My name is Courtney Adamo and I’m married to Michael. Together we spent 12 years in London where all four of our kids were born. We have two boys, Easton (11) and Quin (9) and two girls, Ivy (7) and Marlow (3). In spring 2015, we sold our house and most of our bigger belongings. We then sold the car, gave lots of stuff away, put some treasured belongings into storage and then asked some friends to babysit the house plants. We decided it was the year to make a really big dream a reality. We decided to push pause on our busy lives in London and take a year out to spend time with our children.
We spent the first couple months with friends and family in the US, followed by a road trip through California in September. We then spent the next few months in beautiful South America: in Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile. We flew from Santiago, Chile to Auckland, NZ just before Christmas and then spent nearly two months driving around New Zealand, exploring both the south and north islands in a camper van. We then spent two months in Australia, with a month in beautiful Byron Bay. Our journey took us to Japan, then over to Sri Lanka and then back to Europe where we will spend the summer with friends in Italy, France and Portugal. A family trip around the world: a dream I’ve had since I was a young child.
We look forward to immersing ourselves in the culture and language of each place we visit. We hope to experience how the locals live, what they eat, how they cook it, how they work, how they learn, how they play, and how they love as families. I want to discover and teach our children the history, theology, and geography of each place, but more than that, I want to discover a deeper part of myself and gain an understanding of the values that matter most to us. For as much as we want to experience the amazing things this world has to offer, we are more interested in slowing down our days, enjoying time as a family, being more present, listening, really listening, to each other, and emerging with a happiness and fulfillment that will hopefully influence the rest of our lives. Because life is so short, and our kids grow up too quickly. Because Easton is eleven years old, and it won’t be long before he won’t be excited about an adventure like this. Because now is the time. We look forward to jumping off this fast-paced treadmill and heading somewhere slower…
If you would like to read more about our trip and the reasons behind our decision, I wrote a piece for The Telegraph back in June in which I also talk about how we will educate the children while we are away. I followed up with another piece five months later, which you can read here.
Thanks so much for following along.
Courtney x
All the pretty illustrations on this site have been designed by Joya Logue. I am such a fan of her beautiful work. And the photo above was taken by our friend Amelia Fullarton during our time in Byron Bay. You can follow our daily adventures on my Instagram feed, @courtneyadamo.