The Journey Begins

My husband and I have always had an interest in traveling, learning about and experiencing other cultures. We haven't had the opportunity to live abroad yet, but we continue to have that as one of our goals in life. My husband has been lucky enough to see some new countries first hand while he was serving in the Navy. We have made a few trips to nearby vacation destinations (Caribbean islands, Tijuana, Ensenada, Cozumel, Niagara Falls, Canada). We always told ourselves that we would have both learned a second language by the time we had kids, so that we could raise them in a dual language home. Well, we fell short of that goal (neither of us had quite enough self-discipline for obtaining that goal).

Now that we actually have children, we keep looking for ways to expose them to the world's diversity.  When our oldest daughter was an infant we received a cd of lullabies from around the world.  It's called "The Planet Sleeps", and I highly recommend it!  There was one particular song on there, Chi Mi Na Mór-Bheanna, that worked magically to put our daughters to sleep, especially when we were in the car and couldn't comfort them ourselves.  Last year my husband put together a calendar for us of holidays around that world and we planned to observe and learn about as many of those holidays as we could. We stuck with that for a while, but... We also planned to live in a large city with access to many different cultural museums, festivals, restaurants etc. However, sometimes you just have to move where job opportunities call you.  Some day, we think it would be terrific if our kids could attend a dual language immersion school, but then again, it depends what is available where we are living. 

Now, recently, a friend on Facebook recommended an article on raising global children: How Every Child Can Grow Up Global. At the end of the article were suggestions of things to do with your family to help raise your children's knowledge of other countries and cultures. Those ideas sounded like lots of fun! And, so, I was re-inspired to surround my children with experiences from around the world.  Our plan is to focus on one country each week.  I decided to write a blog about what we do each week as a way to share with others which books and activities we found helpful, to hopefully receive feedback from others about ideas they have, and also as a way to keep myself motivated and encouraged to contiue with our project of being a Family Gone Global. 

And now our journey begins...