Combined Feb/March budget and some thoughts on homeschooling

Hello, everyone, it’s Deena again with the budget numbers.  We had a great month in February, but sadly I was too lazy to post; so I am combining both months.  February was our best month yet coming in at $90 per day.  That was most of the time we spent in Vietnam with some hotels in the $12-$19 per night rate.  We ate out almost every meal since it was cheaper than cooking.  The food is fantastic in Vietnam and Thailand, but it backfired on us in the month of March.  March was a bit higher at $113 per day.  We spent some time in Cambodia in March, and by this time we were sick of rice and noodles everyday, so we started eating Western food, which of course costs more and doesn’t taste as good.  We had an expensive day in Angkor Wat, but we wouldn't trade that day for anything—because it was amazing.  We finished up March back in Thailand, and we are back to eating the Thai food which we love.  We have about 10 days more in our beloved Southeast Asia; then we move on to Australia and New Zealand.  It will be a challenge to keep costs down.

We fly from Bangkok to Brisbane, Australia on April 11.  This is one of the sweet spots in the United Airlines chart, only 17,500 miles required per person for a free flight.  So we are off to Australia for 70,000 miles for a family of four, FREE.

When the plans for this trip were in its infancy, we knew we would have to homeschool the kids, but I chose to ignore that for a while as it was just too intimidating at the time.  Eventually I had to sit down and look at the particulars, and boy was it overwhelming!  There are tons of curriculums and various ways to homeschool; and the possibilities are endless.  We knew we needed something on computers as we were not going to haul around textbooks, but the question was do we use a web-based curriculum or a software-based curriculum?  We had no idea what kind of internet would be available around the world and no amount of research could give us total confidence before we left home.  We finally landed on a FREE curriculum I found online called Easy Peasy.  It was started by a lady that homeschooled all her children while overseas and began putting her curriculum online so others could use it.  It has grown and become more popular and includes high school.  The more I researched homeschooling, the more confidence I gained, and we were able to supplement some classes and cherry pick from whatever courses we liked online.  I have come a long way from terrified “how am I going to homeschool high school?” To  “this isn’t so bad after all.”  The kids have been accepted back into their high school at home, and I am confident they will do just fine when they go back to their regular classes.  Joseph will return with some college credit up his sleeve, yet another benefit of homeschooling high school.

Both kids started their curriculum the summer before we left, so they had a good understanding of how the classes worked and got accustomed to the laptops.  Once we were on the trip, we had flexibility to work daily as they needed.  Some days we did lots of school and some days we went on field trips.  My favorite part of homeschooling is the ability to research a historic event and then visit the area where it took place the next day.  For instance, we watched Bridge of Spies and then went to see that bridge the next morning.  We watched several documentaries about D Day, then went to the beach where the landing occurred.  We had another fascinating day after watching the documentary, Last Days in Saigon when we walked the streets of Saigon with a Vietnamese teenager who explained everything we had seen the night before.   I wish I had been able to do school like this!!!!

This has been an amazing learning experience not just for the kids but for us as well.  See you next month!