I didn't completely follow this format either though looking back at it. But, instead went back into how sometimes I thought at a teenager which is both good and bad I suppose. My experiences regarding Malibu and West LA which were a part of my surfing experience come through in this writing. Also, the home schooling experience of educating my older children who were 5 through 8 years old in 1980 when we put all three of them on Independent study which is a form of home schooling with a teacher supervising at a distance their curriculum through Oak Meadow School. So, Oak Meadow School is a real school my older children were educated from the time the youngest was 5 to 10 years old and the oldest was 8 to 12 years old. In 1985 we took a family trip from December 1985 until April of 1986 where our children traveled with us through Japan, Thailand, India and Nepal.
I'm not sure they sell these types of tickets anymore or not since 9-11. However, they are called "open ended tickets" which have a one or a series of destinations. I bought these tickets at a place Called Global Travel II in the Haight Ashbury area of San Francisco. They are designed specifically for college researchers both students and teachers where research (like archaeological) and other is conducted in Digs throughout the world and other types of research. At the time I was able to buy 5 tickets from San Francisco and returning within 6 months time from San Francisco to Japan, Thailand, India and Nepal. We also could have stopped in Hong Kong if we wanted to with these tickets. However, the holidays going to Thailand kept us from doing this and coming back from Nepal 4 of the 5 of us were sick with Giardia that we got later into the trip likely from the feces in the dust then in Kathmandu. That year because so many roads were unpaved still the feces in the dust I think got us. In fact, every person I knew that went to Kathmandu, Nepal that year who was an adult got giardia that year.
So, the tickets don't have flight dates, you arrange for flights when you want to fly. You can fly to your destinations within a certain time frame (ours was 6 months and we used 4 or 5 months instead). So, we actually had another month available that our tickets were good for when we landed in San Francisco in April of 1986 after being gone since December of 1985.
So, potentially 6 months traveling as long as we wanted to spend in any country only cost us then about $6000 dollars with open ended research tickets we bought in Haight Asbury in San Francisco. So, we were in Japan or Thailand or India or Nepal starting from December 11th when we took off from San Francisco until April of 1986 when we returned.
However, the culture shock going to Thailand and India and Nepal was actually nothing compared to the culture shock of returning to the U.S. after 4 months time. Coming back to the U.S. was horrific on many cultural levels. But, you might have to experience what we experienced to fully understand this.
A way to explain this would be to say that the U.S. is very robotic and people are much more paranoid about hiding in their houses and apartments and cars whereas people in Asia are so close to death that they tend to live each moment more than people do here. So, even though more of us live longer than there, they tend to live much more in the shorter times that they have alive then we do here.
So, when I returned it was like seeing just how paranoid a bunch of robots who hide in Apartments and houses and cars that we actually are.
This was pretty horrific to experience the first few months we returned until I could adapt to being back here once again.
However, we did all become "Citizens of the World" and of Earth on this trip and all members have traveled all around the world since then and my two daughters born after this trip too.
By God's Grace
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