Bouck Family Adventures

This trip, gap year, sabbatical, sojourn, whatever you prefer to call it, has been years in the making and something we talked about even before we had kids.  

Trevor is fortunate to have the option of taking a four over five as a teacher, spreading four years of his salary over five years, with the last year taken as a sabbatical year. We always knew we would take advantage of this to help fund our year of travel.

The next decision to be made, once we had children and started talking more seriously about our year of travel, was the age of the kids on departure. We wanted them to be old enough to appreciate the experience and carry their own gear, but young enough (elementary school age) to be home schooled/world schooled as we travelled. We settled on ages 11 and 13, meaning Wes would be going into grade 6 and Elise into grade 8. 

With the target travel year of 2024/2025 set, we determined our budget and started saving. We casually talked about places we wanted to visit and what our travel year would look like.

Most of the forward momentum for trip planning took place in the final year leading up to our departure. I submitted a request for a 14-month unpaid leave of absence from work, which aligned with Trevor’s time off. We would both end our jobs on June 28, 2024, and return to work September 3, 2025. We plan to travel for 13 of these 14 months, giving us time to prepare before we leave and time to re-establish ourselves once we are back in Canada. 

We spent the year leading up to our departure researching and reading about other families who had embarked on similar journeys, even meeting up with another local family (thanks Côtés!) who took a similar 6-month trip with their two kids. This helped us determine where we would start our travels, and which direction we would travel around the world (West to East). It also helped us decide what type of travelers we wanted to be, opting for a mix of frantic sightseeing and slower, more relaxed travel. The world is a big place, and although we will get to quite a few countries, we just can’t see everything. We also don’t want to wear out from constantly being on the go. There will be days spent hanging out at “home” or playing in the park.

We plan to book about three months of travel at a time, favouring Airbnb’s with kitchen facilities that allow us to cook our own food. This serves two purposes: to keep us on budget, and to accommodate Elise’s Celiac disease. We will opt for stays that give us an option to cancel so that we can remain flexible with travel dates if needed. 

Most of the countries we will visit do not require a visa for entry, or have a visa upon arrival. There are two countries that we had hoped to visit that require a visa application: Egypt and China. Unfortunately, Egypt changed its entry requirements for Canadians in October 2023. This means an in person application process in Ottawa, something we just could not arrange ahead of our departure. China also requires an extensive application process and in person visit to the Chinese Consulate in Toronto. We could have managed this process, but the visa would have expired before we made it to China. While we are disappointed that we cannot visit these two countries on this trip, we know we can fill our time with many other exciting travel adventures.

On July 21, 2024 we set out for Lisbon, Portugal. Despite all our spreadsheets and planning, it was a ready or not type situation getting us out of our house and to our first destination.