Suzy: What if selling your house and traveling full-time wasn't just a wild dream, but the best education your teenagers could ever receive? Today I'm chatting with Kristen Thatcher, who has spent the last five years traveling the globe with her family. We break down the realities of slow travel—from surviving the three-month rudderless slump and saving fifty thousand dollars house-sitting, to navigating neurodivergence on the road and turning hands-on world experience into an accredited high school diploma. Plus, what it's really like to take multi-week transoceanic cruises with teens. Listen to the end to find out Kristen's game-changing advice for any family wanting to take their very first leap.
Suzy: Welcome to the Wander Worldschool Podcast. I'm Suzy, the travel-loving money nerd, mom of two, and our family lives between Spain, Colorado, and Japan. On this show, we discuss the stories, logistics, and finances of traveling families and the many ways to learn along the way. Today we get to know Kristen Thatcher. Welcome to the show. Tell me more about you and your family.
Kristen: My husband Ren and I have two kids: Kaylee, who is 19, and Jacob, who is 17. We've been traveling pretty much full-time for the last five years. We left Canada intending to permanently move out of Canada, and that has not been the case. So we did a wander around Central America for a couple of years. And then for the last few years, we've been doing laps around the globe. So we just finished our second lap around the globe, and this fall we're going to go across the Pacific and then back.
Suzy: Very exciting. And we overlap a little bit in Japan soon. We're also going to talk about Mind the Gap Tutoring, Learn with Every Avenue, the directory for homeschooling and worldschooling families. So I'm really excited to learn about these resources that can help worldschooling families. But let's take it back to where your love for travel started.
Kristen: Growing up, neither Ren nor I really did a whole lot of traveling. One of the things that Ren says when we get into these different countries is, "I could never have pictured myself here when I was a teenager," because it was just not on our radar. During COVID, we got this chance to be with our kids, and then it was this expectation that we were going to go back to our office jobs, and we both kind of said, "Well no, we don't want to do that." So we put together this plan to sell our house and invest that bit of money. And I continued to work online, and we've been traveling ever since.
Suzy: So your kids were approximately, if I'm doing the math, around eleven and thirteen when COVID took everyone home, and that's what kick-started some traveling. What has family travel looked like?
Kristen: In the beginning, it was really rough. My kids are neurodivergent, and like, so am I, I guess. And so the stability part was a really rough point for us. So in the beginning, every time we moved to a new location, there were a lot of tears, and it was very difficult. And then we kind of got into this groove. For the first couple of years, we would move every couple of months, or we would stay somewhere long-term and we would go out for a week or two weeks and come back. We've all learned to be a lot more flexible. You kind of get past that vacation feeling at about the three-month, maybe the six-month mark, somewhere in there. That's the hardest point. And if you can get over that hurdle, you get into a groove or whatever works for your family. And for us, for the last couple of years, that has been like a month to two months in one spot, and then a week or two of quick travel where we would hit a couple of different countries, and then back to settle down for a month or two, and then repeat.
Suzy: Sounds like you've really had opportunities to learn what rhythm works well for your family. What locations have really stuck out to you as good places that you've been to over the last few years?
Kristen: We spent a good chunk of time in Costa Rica, and we made a lot of friends there. It was great for our kids. We went to an alternative school a couple of days a week and volunteered in the community and had a lot of connections there. So that was one place, and we would like to go back because of those connections. Some other places that stood out to us were Cambodia—we really liked it; the people are really nice, it's very affordable. And Vietnam—we've been back; it is the only place we've actually been back to. And we've spent time in Hoi An and Da Nang the last two times we've been there. There's just a good, robust community of people there.
Suzy: I love those locations as well. Tell me a little bit more about what travel has looked like more recently, especially with Cultural Compass, and then a little bit more about what's coming up.
Kristen: For us, community has been something that's been really important to us. So I run a big Facebook community group for homeschoolers and worldschoolers. And for the last couple of years, we have been putting on hubs. We've been partnering with World Schooling Journeys to host a couple of cruises, and that helps to bring people to us. And then we also then go and join up with other hubs as well.
Suzy: That brings up another question I have, like you said: what has the role of community played? Because you're traveling with—when you started with teens and tweens, and now older teens. And we all know that there's understanding with teens around being around other teens, the independence piece. I'm really curious how to navigate that as the parent of teens while still continuing to do some amazing travel.
Kristen: So yeah, traveling with teens can be difficult because they want that independence. And if you are going to places where they can't exercise that independence, then that can be difficult. And the other piece is the social piece, where they want to be with other teens, they want to be able to be away from the parents and doing their own thing, at least to some degree. And that's another reason why we chose Hoi An to go back to, because it's a place where I was comfortable putting my kids in a Grab, like an Uber taxi, and they would go and hang out with their friends and come home. And they knew that the homestay closed at 10 o'clock, so they had to be home by 10:00. So then it wasn't even me setting the rule; it was the homestay mom who was setting the rule.
Suzy: Sounds like looking for specific locations where you know it's safe and that there is reliable transit. With teens, are there locations that you might not go to particularly because you want to give them some independence and flexibility, and you know that location may not offer it the way you feel comfortable?
Kristen: Yeah, I would say Costa Rica was not the best for that. It was okay because they were younger and they didn't really want to be off on their own, but it wasn't really walkable. There isn't transit. I'm not comfortable with them getting in a colectivo and going off with some stranger and, you know, paying cash. But there really wasn't anywhere else for them to go, and because it's so spread out, it's kind of difficult to be able to give them that.
Suzy: Like sometimes it just comes down to luck based on the location you're at, what other families are around. That's the great thing about a lot of worldschooling opportunities: they do bring together families, and some of those families are going to click really well because the kids get along, similar ages or interests. You mentioned this alternative school in Costa Rica. I'm curious to learn more about that, and then also in general what your approach to education has been while traveling.
Kristen: Our general approach to education is that my kids have done basically everything. We started with the intention of homeschooling the kids when they were very young, and life got in the way, and I ended up having to go back to work and put them in public school. They were in a French school, so they got the bilingual education, which was important to us. And when COVID hit, we were like fully home, and I didn't want them on the computer staring at a screen six or seven hours a day. So we opted to go back to homeschooling while my husband and I worked from home. We realized that they were kind of burnt out from being in the public schools. So we unschooled for both of them until they got into grade nine. Then they got into the Ontario online program called TVO ILC. ILC is Independent Learning Centre. So they've been doing some online courses, some unschooling, and just learning through travel. So we go to museums, we go to art galleries, they volunteer when they can. And that experiential learning has then translated into actual high school credits for my daughter. And she got her diploma two weeks ago, so she's officially graduated.
Suzy: Yay, congrats!
Kristen: And then my son will follow the same path. When they've volunteered, they've run businesses, they've, you know, learned languages, they've learned cultures, they've learned geography and history in all of these different locations that we've been. So that will translate into actual credits here in Ontario, which is kind of difficult to do if you don't know who to ask.
Suzy: Can you touch on that a little bit more? Because I believe that when people opt for unschooling, homeschooling, or anything outside of the public school system with younger grades, there's less of a concern around transcripts, aiming for graduation. And of course, every family's going to have a different goal there. But when it does come to high school, often getting that diploma is an important step, right? And so I'm curious how you've been able to track the coursework for the transcript, or however you would say it. And I realize every country might be a little different, but I'm curious how they do that in Canada.
Kristen: It is different. It's different in every country, it's different in every province, and it's different in every state in the US. When the kids turn 18 here in Ontario, they're eligible to go through a Prior Learning Assessment and Recognition program. And when you do that, you fill out basically a resume. And we detailed their volunteering, their work experience, their arts and crafts that they like to do—like anything you can think of. You just put it down on this paper, and we gave it to the guidance counselor. And he came back with his list and said, "Okay, well, so you still need an English 12 credit, you need a Math 12 credit, and two other grade 12 credits. You pick them."
Suzy: And then does that offer the same access to universities? Whether your daughter or anyone that achieves this wants to pursue that higher education, would this diploma open those doors as well?
Kristen: Yep, it's the same exact diploma as everybody else's. There are a couple of other options for getting into university programs in Canada: they can do just five accredited grade 12 courses; they can also do the CAEC, which is the GED replacement; there's Athabasca University in Alberta that, as long as you're 16 and you have a letter from your parents saying that you're capable of doing the coursework, you can get admitted there, too. So there are many paths, but the OSSD for Ontario students is like the most normal path, and it opens the most doors. So that was why we decided to go that way.
Suzy: What does unschooling look like—either a typical day while traveling or a typical day while stationary for a while? I'm curious especially maybe what their interests are and what they've really opted to dive into.
Kristen: Kaylee's interests tend to revolve around history, mythology, cultures, anthropology—that kind of, those like soft sciences. One of our recent trips was through Eastern Europe, and our last stop was basically her graduation present, which was to go to Greece and go to the Acropolis. And Ren took Kaylee to the Acropolis Museum, and they spent, I think, four and a half hours there. And then at the end of the day, Jacob and I met up with them and we went to the Acropolis. And walking through the Acropolis, she would stop and point out, "Well, this theater is here because of whichever reason, and these statues were replicated because they were destroyed in this war at this period." And she just knows all of the facts. And she's my museum guide wherever we go.
Suzy: It makes a huge difference to have someone that understands the history and can bring it to life. So I actually do like getting guides many places because it gives you more of a rich context to just the place that you're walking around, which I think really helps for younger kids as well. You mentioned your kids also went to the French school for a little while. I'm curious what your approach to languages has been.
Kristen: So we spent three and a half years in Central America, so we've all tried to learn Spanish. Ren was already fluent in Spanish, so he's kind of been our translator. Kaylee is still fluent in French. Jacob is not the strongest in languages; he's more of a math and science kind of brain, and so am I. It's been important for us to learn at least a few words in each country so that we can say "please" and "thank you" and get what we need to at the market, that kind of thing.
Suzy: It's really helpful. And behind every trip is the financial and logistical side, because you've been able to navigate full-time travel for many, many years now. You mentioned selling your home to help kick-start the travels, but I'm curious if you can tell us a little more about the financial and the logistical side of funding your travels over these last many years.
Kristen: Yeah, so we sold the house and a lot of what we owned. So we do keep a car and basically a household—like the basics of a household. We keep it in a container on my aunt's farm, which is where we're visiting right now, actually. And that helps to fund the travel. So we've invested what we got from the house, and we take a bit of a drip from that, trying to keep a nest egg there for in case we want to come back or when we eventually fully retire. And then other than that, I tutor online, and I am running Learn with Every Avenue, which we just started up a couple of months ago. Then we run hubs every once in a while as well. And then one of the ways that we saved a lot of money, at least the first lap around the globe, and we've started back up again, is house-sitting. We use TrustedHousesitters. From what I estimated, we've probably saved 50,000 US dollars in the first year just because of where we were spending. We spent three months in Australia, and we house-sat for all three months. I think we spent like six days in hotels. And then we spent another three months in Europe and two months in the UK. And again, we house-sat for most of that. One of the houses was in Switzerland, where the nearest hotel where she told us we could stay the night before was 800 Canadian dollars a night. So we ended up going and spending the night across the border in France because it was only $200. We couldn't have visited Switzerland in any other way because we couldn't afford to stay there. But with the house-sit, it was okay.
Suzy: And you're right, those countries that you listed have a lot of opportunities. I've even told some of our friends in Spain, where we live half the year, that I'm like, "If you ever want a vacation to the UK because you want your kids to practice their English, do it with TrustedHousesitters. Don't get a hotel." To get a better idea of your past spending, what is a financial snapshot of one month's spending on your last trip, or if you're planning for your future trip? One trip that you'd like to tell us a little more about—the expenses, lodging, all the things.
Kristen: Our most recent trip was to Albania. We went there with a group called Wonder. And in Wonder, we stayed in Himarë, which is a little town on the coast, and our apartment there was a little bit more expensive than we typically spend. We spent about eighteen hundred dollars Canadian, and I try to keep it under fifteen hundred. And that included a shared kitchen, and the kids had to share a bedroom with tiny little single beds. Food was probably about fifteen hundred Canadian for the month. So Europe tends to be a little bit more expensive than some places that we go. We didn't do a whole lot of side trips there. We did one rafting adventure that was up in the mountains, so we ended up spending the night up in a little town called Përmet, which is beautiful; I totally recommend that. We did some just little trips to—there was a castle up the road and things like that. So I think in total we spent under $500 for entertainment, side trips, all of that kind of stuff. And I would include our eSIMs and things like that in that as well. We did splurge on a car rental for the month, which we almost never do. We usually rely on transit because that keeps our costs down. The car rental was probably six to seven hundred dollars a month. And I think that covers most of it.
Suzy: And I did the calculation: for those who are more accustomed to the US dollar, that's around thirty-three hundred for the month in US dollars. And do you think that the lodging was a little more expensive in Albania because it's becoming more popular, or just because this was summer, this was their high season?
Kristen: I think a little bit of both. We were just getting into high season because we were there in June. But Himarë also tends to be a bit of a touristy destination. All of our neighbors that we shared the kitchen with came for a couple of nights and then they would go on to somewhere else. So it was unusual for them to have us there for an entire month.
Suzy: They're like, "You guys are still here?" And you're like, "This is how we travel. We travel slow. We're taking over the kitchen." Just kidding.
Kristen: Yeah, yep. Yeah, exactly.
Suzy: I love it. Well, tell me a little more about Cultural Compass Adventures. You have a big adventure coming up soon with the cruise and then pop-ups in Tokyo this fall, which is going to pair very nicely for people that come to Osaka for our World School Pop-Up Hub and then can jump over to Tokyo October 20th to the 26th. Tell me a little more about how Cultural Compass started, and of course these upcoming activities, but also if there's anything else in the works.
Kristen: We started Cultural Compass Adventures because we were—so we do a little bit of coordination with World Schooling Journeys. We host some of their cruises, and it made sense for us to host hubs on either end. So last year we hosted a hub in Seattle before the cruise. This year we're doing a hub in Tokyo after the cruise. So we're going from Los Angeles over to Tokyo, and then the hub is from the 20th to the 26th. And we're going to try to incorporate some cultural stuff, some activities. We're going to do Disney this year; we did a little bit of a vote, and people decided that that's something that they wanted to include in the hub rather than just going on their own. So we do like the complete seven-day itinerary, make sure that we've got lots of different activities for the age group that we've got. We've got kids right from one up to seventeen or eighteen now, I think. We've got fourteen families signed up so far, so lots of people.
Suzy: I love it. And you've done some of these transatlantic or transpacific, in this case, cruises before. Tell me a little more about what it's like to be on a cruise with a lot of other worldschooling families. Is it just one nonstop kid spring all over, having a lot of fun, or what is that like? I'm really curious.
Kristen: The very first one was 32 days. We went from San Francisco to Australia, and we had never been on a cruise before. Our family has never—like, we've done some fishing, but that's about it in terms of boats. So it was kind of like jumping in with both feet and hoping that we liked it, and we actually loved it. The couple of cruises that we've done so far, I wouldn't say it's one nonstop party or anything like that. The kids get into a groove pretty quickly, especially when there's a lot of sea days. So some people are afraid of the cruises with a lot of sea days, but we found it was really good for the kids because they would get into this groove where they would get up in the morning—well, I'll give you my son's schedule. He would get up in the morning at about 10 o'clock. He knew that the pizza joint opened at 11:00. He would go and get his slices of pizza, and then they would head up to one of the lounges and they would play board games, Dungeons and Dragons, anything like that. They'd go to the trivia; they won tons of prizes because a couple of them on this last cruise knew a lot of flag trivia. And they hosted three events for us. So the staff gets to know us because you're on the boat for 16 days on this last one, and 32 for the first one. And then they would go to dinner, they'd go to the show, and then they'd walk each other back to their cabins, and then he would show up back at our cabin at about 10:30. And then the next day was kind of a repeat.
Suzy: Do you think this works well for a certain age kiddo and above then to do, especially these longer cruises where you're on one ship for almost a whole month? Or what ages would work well for some of these longer cruises from your experience?
Kristen: We saw a lot of growth in all of the kids that came on the cruise. So they have to be 12 months in order to do a transoceanic cruise. They have to be two or three, depending on the cruise line, to get into the kids' club. They can go to kids' club up until they turn eighteen. And then they're broken into different age categories in the kids' club. There were some parents who put their kids in the kids' club and they were like, "No, I need to sign them in, I need to sign them out." And by about day five or six, they were like, "No, you can sign yourself in and out, and I trust you to go and get a snack and then go back to kids' club, or go and get lunch and go back to kids' club." It was good for all of the kids; I wouldn't put a limit on it.
Suzy: I think anywhere that you're traveling when you have a large group of kids where the kids can have a space for themselves, right, play those games and socialize, I think that's really cool because parents also have a space nearby that they get to do their own vacation-style things. That's what I really do like about pop-up hubs: there's often a lot of great common meeting areas, and so I think cruises really facilitate that. Is there any memorable moment from a past hub, either a cruise hub or any of the other ones that you've hosted before, that you'd like to share?
Kristen: So I think the first cruise was a good memory for us because we were able to see our kids really grow in independence. Because we had come from Costa Rica, where I think I said earlier that they didn't really have the opportunity to go out and connect with other kids on their own because we had to drive them everywhere—it wasn't very walkable where we were. So they were able to just manage their own schedules, do their own thing, connect with the other kids. And seeing them grow in that independence and the responsibility of maintaining that schedule so that they were back at 10:30 every night, they got up and had breakfast...
Suzy: Pizza.
Kristen: You know, pizza. From when we got on the boat to when we got off the boat, they were almost completely different people. Like, it was amazing to watch.
Suzy: So this sounds like a lot of fun, of course, to take long-term cruises and have these pop-ups in Seattle and Tokyo. Tell me a little more about the challenges, though, that you've experienced for either running hubs or long-term family travel. And then we'll also talk about the wins.
Kristen: I think most families—and we certainly hit this at the three- to six-month mark—you get out of that vacation mode. And then it kind of hits you that this is your new life. You kind of feel like a bit of a rudderless ship where you don't have the momentum anymore of the schedule that you used to keep. And all of a sudden you're kind of just floating there, and you're like, "What do I do now?" A lot of families struggle with that, and we did, too. And we were able to kind of get past that and get into a rhythm of travel, and now things are pretty good. I think one of the other ones is what you cover in a lot of your shows: managing your finances, because I don't have the same income coming in that I used to. You know, when thirty-three hundred dollars US a month is a big spend for us, obviously we're trying to keep things pretty low-budget, low-key.
Suzy: Yeah, which means there's trade-offs, and sometimes we have to say no to certain things, but then we save up to get to do the cool things, like I'm sure the rafting you said in Albania. I also want to bring up you wrote down that restocking food supplies in every new country is a challenge. And I want to highlight that because we are living that right now. I left food at the house-sit that we left this morning. You always have this food that you carry with you, but then sometimes you can't. And then you go somewhere new and you're like, "I just had ketchup. Why am I buying ketchup again?" So I understand that one, absolutely. But I'd love to hear more about the positive parts from the travel that you've seen over the last many years.
Kristen: Yeah, my kids have become—they've grown up so much in the last five years. Obviously they're seventeen and nineteen now. They've grown in flexibility and adaptability and culture and languages, like all of these things that they would not have gotten if we had stayed in school in Canada. Yeah, they wouldn't be the same kids at all. And it's just so neat to go to a museum and have my daughter tell me everything about everything that we're looking at. And, you know, to walk in and say to my son, "What are you working on?" "Well, I'm writing a program for this, you know, I'm writing a Discord bot." He's written a couple of programs for that, and he's got a thing that we're working on where it's a travel planner for worldschooling families that hopefully we'll launch this year, where you can put in your different locations and put in notes about when you get there, when you leave, and how you're getting there, and your budget and all of those things, because it's something that I struggle with. He works on all those kinds of things, and they wouldn't have time for that stuff if they were in school.
Suzy: And I'm curious if they've thought more about their future plans. And not that 17- and 19-year-olds need to have their whole future mapped out, but do you think that the travel has influenced what their next steps might look like? And do you think it's different than if they had stayed in like a traditional school, maybe what their choices might be or jobs that they're interested in or next steps?
Kristen: Yeah, they're both very much not wanting to settle down anywhere right now. There was a moment a couple of weeks ago when we were driving through northern Ontario towards my mom's house, and we drove past our old house and it was for sale. And they were like, "We could move back here." And I said, "Really, would you?" And they said, "Yeah, yeah, we would." I said, "You would want to spend the winter here again?" "No." And that was the only time in the last five years that they've even really considered slowing down and staying anywhere. So my daughter's looking at going to university, so she's going to start looking at courses, and she's going to do online so that she still has the option to travel.
Suzy: That's smart. And a lot of university that's very expensive is the in-class, the in-person components, living in a dorm, stuff like that. So if you can eliminate some of those expenses, it opens up other doors. Let's wrap up with the lightning round. You can only ever visit or live in three countries. What are they?
Kristen: Cambodia and Vietnam. And I do like Japan; I think that's why we're going back this time. So those would be my three.
Suzy: My kids love pho, so I'm like, we need to go to Vietnam before too long. What is one item you cannot travel without?
Kristen: My pillow.
Suzy: So I just saw this reel about someone who went all the way to Osaka, Japan, to get a custom-designed and built pillow. And I was very intrigued because I literally have neck pain from like a sleeping injury, and I was thinking, "I need to do that when I'm there." I think that would be a really interesting and useful souvenir. Is this a fancy pillow, or just a pillow for you, like a good pillow for you?
Kristen: It is not a fancy pillow. I got off the boat on that first cruise at the first stop because I hated the pillows on the boat. One pillow was too little, and two pillows was way too much. So I got this memory foam pillow; it's about two inches, and it's just enough to kind of give me a bit of a bolster whenever I need it. And it folds up nice and small, it doesn't add any weight to my luggage, and it's just nice for me.
Suzy: Sleep is important. What is your favorite memorable sunset or sunrise that you can recall?
Kristen: So I have two. The first one was a sunset. In Costa Rica, you go up into the mountains and the families will gather on the roadside. So we had gone to Fraijanes to get strawberries, and then we saw all these families sitting on the side of the road all the way back. So that was pretty cool. And last year, New Year's morning in Korea, they get up and they go and greet the sun on New Year's morning, so this was a nice cultural experience for my kids.
Suzy: And what is your favorite subject to worldschool?
Kristen: It's more my kids' favorite subject because I actually don't like history very much. But I like to worldschool history because we get to go to all of these places and learn things that they would not learn anywhere else. We went and talked with a veteran in Cambodia, for instance, who told them all about the Khmer Rouge and his experience in the war. And that's a part of history that they would not have learned had they gone to school. That's just the better way to do it, in my opinion.
Suzy: If you could teleport to one place right now, where would it be?
Kristen: I would go and visit a couple of friends that I haven't seen in a while, probably.
Suzy: What is one piece of advice for a family just starting out?
Kristen: Take it slow, and don't feel like you need to have a big, elaborate plan. Just take it one step at a time. I know lots of families plan out like an entire year in advance, but if you don't know what to do, just go to one spot and then stay there for a little bit, and then figure out where you want to go next.
Suzy: I tend to be a bit of a planner. I've already planned for the eclipse in one year, but those types of things you might need to plan ahead. And it's great to leave a little bit of flexibility in between all that. If people want to connect with you, your opportunities for tutoring, Learn with Every Avenue, Cultural Compass, where can people find you?
Kristen: So I have learnwitheveryavenue.com; it is our educator directory. So if there are any worldschooling parents out there who are tutors, teachers, mentors of any kind, they can sign up there. I'm on Instagram at learn.avenue and at Kristen.98765, and my personal tutoring is mindthegaptutoring.com.
Suzy: I will link all of that and your Tokyo opportunities in the show notes. This has been lovely. Thank you for sharing.
Kristen: Yes, thanks so much.
