Suzy

Welcome to Wander Worldschool. I'm Suzy, a travel-loving money nerd, mom of two, and our family lives between Spain and Colorado. Here we discuss the stories, logistics, and finances of slow and long-term traveling families and the many ways to learn along the way. Today we get to know Cassidy Crowell.

Cassidy discusses the logistics of slow family travel, focusing on funding adventures through rental income, navigating worldschooling hubs, and the importance of maintaining a consistent home base for their kids. Be sure to listen to the end for Cassidy's insightful advice on taking a three-week experimental trip as a way to discover your family's unique rhythm. Let's jump in. Tell me more about you and your family.

Cassidy

Hello. Thank you for having me here. My family and I are based in Grand Junction, Colorado. We've got three children: eight, seven, and a one-and-a-half-year-old. We usually spend about eight to nine months a year here in Colorado and three to four months a year traveling, usually divided up into three or so trips. We kind of find that four-to-six-week mark to be the sweet spot for us. We love coming home after a long trip. I commend people who can take some time off and travel full-time, but I don't think we would enjoy that. We very much love coming home to sleep in our own beds after a long trip.

Suzy

It's great to be able to do the best of both worlds in that sense. You get some of those longer-term travel opportunities when you can be gone for four to six weeks. But there is, of course, something to be said for being at a comfortable spot that you know really well, especially with children. Did you tell me a little more about your family? Your kids?

Cassidy

Absolutely. We have an eight and a seven. They're boys; they're 15 months apart. And then we had a baby girl a few years later. So she's a toddler right now. We kind of started over and it's a lot of fun.

Suzy

Okay. I have boys—my boys are eight and six—so I know that they are very busy, very hectic. So I cannot imagine having a toddler in the mix as well, especially when traveling. But I was really drawn to your stories that you share. Obviously, since you're from Colorado, it's great to have that connection. And then you share a lot about worldschooling. But I'd like to get to know a little bit more about where your love for travel started.

Cassidy

Well, I was very blessed to go to a school growing up that had a heavy focus on travel. So there was always an end-of-year trip for the classes. Everyone would fundraise. But the summer between seventh and eighth grade, my seventh-grade Language Arts teacher organized a trip to China with a tour group called EF Tours. I don't know if you've heard of EF before, but they do lots of educational tours. So I was 12, and there was a group of us, and she took us to China. And it was the first time I left the country, and it wasn't like going to a resort in Cancun. It was like the other side of the planet and the culture was absolutely reversed in like every way possible. My vision of the world was turned upside down and I just loved it. And after that, I just knew whatever I was going to do the rest of my life, it was going to be travel-focused. Never really had a firm career path; as long as it involved travel, I was good.

Suzy

That's awesome. I also did the EF tours in high school to London, Paris, and Rome. So I commend you for heading to China, which is a little bit of a very different experience compared to Europe compared to the US. And then to do that at even a little bit of a younger age—that's really cool. But I love that those tours still exist. I think it really opens up so many doors for students that maybe didn't have a chance to travel as a family, but if they can do it as a school group, that's great. Tell me a little more about how you met your husband and how family travel started for you all.

Cassidy

So I was in college and I did a study-away program at the University of the Virgin Islands. So I was there for the spring semester and I had flown straight from the Virgin Islands to Spain. I met my dad; we hiked the Camino. So I had been gone for six months and I got back to Colorado in June. I booked my ticket home just in time to be home for my favorite music festival that was going on. And the very next night at the festival, I met Scott. So it was crazy. Like, I had been gone all this time, came home, met him the next night. We were pregnant with our first son like six weeks after that and the rest is history.

Suzy

That's so cool. And so he is from the same area as you, right? You're from the Western Slopes.

Cassidy

He went to college here in Colorado. Yeah, he grew up in Baltimore, but he relocated here for the geology program in college and just never left.

Suzy

Okay, very cool. So he was drawn to the Western Slope with the geology background. Side note, the Camino—I mean, you were younger, probably a little more energetic at that age and stage of your life—but how was that experience for you?

Cassidy

It was a life highlight for sure. Yeah, I was 19 and I didn't have a super close relationship with my dad growing up, but we had seen this movie, The Way, years before. I don't know if you've seen it with Emilio Estevez and his dad. We were like, we're going to do that one day. So the summer before, on Father's Day, I surprised him with a one-way flight to Paris where we were going to start the Camino, fly into Paris and then take the train to the border and all that. And so we had from that Father's Day a year to kind of save up and work out the logistics and make a plan—and it was awesome. You stay in a different hostel every night and you're with all these other people who are on the same journey and it's really cool. It's like a melting pot at every dinner table with 15-plus different nationalities, which you don't really get that experience anywhere else, ever.

Suzy

I'm hoping to do a few days this spring. Part of that is in preparation to possibly do a family group trip along the Camino the following year. Not the full Camino necessarily; at least like a week would be great to have a pop-up or something. So there's stuff in the works for that. But the trail—some parts of it aren't terribly steep and treacherous, as well as the fact that you don't have to carry as much—could be actually really family-friendly, I'm hoping. So we'll see how that all works out.

Cassidy

Yeah. For us, it was mostly flat. The first two or three days were in the Pyrenees, but after that, you're in farm country for most of the route—or the route we did. So it was really mellow. It was more cultural, going through all the villages and whatnot.

Suzy

Exactly. I think that could be really fun for kids because there's a lot to see when you're going village to village. There are unique things or things to play on as you're going through. It's not just like hiking through the woods endlessly, which we've done some in Colorado and love, but it's a little harder to keep kids engaged when it's just like hiking. But it's great when you stop for lunch along the way and you just have to wear your backpack instead of all the gear. So it can be fun to consider those options. You started a family pretty young, and then how did travel come into play?

Cassidy

I had just gotten home from this massive trip and I was really motivated during that season to travel, and then I got pregnant and I was like, oh no, life's over. I had to pull out of school that semester to transfer to a different school. So I was kind of like, my life's not moving forward. I can't travel. I'm not getting credits in school. What am I doing? And it was really sad and it was kind of a dark place for me personally, and I was spending a lot of time online. I was watching YouTube videos online and I saw other families travel on YouTube and being like, wait, people can do this with kids. It doesn't stop just because you have kids. You can totally do this. Immediately after we had our son, it was just ingrained from the beginning that we were going to be traveling. I think that we took him abroad for the first time when he was 10 months old. Our other kids were both about three months. We just started from the beginning like, there is no other option. It's probably going to be hard. It's definitely going to be different. But there is no other option.

Suzy

Yes, got to just get going and get them used to traveling young. I'm curious what your approach has been to education while traveling. Sounds like you do get to get away from Colorado for longer chunks at a time. How does that work with schooling and education, and what do you take for education along the way as well?

Cassidy

Yeah, so when our kids first started school, I had checked out all the schools in our local community. I was looking at charter schools. I was looking at public schools. I was looking at private schools, everything. And they all kind of had this same thread of if you're absent more than, I think it was like 15 days in a semester, there's an issue of truancy. They take it really seriously. And for us, that was really concerning. I'm like, 15 days? That's three weeks. That's a lot for them to be able to dictate and...

So our eldest didn't go to kindergarten the first year. We were like, we're just going to try it without a program. By the next year, our second child was at kindergarten age and we reevaluated the programs again. I'm like, they really want to be around other kids when we're here. Like, I think the homeschool approach is awesome for some families, but my kids really want to be around other kids all day, and trying to be at home doing math and whatnot just wasn't it for my kids. So we found a program here locally that is not a public school, it's not a charter school—it's kind of like a co-op. But they were able to start that first year by just going two days a week and then there was no issue if we left, and the following year they went three days a week, and this year they're going four days a week when we're home. And then we just pull them out for the month or whatever we want to travel and there's no issue with it. We've brought notebooks and stuff in the past, but they don't do a lot of that when we're traveling. They're really in it, and we're really focused on kind of being present where we are. We do do hubs sometimes; sometimes we don't. Sometimes we do, and those have helped with cultural aspects, social studies, science things, but they're not super heavy on literacy, language arts, arithmetic—that kind of thing definitely lags behind on the travels. And we're still kind of navigating that right now because our oldest is only eight, so we're just kind of getting into the need to maintain some consistency with it where it wasn't an issue when he was a first grader.

Suzy

Absolutely. It's nice to take advantage of these opportunities when you have flexibility with the education piece. I mean, we know they learn so much during travel, but sometimes it's hard to find that balance with home. Whatever works for every family, I think, is the most important. I've always considered that if we were to do Denver longer-term and try to be gone for longer periods of time, it would be great to have a school opportunity like that. I think it's a bigger deal maybe at smaller districts. And of course, I get the intention of it is to make sure kids are getting an educational opportunity, but if you're going to travel, they are getting that.

Cassidy

Yeah, we have a friend and their family goes like three months every year to a worldschooling hub program and they just withdraw their children from the school district entirely for that time. So there's no grade pile-up, there's no work that they need to keep up with, and there's no problem with truancy because they were just withdrawn and they just get put right back in when they get home. It seems like another good option. We haven't done that, but I like to mention that to people.

Suzy

For sure. I think it's important to communicate with your school district and see where your opportunities are. Most schools, if you already had a spot there in the first part of the school year, you could probably be gone for a few months and come back to that spot. And I disenrolled our kids at the end of December before we came back to Spain. And all I did was like, "I need to disenroll." And she's like, "Okay, just write their names down." That was it. That was disenrolling. So it's not that difficult once you navigate what those things look like. You mentioned that you've been on a couple of different hubs. What are some of those that you have experienced? I know you did Deliberate Detour recently, which I'd love to hear more about, or any other hubs that you've done and also what your kids have thought about those opportunities.

Cassidy

Yeah, we've done a few now. We did Deliberate Detour most recently. That was in Cusco, Peru this past August. And that was super cool. It was very culturally focused, so lots of activities regarding the local culture. Something different about that compared to the other hubs we had visited was that they don't have a permanent space. It's kind of more of a pop-up hub. So they do specific sessions throughout the year and they rent kind of like an Airbnb space, versus some of the other ones that own their property or have a long-term lease on their property. So there were some differences with that for sure. Cusco is amazing and they did a great job orchestrating a full itinerary for parents and kids. The hub itself—it was very small when we went. There were only like seven kids at the beginning of the hub. One of them got injured and had to go home early. It was just really small and it was a little bit of a different dynamic from some of the hubs just because obviously, with fewer people, there's less of a chance to make that connection with someone who's like you, but you definitely are more connected to the small group around you. And then we were lucky—all the kids got on pretty well. So that was awesome. Our first experience was with The Hive in Cabrera, Dominican Republic. That was like the first worldschooling hub we ever did, and that kind of set the bar. We absolutely loved it. It was a fantastic experience. They do six-week options and three-week options throughout the year. Each session is focused around one of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. So there's this underlying educational theme/timeline throughout the program that ties every day's experience back to something, which I feel really deepens the educational component versus just doing these one-off tours, which make it feel kind of more like a group trip. It really deepens the learning side of things to have a theme for the session. So I really love that The Hive focuses so much on that. We did a Boundless Life too. Have you done Boundless Life?

Suzy

I can imagine. Oh, yeah. We're signed up for Japan this fall. Our first. Obviously heard great things. I've met some people that have done it. But because we've been here in Spain and then also wanting to spend time in Colorado—and we thought we were going to Spain all next school year and then we decided not to—and I was like, "I don't want to just go back to Colorado. We could always do that." And then they were like Boundless Life Japan. I was like, that would be amazing. I felt like it was worth a premium to go somewhere that I've never been before, as well as it's just maybe harder to navigate without some on-the-ground support. So what Boundless cohorts have you done? And then what tips do you have for someone who's going on a Boundless cohort so that I can make the best of this opportunity?

Cassidy

Yeah, we just did one. We did Montenegro and we did one of the summer programs. So it was only a month long and it was amazing. We are definitely keen to go back and do another Boundless hub at some point. I like to think of Boundless Life as the bougie worldschooling hubs. Like, they're all-inclusive, they're high-end. They really draw in a different group of people than some other more economic hubs or cheaper programs. Just the nature of the people who afford the program is different and it really elevates the experience to be with other parents who have, I guess, the disposable income to go out and have these experiences and excursions, versus to be in a hub with other parents who are on a shoestring budget because they're trying to stretch this lump sum of money over the course of their gap year. It's a different experience to be with people who want to do stuff every day and not want to do stuff every day. So I think for Boundless Life, that was the highlight—was just being with a group of parents who were so engaged in being a community and going on boat trips every day and going to lunch and going to dinners. And Boundless Life does a great job fostering the parental community.

Suzy

Yeah, that's good to hear. That's what I've picked up from people—that it is a very strong sense of community. And the three months together really will build that as well. I've looked up a little bit of the costs as it relates to accommodation in that part of Japan, and it seemed pretty equivalent to what I could find on Airbnb. So I was like, "Okay, yes, it's included, but you're going to have to pay for that anywhere, wherever you stay." And then I looked at the education costs and the family stuff. And I think it just depends where people are coming from and what they're looking for. And for us, I want to experience it all. So I'm like, might as well save up and kind of make this a priority. We're doing much lower-cost trips this spring when we're in Spain to somewhat offset the more expensive fall that I think we'll have. So it's just a part of the whole travel planning process—to figure out what works for each family. I've interviewed Kate as well, and I really loved what she shared about her vision behind The Hive. And that is absolutely on my to-do list, especially since we're trying to prioritize Spanish-speaking countries. You bring up a good point, though. Part of worldschooling is that these things do cost money. As a family, to travel is not always the cheapest thing, even though a lot of us do try to do it as affordably as possible. What does the financial/logistical side of the journey look like for you all? How do you fund your travels and how did that start?

Cassidy

Our family funds the travels the same way we fund the rest of life, but my partner has grown a rental property portfolio and that kind of affords us our lifestyle, whether we're traveling or whether we're at home. He built a property management company to help look after the rental properties so that it doesn't make it hands-off, but it definitely helps in having boots-on-the-ground staff to help look after things. And I think it's a great way for people to get to travel. I know a lot of people are keen to like rent out their personal space when they travel and we haven't done that yet. I've just gotten on the Home Exchange platform, so maybe in the future, but we haven't done that yet. Just separate rental properties apart from our own house.

Suzy

Rentals is a wonderful way to build passive-ish income. I know that there is still work involved, but obviously there's some flexibility there. So that's great to have that opportunity. And then you've done some work with how you've made money with sharing certain affiliates and things like that—or what's worked on your end, especially in the worldschooling space?

Cassidy

Yeah, worldschooling kind of blew up. I mean, it was like nothing before COVID and then after COVID it was like this buzzword online. It's been a very new thing and I definitely jumped on that early as far as travel content creation online. We make a little bit of money from doing that stuff, but more so we are able to trade experiences in exchange for features on our YouTube or features on Instagram. Tour companies are a great one because you go on the tour and you're going to want to take videos of it anyway, so it just makes sense. Working with worldschooling hubs, working with even product brands when we're here at home—I don't usually do that on a trip. I don't like to bring extra stuff and they always want you to bring their stuff on the trip with you, so I try to avoid that. But definitely the experiences are great—like websites like GetYourGuide or Booking. The experiences on there—they've got a great affiliate program. YouTube Partners Program—I make ads on our YouTube videos now. It took a long time to get there, but we make the YouTube family videos anyway just to catalog the trip for ourselves. So it's been a great way to add a bonus incentive there.

Suzy

Thank you for sharing. We just got a new—it was my Christmas gift to myself—to get a new camera. I'd like to do different videos. Like you said, part of it is just that these kids grow up so fast; it's so great to have these videos for personal use. And then there's an opportunity to share your adventures with other people. I do like to share a little bit about a one-minute spending snapshot or some expenses on a trip. Since you've done more like one or two months at a time, maybe there's a certain trip that was either light on the budget or you splurged on that you'd like to share.

Cassidy

Okay. Yeah, there's definitely more budget destinations. The first place that comes to mind as far as most budget-friendly for us was Colombia. I mean, the exchange rate was incredible. Everything was affordable. I remember this one Airbnb we booked: it was like a three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bathroom, super modern, luxury penthouse type Airbnb. It was like $80. I mean, it was crazy. There are so many cheap places to stay in Colombia, but it's not short on experiences. It's super diverse. I mean, it's totally a bucket-list-worthy destination, but very affordable. I think some people get a misconception that Costa Rica is going to be cheap because it's in Latin America, and it's not cheap. And some more expensive places that come to mind are definitely going to Hawaii. That was really expensive; we've done that a couple of times. And then Iceland was just out-of-this-world expensive. I mean, stopping at the gas station and getting food from the gas station for lunch was just astronomically expensive. We went from Iceland straight to the South of France and everyone was like, "The South of France is going to be so expensive," but when we got there, it was so cheap compared to being in Iceland. So I definitely would avoid maybe those island, super remote places if you're on a budget. But something else that I think helps a lot too is whenever we are taking a big trip, we usually try to make a long layover somewhere on the way or on the way back just to break up the long travel days. I hate sitting on a plane for an extended period of time and we don't like traveling with like three layovers within a short window. So if we can stop somewhere along the way, you can see another place. Usually, you can make it work to fly in and out of bigger hubs if you do it that way, and that definitely adds another layer to your trip to get to see this other place for a few days in between as well.

Suzy

That's a great tip to take advantage of those layover opportunities. That's how we visited Iceland for the first time many years ago—on a stopover. And I'm happy that we did it in maybe three days, saw a bunch of stuff, and I'm like, "Wow, this is expensive. I think we'll hold off on this as a family for a little while." But I think it's important to also discuss the realities of long-term travel. I mean, we love to do it; there's a reason we all love to travel. But it's not always sunshine and roses. What are some struggles or challenges that you've experienced either on your recent trip or one in the past that has popped up for you and how you overcame that?

Cassidy

Yeah, we've definitely tried to push the envelope on the length of trip. And like I said before, we've kind of found that sweet spot to be four to six weeks. And if we're not in a hub and the program is extended—like, we did this one trip that was almost three months long, we didn't do any hubs during it—and by the end, we were just so, I don't want to say lost, but we were feeling very much like we're not productive members of society. We weren't furthering a mission in any way. Like, you could only go to beach after beach after beach for so long and eat at restaurant after restaurant for so long with no greater purpose. And I'm not going to say it's boring, but it just doesn't feel as meaningful to just go and spin on the hamster wheel for the sake of spinning on the hamster wheel. It's really nice to have a goal in mind on a trip. And so moving forward, it's not only our trips kind of shortening to that four-to-six-week window—unless if we did like a three-month Boundless, I think that would be fine because you have more of a community, you're having a goal there—but to go with a shorter window and/or have a goal in mind like, "We're going for this specific reason. This is the thing we're going to see. This is what we're going to do. And then we're going to come home after that." We're not just going to stay there to stay there for the sake of just saying we want to be gone that long, because it does feel less purposeful after a while.

Suzy

That's a really good point. I think that's where travel burnout can pop up for families that are really excited at first. Maybe they're picking their initial destinations as a location that they've always wanted to visit, and then eventually they're still on the road and they get a little listless. So I agree that pop-ups and worldschooling opportunities can provide some of that structure. It gives you a chance to slow down while giving your family and your kids an opportunity to connect with others. So that's what I love about worldschooling. And also language opportunities, I think, would fall under that. So families that did even just a language school for a summer—we've done those in like Atitlán before, or I know most every city has a language academy that you could do. There's just ways to add a little bit more purpose to a trip or like exactly what your family has decided: what length of travel works best for us where we still have energy, we're still excited, and it's still worth the expenses that you're putting into it, while also knowing that when we get home, we're going to be happy we did it instead of maybe burned out or exhausted. I agree that it's worth looking at what the trip entails in addition to the length of it. Also, what are some current family wins from trips you've had in the past?

Cassidy

This past year we did two big trips. We did one to Peru and one to Australia, and both of those trips entailed one of the Seven Wonders. The Great Barrier Reef in Australia is one of the Seven Wonders of the natural world, and then Machu Picchu in Peru is one of the Seven Wonders of the new world. There are actually 21 World Wonders—I learned this recently. There are seven old world, seven new world, and seven natural, which is hilarious. So we visited two of the 21 Wonders of the World, which I think was a great addition to our travel resume this past year. We did take a flight from Sydney to Los Angeles that was 14 hours and that was terrible, and we survived it, so I'm calling that a win. But our baby was 10 months old on that journey and I would not recommend that age on that length of a flight. But we had to get home from Australia.

Suzy

Yes, that is a rough age for long flights because they're much more mobile.

Cassidy

Our older kids now are excited for it. They're going to go watch movies, like, "The lady's going to bring us apple juice. I'm good." Let me go on the longest flight possible, and they're happy about it.

Suzy

Your daughter in a couple more years will be right there alongside them and it'll be a lot easier than this stage for sure. But you brought up a really good point with the natural wonders. That's another way, I think, to give some sense of purpose to especially long-term travels: to have certain destinations that are fascinating to you and your family and you're trying to visit all of them—not just country counting, but maybe a certain number of sites that is meaningful to you that gives your travel some purpose. So I like that idea as well.

Cassidy

To go even just a little bit deeper and beyond just kind of checking boxes off a list, something we've tried to do is incorporate a certain element that we've learned about in one area in the next area. So we were in the Dominican Republic at one point and we saw the North Atlantic humpback whales where they have their babies—they have their babies in this one little bay in the Dominican Republic. So we saw the babies with the mom and the dad. Six months later, we were in Iceland and we saw the same North Atlantic humpback whales on the opposite end of their migration pattern where they feed and breed in the summer. And so I think if we're able to grab onto that same concept in multiple areas and show how it connects from different areas around the world, you can really deepen the experience and deepen the educational portion of the trip as well.

Suzy

And shock your kids to be like, "These are the same creatures that were all the way over there!" You show them on a map how far they travel; that's very impressive. That's a really great tip to link some of the travels together so that there's more meaning for the children, especially.

Cassidy

Absolutely. There are so many topics you can do that with. World War II is a great one. You can do World War II in Pearl Harbor and then in Europe at the Anne Frank House. And then you can do the war in the West. There are so many topics that you could incorporate lots of locations in. And so I definitely encourage worldschooling families to seek out those bigger conversations that they can tune into on various trips in various locations.

Suzy

Absolutely. We were in Berlin last summer and started to dabble in some of the history there. I agree; there's so much in history that can link to other places and other civilizations. It's a really great way to connect the pieces for the kids. What are some resources that have been helpful for you in your worldschooling journey?

Cassidy

I really love using Skyscanner to search for flights. But what I do is I always go to Expedia, because on the backend, if you have an issue, if you have a hiccup, if you need to cancel something, Expedia has the best backend support as far as all those external third-party websites. Like, I've used so many of them and I've been let down enough times, and anytime I use one of the other ones I'm like, "Why didn't I just book it on Expedia for the extra $50?" Like, the backend support of using a tried-and-true big name like that is so helpful, and so that's the one I choose. They also own hotels.com now, which is my preferred site for booking hotels, but your points carry over between hotels.com and Expedia, which makes it awesome because you can accumulate your points on the cars, the stays, the flights—everything—all in one place, which I really love. I also love just using Google Maps to pin all the places I want to go on a trip before making an itinerary. I'll pull up the map of Greece and pin, "Okay, these are the 15 places I'd love to see in Greece." And then from there, I can go into Google Drive and just build my trip itineraries on Google Drive because you can access it offline on your phone really easily. You can share it with whoever's on the trip. It just makes it really easy; you can copy and paste all the information you need. So I'll kind of start on Google Maps and then build it over day by day in Google Drive, and I think that's the simplest. I think there are a lot of apps out there that kind of overcomplicate it now. Google Drive, Word doc—it's just the simplest, easiest thing.

Suzy

That's a really good point. And what about for worldschooling hubs? You have a resource that you put together that shares a lot of those opportunities. I'd love to hear more about that.

Cassidy

Yeah, so worldschooling hubs—it was just barely starting before COVID and then COVID happened and all these people went to work remote and the worldschooling movement just exploded because while all these people could now work remotely, they still needed a solution for what to do with their kids during the day. So now there's worldschooling hubs. And to me, there's a lot of information silos with Facebook groups and different websites, Instagram pages—all this stuff to try to find them. But there wasn't a cohesive directory when I started building the map. So I put together a Google map and there are hundreds of hubs pinned. Now I've got over 200 pins on the map all over the world. All the continents—not Antarctica, but all the other continents have hubs pinned on them. And I try to update it once per month because hubs come and go so frequently, especially with pop-ups. There are always different offerings. So it needs to be updated regularly. There are a lot of directories out there now, but I find that a lot of them only have the kind of stable hubs on there—like the long-term hubs that exist session after session after session. But I like to include the pop-up opportunities. I like to include family retreats, I see things like that come up—family camps—there are just so many different things. Even some all-ages language schools on there. Anything where you could do this educational experience for your family, I try to include on there and I try to update it regularly. I've also negotiated exclusive discounts and bonuses with a lot of programs. So when you go on the map, certain programs you'll click on the listing and it'll show you at the bottom you get a hundred dollars off with the map, or you get a free horseback riding lesson with the map, or whatever. And I think that just definitely adds another layer of value to a worldschooling family who might get the map.

Suzy

That's super great. The Facebook groups come up a lot. I think that's where we've all learned a lot about the various opportunities. I'm wondering why these other opportunities haven't taken off. I think part of it, my thought is that it's hard to promote. It takes a lot of time and effort to update it, let alone to go out and promote it. I'm going to absolutely share it in the link so that people can find the map. But why has it not been easier to find a different place than Facebook for a lot of this? I wonder.

Cassidy

It is a lot of work and there's not an overarching—like, there's no regulator. And honestly, that's become an issue. There have been people having negative experiences at some hubs. They go into a Facebook group, they say something negative about a hub. Not only does their post get taken down, but they get blackballed from the group for saying something negative. Like, there's not been a great option for families to report feedback that's anything less than positive and like a five-star glowing review because these are people's small family businesses and the last thing you want to do is destroy someone's small family business. But at the end of the day, people are traveling from the other side of the world, they're spending a ton of money, so for them not to get an accurate representation of what they're getting into is outrageous and it's dangerous in some of these situations. And there's not a reputable reviewer, or at least not a third-party reviewer that's verified. The best thing we can do right now is cultivate that social proof and share within our socials, for better or for worse, on social media the programs that we do stand by. Put your name behind the ones you stand by because it's really meaningful to those businesses. And for the ones that don't, they're going to fall to the wayside. They're not going to get the same amount of business and maybe that's for a good reason.

Suzy

Yeah, very good point. I think some of the misunderstandings can be attributed to just varying levels of expectations and maybe not great communication about what is being offered or what is being expected. Everyone's coming from a different price-point expectation. So maybe for one person, it's considered a value and for another, it's very expensive, and so they're coming in with a different mindset. It would be great if there was something like a Trustpilot or Google Reviews where people could leave their honest reviews. I think to have a map like the one that you share, where at least you can get started with what are the opportunities in this part of the world that I'm interested in—and then from there, you can do some more searching on what the reviews are or talk to the people that run it to really make sure that that's something that you want to put your time and effort into.

Cassidy

Yeah. The worldschooling community is so small that nobody wants to be that person who's leaving these terrible reviews online. I always tell people, like, I'm not going to blast someone's small business on my social media, but if someone comes into my DMs and is like, "What do you know about this program?" I'm going to tell them everything I know. I'm going to tell them my firsthand experience. And if I don't have the firsthand experience, I'm going to tell them all of my conversations that I've had about the program with participants and let them make their own informed decision. You have to reach out to past participants and not just the participants who are leaving glowing five-star reviews. You need to track down people who have participated.

Suzy

Absolutely. Hearing those firsthand reviews is very important. Thank you for sharing that. Maybe we'll see how this all evolves in the worldschooling community as things continue and as there are more opportunities. I think it'd be fun to wrap up with a bit of a lightning round to learn more about you. You can only ever visit or live in three countries. What are they?

Cassidy

Ooh, well I'm going to say the United States. I do love where I live here in Colorado. Let's see... I'm going to pick a diverse one like Colombia because they have everything. They have mountains, they have beaches, they have cities—they have everything. And then I'd like to pick one with an incredible reef, maybe somewhere in the South Pacific or Southeast Asia. I haven't really traveled there yet outside of Australia, but I definitely want to visit that Coral Triangle, and I think I would be very happy to count one of those places, like the Philippines or something, or Indonesia, for one of my three countries.

Suzy

I feel like that's a part of the world that's a little intimidating because there are just so many islands and navigating them is probably tricky. And so you're like, "Where do I even go?" And so it's a part of the world that would be really fun to really deep-dive in at some point. Best or worst food you've ever tried.

Cassidy

Ooh, the boulangeries of France are top of the list. I love a good fresh croissant. Worst food, I think, is Costa Rica. Definitely the worst food in Latin America. The worst rice and beans, for sure.

Suzy

I've not heard many good things about Costa Rican food compared to their neighbors.

Cassidy

No, it's like they've already cornered the tourist market so they don't have to try on the food and yeah, it's not good. Exactly.

Suzy

Yeah, they focus on the scenery more than the food in their country. And what is one item you cannot travel without?

Cassidy

Well, I always bring my own flax seeds and my own hemp seeds. They're lightweight. It's like taking a supplement, but it's just like actual food and you can get them other places, but it's really nice to just be able to sprinkle it on whatever breakfast or whatever lunch you have. It just adds your omegas and tons of nutrients that you might not otherwise be getting on your trip diet.

Suzy

That's smart. What is your favorite subject to worldschool?

Cassidy

I love all of it. Probably history, though. I mean, I wouldn't want to go sit in a classroom and study history all day, but I love helping my kids connect the dots on why the history is relevant to the current socio-political environment, or how the geography affects the culture, and how the culture affects the language, and why we say this in Spanish but we don't say this in English—and that's a result of their culture versus the English being a result of our culture—and just connecting all the dots. Like, the cross-curricular, it's beautiful.

Suzy

And last one: one piece of advice for our families just starting out.

Cassidy

I would say spend a little bit less time on social media crafting your trip to look just like someone else's, and instead start with an experimental trip. It doesn't need to be long. Take three weeks; take an experimental trip and find your own flow for what works for you and what doesn't work for you and what you like and dislike. And if it doesn't look anything like whoever's that you saw on Instagram, it does not matter. All that matters is it's the flow that works for your family. So that trial run of like a three-week period—I think is a great place to start.

Suzy

It's really, really good advice. You've shared your opportunities with the hub map and I know you have other resources on YouTube, but how can people find you if they want to learn more about you and your family?

Cassidy

We're at Living Unconventionally on YouTube and Instagram, then living-unconventionally.com. There's information about worldschooling on there, and just if you want to message me directly, you can definitely do it on the website.

Suzy

This has been so great to learn more about you and your family. And I can't wait to share this with everyone. So thank you so much.

Cassidy

Absolutely. It's great to talk to you.