Alumni

meet the Waters

Sacha, Class of '16
Thalie, former student
Luke, Class of '20

Traveling just before or after college will equip you with invaluable interpersonal skills, the ability to think on your feet, and independence. Take time to think about who you are, what you want from life, and learn about the wider world.

We had always talked about doing a distinct family adventure, and it became a case of now or never due to the ages of the children and their schooling commitments.  We tried many iterations of an around-the-world itinerary, and ended up having to cut many places out, as our aim was to spend a minimum of three weeks in each country.  So, in August of 2014, we– Gerry, Lou, and Sacha, then 12; Thalie, who was then 10; and Luke, who was 9–hit the road to 12 countries: Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru, England, India, New Zealand, Australia, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, and Turkey.

We had a lot of scary moments. Our car broke down on the Interamericano, and Gerry nearly overturned our tiny car in Costa Rica. Rappelling off a sheer cliff face with a crazy rushing waterfall roaring down at breakneck speed and the children getting sick in India were, frankly, terrifying.  But then we camped out with camels in the Indian desert, scuba dived the Great Barrier Reef, did the four-day Inca Trail trek, and hot air ballooned over mystical cave dwellings and rock formations in Turkey. So, the positive experiences definitely outweighed the negative! 

The best overall experiences were living and working at a leprosy school in India and living in Cambodia with Ponheary Ly, who has won many global awards for her work in getting children off the streets and into schools.  Both places gave us a great sense of community and purpose, which is an important counterbalance to the rootless life of traveling. When you stay in one place for some time, you can start to connect with the city and community to understand the culture and living like local people. We learned many lessons from our year abroad.

• You can work anywhere; you can sleep anywhere! 
• Don’t sweat the formal learning too much. Many of the lessons we learned through our travel are still emerging in history and geography classes today. We learned through walking in the places where huge seismic or historical events happened, through listening to locals who really understood it.
• Have faith in the goodness of people. When Lou was absent, some people looked on Gerry as a bit of a curiosity traveling alone with three children. But she was never threatened or felt in danger.  People around the world looked out for us and wanted to make sure we were OK.
• You don’t need a lot to be happy; a place to sleep and a full stomach are pretty good!  We lived on five T-shirts each, and that was much more than most people we met had.  Having many possessions can be as much of a hindrance as a blessing.
• Traveling to see things gets stale pretty fast. The joy and fun comes in meeting and spending time with other people and having experiences. When we were in New Zealand, we did far too much traveling around to look at things, and as a result it was everyone’s least favorite country.

Three years later, our kids are pretty fearless and adventurous–always up for a new challenge. They have a strong sense of self. They are kind and respectful and have good circles of friends, but don’t waste much time worrying about fitting in or pretending to be someone they are not. They are all quietly confident and care a lot about others. We spend lots of time volunteering with Houston’s homeless, which came directly from seeing the desperate circumstances that many people around the world live in. We remain a close family and still do crazy projects together like the huge art car we built for Houston’s Art Car parade. It’s our hope for future generations to develop a great respect for the many different forms of belief and culture while understanding the inter-connectedness of the world. Most importantly, may we all experience the kindness and humanity of every culture.