Roadschooling Examiner (RE): Who are you? Introduce yourself and your family for us.
Brandon: We are the Pearce Family. Brandon, Jennifer, Emily (6), and Marie (4). We are all born and raised in Utah, except for Jennifer who spent some of her childhood in Washington. We love to travel together when we get the chance.
Jennifer and I got our first taste of international living when we served volunteer missions for our church about 10 years ago. She served in the Canary Islands (Spain) for 18 months, and I served in Japan for 2 years. We met shortly after we both got back. Our missions were life changing experiences for both of us, and we want to include volunteering as part of our family adventure.
For work, I did web programming full-time for several years. But I quit my job about three years ago to work full time on building up my own on-line businesses which are now providing for our family, and enabling us to live anywhere. My main business is www.MusicTeachersHelper.com, which is web-based software that helps private music teachers manage the "business" side of teaching - billing, scheduling, and such. I'm also a musician. I love to play the piano and sing, and hope to spend more time in the years ahead composing, arranging, and performing music.
RE: Tell us a bit about your plans. What will you be doing, where do you plan to go, how will you travel? That kind of stuff...
Brandon: We plan on moving to Costa Rica in January, 2010. We will be homeschooling our two little girls, doing community service, working to learn the language and culture, and hopefully making some new friends in the process. We hope to travel by bus, taxi, and on foot while we are living abroad, but we may get a car if we find it necessary.
For accommodations, we're hoping to find a decent rental house once we get there. We want to explore different parts of the country in person before we choose a place to settle for a while. We're not sure how long we'll stay in Costa Rica, but we do want to immerse ourselves in the culture and really learn the language. After that, we'd love to travel to Asia somewhere, or maybe Europe. We'll see how things go. It's nice to have flexibility.
RE: Taking off to live full-time on the road is a big decision involving going against the demands of society. How did you come to make that decision.
Brandon: It's been a gradual decision. Three years ago, we would never have dreamed of doing this. But once my business took off, we realized that we could live anywhere we had a reliable Internet connection. And we wanted to take advantage of that opportunity.
One other influential factor was when we spent 6 weeks touring around Panama last winter. There, we found it was easier to focus on developing closer relationships within our family, which is one of the most meaningful things to us. We hope to be able to do this while we are in Costa Rica as well. We worried that being together 24/7 would drive us all crazy, but the opposite was true, and that got us excited. We also met some other families in Panama who homeschooled. While we had toyed with the idea of homeschooling, we never seriously considered it until we were encouraged by the friends that we met there.
Finally, we love to experience new places and cultures together. We are ready for a change from the fast-paced and high-stress culture of the U.S. We especially like Costa Rica because of the tropical warm climate, beautiful surroundings, relaxed lifestyle, and Spanish language.
RE: I realize it is hard to say what your "school day" will look like, but what do you envision at this point? How are you planning to deal with the education of your children?
Brandon: Right now we do most of our formal studying during the morning hours, and we expect to keep that schedule while living abroad. Rather than follow a set curriculum, we try to follow our children's interests and ideas, and use them to guide the educational process, so each day brings something a little different. Sometimes we'll spend all day in the house, other days we'll be out somewhere learning together. We hope to find some Spanish tutors for them in Costa Rica, as well as other cultural classes. We feel that as we travel, working to immerse ourselves in other cultures, we will have many incredibly rich learning opportunities as well.
RE: What has been the hardest part of your preparations so far? Why has it been a challenge?
Brandon: The hardest part of our preparations have been the research involved in learning everything we need to know and do in order to make such a move. For example, learning Costa Rica laws, figuring out how to deal with our U.S. mail, selling our house and cars, going through all of our things, figuring out what things to store and what to get rid of, etc. There's a lot to do. But we believe it will be worth it.
RE: Conflicting emotions? We all go through it. What have been the major pulls one way or the other in regards to your plans?
Brandon: After we made the decision, I woke up almost every day for several weeks thinking we were crazy for doing this! But I soon realized that a lot of what was holding me back was simply attachment to some of our material possessions and worry about the financial requirements of making the move. Letting go of the attachment to "stuff" (including owning a house and cars) has been one of the most liberating parts of the transition so far. We hope to learn to be even more content with less.
Since this lifestyle is so different from the norm, and so new to us as well, we realize we just need to learn as we go along. Sometimes that can feel a bit overwhelming, since we don't have all the answers handed to us in a nice tidy little package at the beginning. However, that is all part of the adventure, and it ultimately makes everything more fun.
We will miss time spent with extended family and friends here at home, but we do plan to come visit every once in a while, and some of them plan to come visit us as well. For the most part, we are very excited, and feel this is a great decision for our family. We feel the experience will bring us closer together, and help us to learn and grow in ways we couldn't have otherwise.
RE: Thanks so much for your time - I'm sure you are swamped with all your preparations. I hope everything goes well in Costa Rica!
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Contact me via email at familyonbikes@gmail.com
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Comments
I am a gypsy too. There is so much that can be learned in a traveling setting while on the road. Possessions are overrated.
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