives, and I wanted that to be their first experience with seeing the world too. I wanted them to cultivate a sense of wonder and easy curiosity within themselves about culture and people and the planet that would carry them through their lives. This was something I wanted to share with my children rather than waiting for them to be out of the house and on their own. It was the way I wanted to experience the world as well.

Where have you been and which location has been your favorite so far?

We are rather slow travelers. We left with no real plan or itinerary, but a basic plan to head to Europe. We started in Portugal mainly because it was warm, my children could fish, and it was almost directly across from South Carolina, from where we would be leaving. We figured we’d get to Spain and France and Italy in our first three months (we are allowed three months out of every six in the Schengen area of Europe). We never got past Portugal. We fell in love with the south of the country and wound up spending the majority of our time in the Western Algarve. After that, we headed to England for six months with a three-week stay in France during that time. From England we drove to The Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, and now Sweden. We are headed to Norway in a few weeks. We will be back in the United States for a visit this fall.

We’ve loved every place we’ve been, and I honestly don’t think I can choose a favorite, but I will say that I absolutely adore Sweden and England—for very different reasons. Every place we have been has exceeded our expectations and welcomed us in the most surprising ways. I’m constantly amazed that I have yet to be really let down.

What has it been like to experience this travel with your children?

Amazing! We have challenging days for sure, and on occasion we question our sanity but mostly it has been an incredible experience for all of us. It’s hard to imagine any other way of being at this point really. Watching them navigate and adapt as we travel has been one of my greatest joys. Hearing them use words in other languages while still speaking English because they just prefer certain words in other languages is also inspiring. They have this ability to embody the nature of our collective humanity in such a simple, yet meaningful, way.

Any entertaining travel stories to tell? Any “what the heck are we doing?” moments?

Funny, I haven’t stopped to think about the moments that would make for a good story because those moments probably happen 12 times a day, just like they do in any family doing anything. I find myself either laughing out loud or shaking my head at the small moments that are just inherent in life.

I suppose those moments are brought to a unique place when your naked body-fascinated American toddler finds himself surrounded by naked sculptures in Paris or decides pants are no longer a necessity while walking down the streets of London and proceeds to moon the well-dressed (and thankfully fully clothed) businessman behind him. Not all toddlers have the chance to crawl through the National Gallery on their belly just to get a laugh from the docents at the end of a long day and not all eight year olds have to take up Parkour because it’s the only sport that makes sense to their lifestyle.

We are often the only family with children out and about so it does add to the interesting-moment landscape at times. People are often surprised by the presence of children where they don’t expect them to be, which when juxtaposed with the surroundings, can lead to some extra precious or equally incorrigible moments for sure.

We’ve had some seriously trying days and even more magical ones, but all in all I can’t say the location or circumstance had anything to do with our location in the world as much as it did as being humans living in it.

 Have you tried any “interesting” foods? What was the strangest?

Since we haven’t ventured past Western Europe just yet we haven’t been faced with too many strange foods, but I suppose compared to most children mine are used to eating outside the box anyway. I’m assuming most American children probably don’t gobble down sauerkraut and beg for herring and sushi. Just last night they devoured reindeer with dried lingonberries. I had to laugh that my three year old had absolutely no qualms about ordering Rudolph when given the choice.

After three months in Portugal I will say we got pretty tired of fish…particularly fish still whole with heads and bones. The spoiled Americans in us were really pretty excited to eat fish in fillet form once arriving in England. That’s nothing compared to the “delights” of the food in China that I experienced while on Intercession at Williston.

How did you plan out your travel route?

We didn’t. From the beginning we planned this as a “go where the wind takes us” kind of journey. We planned as far as our first week in Portugal. Beyond that we had only a general framework, which even then usually goes in the opposite direction. Since then we have just allowed ourselves to do what feels right and go where we feel led. Sometimes we need a break so we stay somewhere for a couple of months and other times we get itchy and want to press on. So we do.

How do you pack for a year-long [and more] trip around the world?

Well, it’s more than a year actually. We have no end date as of yet so the packing situation is always eventful…Firstly, you overpack even though you think you are being the most thrifty packer ever. Then you get frustrated and leave a suitcase on the side of the road in in Portugal, then you get more frustrated and spend 400 dollars to ship things home. Then you get really REALLY frustrated, ditch your suitcases altogether, purchase four convertible backpacks, wear the same four items of clothing on a rotating basis and call it a day. Thrift shops are a godsend for the traveler as they provide a place to leave the old and usher in the “new” when you’ve just had enough or the clothes have holes from so much wearing. We’ve even learned to make crafts from our battered clothes.

Where do you stay in each country? Hotels, friends, family, apartments?

All of the above. When we first arrived in Portugal we stayed in a variety of apartment rentals and hotels. In England we were blessed with several friends gracious enough to host us for the first month or so. Those same friends helped us purchase a ridiculously inexpensive car and get insurance, which made our lives much easier from that point on. We continued to stay in rentals until we were offered our first house-sitting job and from there we made the decision to purchase a caravan, which is a towed home on wheels (think RV without the steering wheel). So now we travel like nomads and stay at lovely campsites. No more packing and unpacking, it’s much more economical, and allows for greater freedom.

What is your favorite memory of Williston?

I have many wonderful memories from my years at Williston. I credit my time there for changing the very core of my being and helping me to become a more conscious and expanded human being. The friendships and relationships with teachers are, of course, at the top of my best memories list. Outside of that though, not surprising I’m sure, was actually Intercession. I know it does not exist any longer, but there was something so special and dear to me about that time each year. It was a part of the Williston experience that stood out to me as so divergent from other paths of education, and it inspired my expanded way of seeing the world. It seemed to me, at the time, to be such an outside-the-box way of enhancing ones education and I felt an incredible freedom in that ability to direct my own learning.

I took a story-telling class with Mr. Thompson that lives with me to this day; I traveled to China with my peers; and spent two weeks in the middle of the ocean on Outward Bound. It is no surprise that these experiences—where I learned that no story is boring, to travel the world with open arms, and bravery in the face of capsized boats—have led me right here.