Month: September 2006

Categories
Tips

Using Your iPod For Family Travel.

iPod (c) everymac.com

I’ve written in previous posts about iPod audio tours of Boston and the Rick Steves audio tours (specifically a walking tour for Paris) and obviously the trend shows no signs of slowing down. 

How about art museum downloadable tours?

The UK’s Telegraph features an article on MP3 tours on some key European cities, for any MP3 player including iPods. 

Heading to the Big Apple with kids?  You’ve got to see the offerings from Soundwalk: everything from the Bronx hip-hop walk to the Hasidic walk in Williamsburg for women.

A more encyclopedic item from National Geographic Traveler provides an amazing overview of all the things that your player can do to support your family travel escapades.

I love this concept if it’s done well; just don’t let those little headphones keep you from occasionally interacting with real humans.  

Categories
Philosophy Tips

Thinking About a Gap Year or Study Abroad.

My daughter is 14 and just starting high school, but I’m already heavily into thinking about college. Call me crazy, but if the previous 14 years went by so quickly, is there any doubt about how fast a measly 4 will fly by and she’s out the door?

Philosophically, I think that college years are for doing something that educates you about the world and stretches your horizons.  Since I’ve hauled my family from Asia to Europe via Navy duty assignments, my kids have pretty stretched horizons already, but my daughter is eager for more and I’m thrilled.  I love my kids, but I want them out in the world doing stuff, not hanging around the ol’ homestead.

Besides just going off to school somewhere, there are great options like taking a gap year (a year off after high school and before college to work, travel or volunteer) or taking a semester or a year to study abroad.  I’m not saying that a regular 4-year degree program isn’t challenging enough, but there are so many great options for the college years that it would be a shame not to explore them during the most flexible (and free) years any person probably has in their lives.

Budget Travel Online has tips for comparing study abroad programs and a PDF checklist for parents to help kids with the nitty-gritty of study overseas.  Lonely Planet has a book on the gap year concept that I’m dying to read (maybe it’s ME that wants a gap year, not my daughter!)  The UK’s Independent has a nice set of links to many articles on study abroad and gap year. 

The BBC News has a good gap year article as well (gap year was mostly a British phenomenon until recently.)  Interestingly, that year is increasingly supposed to be almost a resume-builder, to help a student stand out in the job hunt.

Lonely Planet

Says the founder of gapyear.com:  “If you ask people whether it is better to spend a gap year in China teaching orphans English, or to sit on a Thai beach then most people will opt for the orphanage,” says Mr. Griffiths. “But that misses the point. What matters more than what you do is what you got out of it. Did you do what you did on your own initiative and did you raise the money to do it yourself? If you reached the Thai beach all by yourself then that is more impressive that a structured stint in China paid for by Mum and Dad.”

Geez, I don’t want my kid to do this to impress some corporate recruiter, I want her to do it to learn and grow from the experience. 

What do you think?

Update 28 Sept 2006:  Wish you could have a gap year rather than your child?  Here’s a post from the Oh Maya My blog (about Guatemala….what a great title) about Gap Years for Grown-Ups. 

Categories
Blog Tips

When Your Blog Blows Up.

There’s nothing like sitting down at the ol’ laptop, clicking on the Favorites link to your family travel blog, and finding that the last month has disappeared; posts, links, comments and all.

Apparently, the BootsnAll folks had some server crashes and backup problems, and the last backup they could salvage was 17 August.  I was absolutely horrified, and a little confused as to how their daily backups could have failed so badly.  The recovery guidance was to go to Google, find the cached articles and copy/paste them back onto the blog. 

It is a free service to have my blog hosted here, and I suppose that I get what I pay for.  I’ve also suffered this “Whoops: Lost Data” fate twice while in the Navy, even with some pretty high-powered tech help.

It happens.

I’m sure the BootsnAll folks will put measures in place to prevent this from ruining my day again. 

The good news is that I’d been feeling terribly guilty about my lack of posts this summer because of our move from Florida to Texas, but this writerly sloth on my part meant that I didn’t have to do as much work to rebuild. It is obviously time to start backing up my posts myself, perhaps on a thumb drive.

Procrastination wins again!

Other blogs like Escape Wisconsin and Killing Batteries are logging online and screeching in agony about their lost posts; I feel your pain, fellow writers. 

Meantime, I’m busy this weekend wearing my sportswriter hat in Ennis, Texas (south of Dallas) blogging about NHRA drag racing for Fast Machines, the motorsports blog, at the O’Reilly Fall Nationals.    

Categories
Texas USA

Finding the Good Stuff: Music in Austin.

I didn’t manage to post this yesterday as promised, but I did find and unpack the cereal bowls, so there’s some progress on the move-into-the-house front.Here’s what I’ve discovered about the “Live Music Capital of the World;” the number of offerings is ridiculously large and (duh) many aren’t set up for children unless you think it’s a good idea to traipse into Antone’s with them at 10 o’clock at night.

Outdoor venues like the Backyard can work with older kids, but tickets can be pricey since they book national acts. I found another outdoor place that has terrific free local music from spring through summer, but since we just arrived in midsummer I never had a chance to take the kids to the Shady Grove Unplugged concert series sponsored by awesome local radio station KGSR. You can be sure with performers like Joe Ely, Ray Wylie Hubbard, the Mother Truckers and South Austin Jug Band, I’ll be all over this place as soon as I finish unpacking cereal bowls.

Most people know about the legendary music festivals in Austin: the Austin City Limits Music Festival this coming weekend and of course, South by Southwest (SXSW) in March. Many don’t know that SXSW is a music and film and interactive (Internet/blogger/digital world) event; there’s so much going on you could stay up for days, although that may not be terribly family-friendly.

I told my teenage daughter that I’d get her a wristband and take her to see some bizarro Norwegian band playing at 2 a.m., and she’s still trying to figure out if I’m kidding.

The festivals do make an effort to include children’s events, recognizing that just because we music lovers have had children does not mean that our concert-going days are over. ACL Festival offers the Austin Kiddie Limits performance area which this year includes one of my favorites, Joe McDermott.

If you happen to travel to the Austin area and just want to know what’s playing while you’re there, take a look at the Thursday XLent section of the local paper, the Austin American-Statesman. There are even more comprehensive listings in the free Austin Chronicle, which also comes out every Thursday and is distributed to hip restaurants and bookstores all over town….here it is online.

Read it carefully for appearances at the UT Student Union folkie haven Cactus Cafe, Stubb’s BBQ, Threadgill’s, Gruene Hall, The Broken Spoke honky-tonk dance hall, Ruta Maya coffeehouse, One World Theater or the downtown Paramount Theater.

When looking for recordings of local tunes, look no further than Waterloo Records at 6th and Lamar. The only problem is that everything is filed alphabetically rather than by genre, so you’d better have at least some idea of what you’re looking for or your brain will explode by the time you plow through “G.”

Oh, well, you can always just run next door to funky Amy’s Ice Cream or across the street to the Whole Foods flagship store to fortify yourself.

Have a good time in the Cosmic Cowboy town.

Note: This is a 22 September 2006 re-post of a 15 September 2006 previously published item, from a Google cache. I am re-creating some recent posts that disappeared in a BootsnAll server crash. The original comments were unfortunately lost.

Categories
Texas USA

Not Dead Yet: Going to the Austin City Limits Music Festival.

Well, the challenges of moving from one state to another with husband, two kids, four cats and about 17,000 pounds of household goods has rather taken the wind out of my writing sails this past summer. But, as the headline (and Monty Python) say, I’m “not dead yet.”

Our stuff arrived day before yesterday to our new Texas house, and the prospect of cutting into one more box and failing again to find the cereal bowls has me running to the computer. I have all sorts of family travel ideas and links to write about but can’t seem to find time in between appliance deliveries, cable guys, starting Cub Scouts….and where are those cereal bowls?

So here’s a promise: to get back into the writing swing of things, I’ll post up a travel item today on the Austin, Texas music scene in honor of my two Saturday tickets to the Austin City Limits Music Festival. My husband and I are looking forward to jumping right in to the lively local music scene & having a date together. Still, there’s plenty of stuff around here for kids to hear as well.

How about this: a blog post about every 4-5 boxes? That should get my writing going again AND get the house unpacked.

Note: This is a 22 September 2006 re-post of a 14 September 2006 previously published item, from a Google cache. I am re-creating some recent posts that disappeared in a BootsnAll server crash. The original comments were unfortunately lost.

Categories
Tips

My Top 10 Ideas For Travel Souvenirs

OK, I’ll admit to having quite a few T-shirts from our family travel jaunts, and my kids have a bunch as well (we’re not even going to get into the souvenir baseball cap collection.) But let’s face it, the budget and the already-stuffed suitcase can’t take too many clothing items, so what else is there for the little darlings to blow their vacation allowance on?

Here’s a proposed list to help stretch the shopping dinero:

** Floatie Pens (when tilted, objects move in the transparent barrel:) Delightfully tacky and inexpensive, these souvenir ink pens are found in some pretty unlikely places. We’ve got everything from Norwegian trolls to one from Jerusalem with floating bread and wine in front of the Last Supper. Classic.

** Key chains: You can find them everywhere, and older kids need one for their housekey anyway. I lost my favorite one from the Netherlands….little painted wooden shoes. Guess I’ll have to go back! The metal one from the Eiffel Tower brings smiles.

** Postcards: Not just blank cards; add to the adventure by taking your kids to the local post office, finding the most interesting stamps and mailing them home to yourself, their school buddies and grandparents. Scribble out some of the key addresses on some paper and carry the list with you so you don’t have to lug an address book.

** Recordings of Local Music: After everyone has checked out the cathedrals, look for sacred holiday music featuring the soaring acoustics of Notre Dame or Westminster Abbey. There are recordings of gamelan and tingklik concerts in Bali, indigenous Mayan music heard in Guatemala or perhaps some zheng music from Beijing, Shanghai or Hong Kong. There are plenty of local musicians in Hawaii who have CDs out; pick one up after the luau.

** Posters (get a tube to transport them home): Look for unique graphics that commemorate local places or festivals from your trip. We ended up with a great poster from a Japanese summer street festival in Tokyo; they were handing them out for free. Another fun thing to look for — movie posters in the local language. We have some in Japanese for Harry Potter.

** Hardware Stores: You may not know what it says but it sure looks cool; investigate hardware or home supply stores for business or household signs in the local language. No Smoking becomes Rökning Förbjuden in Swedish. I have “Please Always Keep Clean” in Thai hanging in my kitchen (not that I actually follow through on a whole lot of cleaning….)

** Drugstores: Find the most appealing colors and packaging on inexpensive everyday items like toothpaste, soap and shampoo. Ability to actually read the ingredients a plus but not required. When in doubt, another country’s version of a recognized name like Crest or Head & Shoulders will do.

** Kitchen Stuff: Refrigerator magnets, printed dish/kitchen towels, mugs and bottle openers don’t cost much and are fun, colorful travel reminders to liven up mundane chores like drying the dishes and looking in the fridge at soda options.

** Stationary store: Friends and family will enjoy hearing from you, especially when those missives have an international flavor/flavour. Thank you note-cards, gift tags, change of address announcements (“Nieuwe Woning” in Dutch) and Christmas/winter holiday cards in another language will un-blah your family’s correspondence. There’s nothing like hunting for stunning Florentine writing paper while you’re actually in Florence. Remember, lots of grandparents want an actual written thank-you note when they send gifts; email doesn’t cut it. May as well get the kids some neat writing papers to liven up those tasks.

** Subway/Metro Memorabilia: Any large city with public transportation will have these items. Bring home a system map to frame (unless the kids are sentimentally attached to their grungy crumpled one.) London’s Covent Garden has a Transport Museum gift shop; cheap thrills include a color-coded felt tip pen set (the Piccadilly Line pen is dark blue, etc.)

And here’s a tip if you are still awash in T-shirts; there are companies that will make quilts out of old T-shirts, or you can make one yourself if you’re handy.

Finally, thanks to Darren Rowse at ProBlogger for the chance to participate in his latest group blogging project….Lists!

Note: This is a 22 September 2006 re-creation of a 17 August 2006 posting that was lost in a BootsnAll server crash. I used a Google cache version, but the original comments were unfortunately lost.

Related Family Travel posts:

Categories
Tips

Back To School Doesn’t Mean “No More Vacations.”

I know it’s hard to think about family travel when your kids have just started school….mine went back about a week ago and I’m still drowning in all of the forms and “please-fill-this-out” paperwork. Some of us may have had time to take a nice, long family vacation this summer, but most Americans don’t seem to get around to it (unlike Europeans, who go on summer holidays for weeks at a time, and look at you with pity if you don’t do the same.)

Me, I was orchestrating a move this summer from one state to another and trying to find a home. There were a few bumps, and we are just today closing on a house and moving out of our hotel.

Remember, though; there are going to be 3-day weekends coming up (Labor Day, Columbus Day, etc.) plus no-school teacher workdays. Those are always great opportunities to take a quick, fun trip.

One of those many papers that came home from school is a calendar with all of those dates, plus it will be on your school’s Web site. Get a jump on things by putting all of those dates, right now, on your family calendar for the whole academic year. You can be making hotel reservations for a New Year’s getaway while everyone else is just discovering that it’s Labor Day next week.

Now that air travel is exponentially more difficult, I wouldn’t recommend flying unless you have older kids who can amuse themselves; it’s too far into the Just Too Hard category. Make it a road trip, about 2-3 hours from your house at the most.

Here are some links to get you in the planning mood:

** From the New York Times, here are practical and focused family travel sites with a wealth of information.

** Want info from real parents who “just got back” from somewhere? Take a look at the reports on WeJustGotBack.com, currently featuring insights on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

** As always, Frommer’s has a comprehensive list of trip planning resources for families.

** From Canada’s Globe & Mail, some ideas for house-swapping as a way to really get local with your kids in some pretty cool places.

** The Web site for the magazine Transitions Abroad has a great list of travel and culture-related Web sites.

** If you do have time for more world-wide destinations, there’s Kids Can Travel, plus Inside Out magazine has an amazing list as well.

Thanks to the Work at Home Mom bloggers for the chance to write about their question of the week.

Note:  This is a 22 September 2006 re-post of a 25 August 2006 previously published item, from a Google cache. I am re-creating some recent posts that disappeared in a BootsnAll server crash.  The original comments were unfortunately lost.