Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro
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1WHERE TO GO
This is obviously the first consideration when the world ’ s your oyster , but South America was somewhere that appealed to both of us , and being far away from Hong Kong with timeconsuming journeys involved , it wasn ’ t a regular holiday destination . Now we had a reasonable amount of time to make the most of it . That said , I really didn ’ t know much besides Machu Picchu , Iguazu and Rio and they weren ’ t exactly going to fill the time ! Once I began researching , however , I started to realise just how many amazing countries and cities there are on the continent and thus began a complicated process of prioritising where to go . We booked a round-the-world ticket with four-to-six stops per continent , which helped to narrow down the countries and also gave us a start and end point for our journey .
WHEN TO GO
2 Where to go very much affects when to go , if you don ’ t want to end up in Europe in the middle of winter ! Our time frame was pretty tight since we wanted to get going straight away , but we found the second term ( January – April ) worked very well for us . Our children are three and six , so there was just one school withdrawal to consider and we felt he ’ d already had time to settle into Primary 2 and had made some solid friendships that would endure a break . Tagging the travel onto the Christmas holiday meant it didn ’ t feel like an upheaval to him , as he wasn ’ t taken out of school mid-term and friends were also going away .
WHAT TO DO
3 ABOUT EDUCATION
I ’ d heard you could apply for a suspension of school fees , but for three months we didn ’ t bother , which meant we still received the weekly email updates for my son ’ s class . These were crucial in maintaining a sense of belonging and also meant we were able to discuss what his friends would be learning , which gave him an incentive to keep up . As a teacher myself , I was confident he wouldn ’ t miss out on too much , but we did end up doing less schoolwork than I ’ d expected . Kindle was brilliant to make sure we could read every night , and I made sure I gave my son the maths vocabulary and techniques he would need to feel secure when he got back to class . Other than that , they both gained real-life lessons that gave them both a greater maturity and sense of independence , making it easy to slot back in at home .
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