Dear Fellow Travel Enthusiasts,

Welcome to the 18th installment of the Roamers' Report!

This is the final update email during our travels.  I will likely send one more after we've arrived home summing up the experience with the perspective of a month or so back home. 

As I write this we are on the eve of our flight back to The States where we'll spend a couple of days in our former home of Los Angeles before flying to Santa Rosa and our home. 

Our last month was spent in Panama which turned out to be a delight in so many ways even though it was never on our bucket list of travel destinations and didn't even appear in the itinerary conversation until a month or two before we arrived. 

We got incredibly lucky (well, it was also Francesca's travel agent skills) to find an amazing house and host from the People Like Us home exchange organization that we belong to.  The owners, Janet and John Hitchens, were completely lovely hosts and made all three of their Panama properties available to us.  Their main house, called La Pandura, was a huge compound located in the remote mountain village of Santa Fe - about 5 hours from Panama City, where we spent our time doing some hikes, cooling off in the many natural swimming holes in the area, but mostly just chilling at the house, doing puzzles, playing Rummy, reading and cooking. 

They also had a small cabin in an even more remote mountain village called El Salto that was accessible via a 2 hour hike mostly uphill.  The cabin had no electricity so we had to read and play games by candle and LED lights. Only Ryan and I made the hike, but we're glad we did as we enjoyed the spectacular waterfalls in the area and the local cooking of Esther, the wife of Janet and John's cabin caretaker. 

The final property was a quaint casita in the sleepy fishing village of Calovebora on the Carribean coast, about 1.5 hours from the main property.  This undiscoverd (by tourists anyway) area boasts long stretches of pristine beaches and a shallow ocean front that had decent sized, but relatively gentle, waves that the kids frolicked in for hours.  This was a truly local experience where the only restaurants were by appointment only and spanish language only.  

Our final few days were spent in Panama City where we toured the Old Town and visited the amazing Panama Canal, celebrated Fathers' Day with some family biking, an escape room (we're still really bad!) and a sushi dinner. 

During the final week in Panama the kids all wrote their reflections on the year they spent worldschooling. If you are interested you can read them here.  

(An overview of the countries and cities we've been since the last newsletter and an update on where we are currently)

We spent the entire month in Panama, mostly in Santa Fe, a mountain town in the Panamanian highlands, but a few days each in the beach town of Calovebora and in Panama City.  Click here to see more photos from Santa Fe, Calovebora and Panama City. 

Click here to read our blog on Santa Fe and see more photos.

Click here to read our blog on Calovebora and see more photos.

We packed in a lot during our 3 days in Panama City.  The highlight was definitely the Panama Canal tour.  You can visit the museum and even watch dockside as the ships raise and lower in the locks, but it was quite the experience to actually go through the locks on a ship.  As a bonus the food on our tour boat was some of the best we'd had in Panama - although admitedly the bar is pretty low. 

We also did a little family biking, saw some local dancers and took in a movie at a theater - our first in a long time. We all loved How to Train Your Dragon!   Oh and we also did our 3rd and final escape room on our Five Tickets to Roam adventure.  As you loyal readers may recall, the Jahns family attempted two other escape rooms on our trip - one in Ljubljana, Slovenia and another in Da Nang, Vietman and both had not gone well.  This one in Panama City's Escape Room Panama was pirate themed and we did finish it, albeit with considerable help from a "parrot" that kept giving us clues whenever it saw us struggling.  

On our last day Francesca and I left the kids at the hotel and enjoyed a 3 hour walking tour of the Casca Viejo ("Old Town") with an amazing guide Charles. 

(Hopefully humorous stories about real events that happened to us on our trip)

I wrote quite a few travel stories in the last few weeks.  Upon the suggestion of some of you I am going to complile an edited version of these stories into an ebook and make it available online.  Stay tuned!

In case you missed the previous Travel Stories, here is a link to the archive.

Travel Stories 

(Many of you may not care about the home schooling portion of this, but since it's ostensibly the reason we are doing this, I will provide a brief update during these Newsletters.)

The kids finished their 7th, 4th and 2nd grade school years as part of the Pathways Charter online school system.  And while Francesca and I are happy to return them to their respective elementary and middle schools in the fall (teaching your own kids is tough!) we are pleased with how well things went.  We feel confident that they will be on par with - if not ahead of  - their peers in their respective grades.  

Sure there were disagreements and trantrums and tears, but all in all we are pleased with the process and very proud of all three of them in how they handled the academic part of their worldschoooling. 

Here is a link to take the 50 question FIVE TICKETS TO ROAM Final Exam that we designed for the kids.  The questions are about the history, culture, religion and cuisine of the countries we visited during our adventure. 

(Blog Posts Published since the last newsletter - in case you missed them on social media)

Panama City

Santa Fe

Restaurants of Santa Fe

Calovebora

(A dose of truth about some of the things that did not go according to plan or worries that we've had about the trip)

On the eve of our return to the US after over a year, it's time to share some reflections of my own.  First, did we achieve the goals we set out to accomplish when we left on this adventure?  I review each of our pre trip goals and give us a grade on each. 

More independence:

We were hoping that this trip would give the kids more independence.  Back home, unfortunately, we live in an area where they can't just go out on their own around the neighborhood and we tend to be a bit helicoptery in our parenting style so this was to be a year where they could flex their independence.  To a degree they did, although not as much as I had hoped.  It turns out that all three kids were much more introverted that I had ever imagined so doing even the simplist task - like going to the bathroom on their own at a restaurant - was an almost insurmountable challenge.  Over the course of the year they did all become comfortable ordering food for themselves (even in other languages) and head off to the bathroom by themselves and Ryan did venture out on his own with friends in a couple of cities, but for my liking they were still very much dependent on mom and dad. Yes, I realize that our youngest is only 8, but I would like them to be ahead of the indepence curve if possible.  I did have to reset my expectations with the understanding that my kids aren't extroverts like me and doing a lot of these things on their own - the things that involve interacting with strangers - don't come as easily to them. 

Grade C+

Don't fall behind academically:

We were worried that taking the kids out of their traditional elementary and middle schools might be detrimental to their academic development, but while roadschooling was definitely harder on us as parent-teachers, the kids overall thrived in that envrironment and, based on assessment tests they took as part of the Pathways Charter program, both Ryan and Finley are tracking well ahead of grade level in Math and English Language Arts (ELA) and Austen is above her grade level in ELA and slightly below in Math, but given her her recent Dupe15q diagnosis we were pleased with her results as well. 

Grade A

Become global citizens:

This is one where I feel they knocked the cover off the ball.  If being a Global Citizen means feeling connected to humanity as a whole and not just their own country or culture and embracing cultural diversity, values and perspectives from many parts of the world, then I think our kids have at least gotten a great start on the way to becoming citizens of the world.  It's so rewarding for us to hear them speak with each other and reference countries, religions, languages or cultures of places they have been in daily conversations.  

Grade A+

Appreciate that not all people have the advantages that we have:

Our kids had plenty of chances to observe some harsh living conditions during our trip and noted that many of the local kids and adults seemed very happy despite their circumstances.  However, they (well mostly Ryan) pointed out at every opportunity that some people appeared to have a better standard of living than we do. Hopefully there is a better appreciation for what they have at home, but that remains to be seen. 

Grade B

_________________________________________________

On another note, the U.S. has changed a lot since we left. It doesn’t feel like the same country anymore. From afar, we've been watching the news, scrolling through social media, and doing our best to understand what's really going on—making a point to read sources from both the left and the right. And while I can now appreciate where some of the extremes on both sides are coming from, I can’t help but feel deeply saddened—and, if I’m being honest, angry—about what’s happening in our country. I’ve spent a lot of time abroad over the years, and being American used to be a source of pride. Now, more often than not, it feels like a source of embarrassment. We’ll see how things feel once we’re back—and what role, if any, we can play in making a difference.   

Here are our Cultural Observations post for countries we have visited for at least one month.  A caveat as you read these, they are not all "cultural" in the typical sense of the word and none are meant to be taken in a negative light, but merely just some observations from an observant family of travelers. 

Peru Cultural Observations

Nepal Cultural Observations

Indonesia Cultural Observations 

Vietnam Cultural Observations 

Philippines Cultural Observations 

Thailand Cultural Observations 

Morocco Cultural Observations 

Spain Cultural Observations 

Bosnia Cultural Observations 

Greece Cultural Observations 

(I'm a little reluctant about this section because this trip is supposed to be more about quality and experience than sheer quantity, but I find stats like this interesting nonetheless) 

I am getting a bit more comfortable with keeping the trip stats.  As time goes by and the stats grow, it is getting fun to track the various cities we've been to and the modes of transport we've taken, etc. 

Here is a quick list of countries we've been to so far on this trip. They are places we have stayed overnight for at least one night. The bold ones are places we've lived in for an extended period of time (over 3 weeks). 

• United States

• United Kingdom

• Greece

• Croatia

• Bosnia and Hercegovina

• Slovenia

• Austria

• Italy

• Spain

• Portugal

• Morocco

• Romania

• Thailand

• Philippines

• Taiwan

• Hong Kong

• Vietnam

• Indonesia

• Nepal

• Peru

• Ecuador (Galapagos)

• Panama

Here is the link to the full trip stats page.

Thanks for joining us on our journey. I have tried to keep to my self imposed routine of sending a Roamers' Report every 2 weeks, but it hasn't always worked out that way. But I do post more regularly on social media (mostly FB, but some Instagram too) so if you want more real time updates please follow our Five Tickets to Roam FB page .

Regards,

The Roamers - Dan, Francesca, Ryan, Austen & Finley