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Friday, February 28, 2003
The House goes on the web
Having chosen our rental agents, Finders Keepers, they've now posted our house up for rent on the Internet. (Got money and clean feet? Take a look at Finders Keepers). They were fast workers - they only took the photo's yesterday, and today they've put it online - must be using some blogger software! Anyway, they came along while we were out this afternoon and put up a "To Let" board. Which should have been fine, but when we got back at 3pm we found that the house didn't have any electricity. After getting out the electricity company (whatever anybody tells you about Southern Electric's poor service, our experience was great - within 40 minutes they had a man and a van on site, trying to sort us out). Anyway, three men later at 5 o'clock ("Oh no, I'm a linesman, you need a joiner") they found out that the line had been interrupted 16M away from the house. And guess what was put up before 3 approximately 16M from the house - yes, you guessed it, the nice sign board. The electric cable can't have been that deep, and the Metpost™ must have gone straight through it. (So now there must be a guy walking around Finders Keepers with a hairstyle like Don King!). Overnight the electric company have hooked us up a line from the local street lamp (I though they only did things like that in the slums of India), and tomorrow there will be a hole in the road outside the house (Hmmm, that will make it attractive to rent!). Hopefully by this time tomorrow, I won't have to pedal the exercise bike to get enough power to write this diary! Sunday, February 23, 2003
More about educating the children
Since we started looking for home education resources, we've come across loads of information. One of the really useful sites is the Government's own site which contains the Schemes of Work used in primary schools. Although they aren't compulsory for teachers to use, it has become more common for teachers to base their whole plan of work around these in primary schools - at the very least they are extremely widely used for literacy and numeracy. Although it might be a bit to direct for a teacher to be told what to do when, it's really useful for us when we're thinking about what we have to cover for Charlotte. All of the subjects are covered on the DfES Standards Website . The most detailed plans are for literacy and numeracy, but there are also less detailed plans available for every subject. Monday, February 17, 2003
Our RTW Route
Our Route Now that we know that our first country to visit will be Canada, it's time to start researching what we can do as a family in Canada for a month. Having brought the Rough Guide (interesting - last time we travelled RTW we used Lonely Planet almost everywhere, but this time when comparing the two, it seemed that the Rough Guide had the edge on information which would be useful for family travel, whereas the LP seemed aimed at singlies) we're surprised about the accommodation costs in some of the parts of Canada - which may mean that our budget gets stretched in our first few ports of call. Our aim is to fly to Vancouver, then head inland for the inevitable visit to Banff national park, then back to the coast, before heading south for a trip to Seattle. Then head back up to the islands off Victoria, before flying out to San Fransisco. How realistic? Well we won't know until we plan a bit more detail, and then until we get there! (If you've got an opinion, or an idea of something great for the kids while we're there, then email!) Thursday, February 13, 2003 School Sarah and I went to see the head at school today - to talk about taking Charlotte away from school for the year. Because we're effectively moving out of the UK for a year, then we don't have to fulfill any legal obligations about providing education (amazing what you can learn about the subject from internet, from sites like TigerChild and Education Otherwise). Our biggest concern is to make sure that for the year that Charlotte is away, she keeps pace with the Year 3 work (8 year olds) that everybody from her class will be doing - that way when she comes back to join Year 4 she'll be able to keep up. We're also interested in doing some stuff with the school to help keep her involved with her class while she's away. There are lots of possibilities - the curriculum is stuffed full of things in different subjects which require some form of comparison to other places (Geography about holiday destinations and climates; our village compared to other villages) as well as all of the multicultural studies that get linked in (how about Charlotte sending back a video report about rice growing while she's away - that will link directly into other work of the class, and provide a good link). There was genuine interest in that idea, so over the next few months we're going to have to pin down some ideas, linked to when & where we'll be in different continents, and talk it through with next year's teacher. We talked about literacy and numeracy - the major issue is to make sure that she learns the numeracy principles as we're going, so that she keeps up. Literacy is less of a worry - with her diary and the range of reading material that we're going to have available, coupled with no TV for a year - we think (and the school agrees) that things will develop well in that area without making it a hard slog. Numeracy will require some planning and preparation, and some formal "lesson time" put aside on a very regular basis. As we plan to take a laptop, and I work for a company producing a wide range of numeracy software designed for primary school children, then we'll have a head start. All in all, a good meeting with the school, some positive ideas and offers of help - all systems are go! Tuesday, February 11, 2003 Flights We've chosen our route to be: London-Vancouver-Fiji-Sydney-Auckland-Singapore-Nairobi-London - all in 12 months, starting around 1st August this year. When we called around flight agents (TravelBag, Trailfinders, Airline Network) today it appears that although it's possible, it's going to be pretty expensive because of two thinbgs - (1) we're doing a bit of a backtrack to NZ after Aus, and much more importantly (2) the Nairobi bit is a bit of problem. There are no direct flights to Nairobi from Asia - we'd have to fly to Joburg, and then fly up, and that racks up the mileage (most Round The World tickets are calculated on a mileage basis) which means we move from affordable (circa £1,200) we go into the £1,800-£1,900 band. So we thought some more, and investigated the prices of a flight from London to Nairobi - and that turns out to be £320-ish this May - if we assumed the same next year, it'll be cheaper for us to do a standard RTW ticket excluding Nairobi, and then when we get to London, turn right around and fly down to Kenya. We also get another stop option in San Fransisco or LA, so we're going to add that on and have a look at Yosemite. That leaves an itinerary of: This is it the easy way - on a map August - Vancouver (Rockies, Seattle etc) September - San Franisco (Yosemite, Lake Tahoe, and then perhaps drive down to Las Vegas & Grand Canyon) October - Fiji for a week mid-Oct-mid-Feb - Australia (into Sydney, buy a Holden and drive around the East & Southern Coast) mid-Feb to April - New Zealand (North Island and north of the South Island) April - May - Singapore (overland up to Malaysia & Thailand, plus a few day trip over the straits to Indonesia to go and see the Orangutan from Medan May - Nairobi (for some form of African safari - if the kids aren't travelling well then around Masai Mara - if they are then down to Tanzania fron Ngora Ngora Crater & perhaps Zanibar) We'll decide this week and then book flights next Saturday! Tuesday, February 04, 2003 House II Next agent came along (Finders Keepers of Banbury too) and they've suggested we may be able to get a reasonable amount of money for the house (if you're wondering, it's a four bedroom stone built house looking over a green in Deddington). It will definitely cover the mortgage and leave us with money left over and the end of the month, giving us even more of a buffer. As we've used this agency before (when we went backpacking for 2 years 10 years ago) we're likely to go with them, but will decide next week.
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