Book Review - One Year Off

I recently finished the book One Year Off - Leaving It All Behind for a Round-the-World Journey with Our Children by David Elliot Cohen, I really enjoyed this book.

David and Devi took their 3 children (9, 7, and 2 - I think) on the road for 13 months. I liked David's writing style, it felt very intimate, I felt invited into their family. The book is a series of emails sent by David to family and friends, which would explain the honest and intimate feel of the book. The writing immediately caught my attention and I was quickly drawn in by the book.

One example of the honesty of the book and the people is that David and Devi tried to home school their children, a common theme for families that take an extended trip. I'm not a fan of home schooling (aside from the whole pulling your kids out of school for a year then you obviously have to do something). It seems like many families who take extended trips around the world were at least considering switching to home schooling if they weren't doing it already, so home schooling wasn't a jump for them. David and Devi are not that type of family, they tried and failed at home schooling and put the kids into school in Austarlia for 4 months as their education. It's honest and human, and they found a solution to the problem for thier family.

What did I learn?
France is not a good place to take children. Sardinia is a good place to take children. African safari's are good for children but not 2 year olds. Take the babysitter, they help manage the kids and allow you to have an occasional dinner without the kids.

What was missing from the book?
I would have liked a little more information on the families re-entry into "normal" life.

My neat orderly world

Right now I'm reading the book One Year Off, a review will come shortly. I was reading the part about Rome and how the hotel keeper was letting them park thier van in front of the hotel for the night. What surprised me was, who is the hotel keeper to say they can park on the street? Where are the police? If you let people park wherever they want and let the hotel keepers manage the parking there will be chaos!

I've been to Rome (Egypt and Russia too) and it seems people park wherever they want. All of a sudden it hit me that maybe the Romans are right and the NYers are the crazy ones. We have "organized" parking, 80 street signs for one block. Everyone's paranoid about where you can park and for how long. Parking is stressful in NYC and expensive if you misread the sign. And then you get the people who live there who decide they don't want "x" vehicle in front of their building and lobby to change the parking rules. You can't win in NYC, it's a horror show. We've made it nearly impossible to have a car in NYC, and in some ways it's a good thing. But, for people who need to park it's a nightmare. But not labor the point of parking in large cities my point is that we do so many things to make things orderly that we make them un-orderly. We have a nice orderly system, but it's got a million holes in it that it's hard to call it a system, the same could be said for taxes and medical insurance and everything else we do to make life orderly. The chaos is astounding!

My experiences traveling have made me so much more aware of the chaos we create by trying to make things simple, and fair. Would the world be a better place if we let the guy who owns the business decide who can park in the spot in front of the business? Maybe or maybe not, but it would be a lot easier to determine where you could park, just ask the guy inside...