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Meet Bliss Broyard, a writer, author and Brooklyn resident who recently returned from an extended journey around the world with her family. Her husband’s sabbatical year from a New York university became an opportunity for the kids to leave school for nine months and travel with their parents through Africa, Asia and the sub-continent.
Family Gap Year Itinerary
Here Bliss talks about the “bubble of privilege” that her children (and countless others in the developed world) lived in, and what it was like when they realized that not everyone lived with enough food, safety and support. Tune in as we discuss her family gap year itinerary, the power of a good audiobook, and how she kept her kids on track to return to school one year later.
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EPIC INTRO
About:
- Names: Bliss Broyard, her husband, Nico, and their daughter Esme (9 y/o) and son Roman (6 y/o)
- Hold passports from: USA
- Type of travel: 9-month RTW
- A few places they’ve been: numerous locations in Ethiopia, South Africa, India, Japan and many others
Find Them On: Their site | Her site | Twitter
EPIC ORIGINS
- Nico’s year sabbatical from a university gave the family an opportunity to travel the word discovering its literature (husband is a tenured professor — details in the podcast).
EPIC RULES & ROUTINES
- Taught the kids that airports are places to be taken seriously, and approached with their best behavior
- When bored or in transit (long hikes included), they would start a story-telling exercise: pick three random elements (ie. “a cake, a crown and a donkey”), and then spin a story from the three.
EPIC ECONOMICS
- Rented their house
- Husband is a tenured professor with partially-paid sabbatical leave
EPIC ESSENTIALS
- Osprey rolling backpacks (disclosure: only used them as a backpack twice)
- eBags packing cubes, 3 sizes (every family member has a different color)
- Skooba cable case
- Power strip
- Macbook Air
- 1 iPad, 2 iPad minis
- Jawbone Jambox mini for listening to NPR
- 2 old iPhones (used as cameras, as well)
- Headphone splitter for listening to audiobooks together
EPIC INSIGHT
- Combination of worldschooling and formal schooling
- Adhered to New York City’s 3rd grade & kindergarten curriculum so the kids could re-enter the system the following year
- When you’re with your kids all the time, daily life becomes “a teachable moment.”
- Used manipulatives or teaching younger son math on the road
EPIC RESOURCES
- Bananagrams
- Khan Academy
- News-o-Matic
- Epic Books
- The Families on the Move facebook group (which I also love)
- Used local library card as a way to borrow eBooks and audiobooks (important on long bus rides)
- I mentioned listening to Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials (Book 1 and Book 2) series together
- Bliss mentions A Wrinkle in Time, read by Hope Davis
- Trip Advisor
- Thorn Tree forum on Lonely Planet
- AirBnB
- Bliss tried to read authors from — or books that took place in — the places they visited. For example, she read George Orwell’s Burmese Days while in Myanmar.
- The free student guides in Vietnam
EPIC ADVICE
- Kids are like “funhouse mirrors” reflecting the behavior of the parent. The more that parents can model calm & mature behavior, the more the kids will, too.
- Relax your rules (details in the podcast)
- Say “yes.” (details in the podcast)
EPIC DESTINATIONS
- Laos
- Japan
- Ethiopia
- Cape Town, South Africa
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