Travel Resources - Home Educators Association of Virginia

When I was in grade school, a friend and her familytraveled from Vermont to Indiana during theschool year. She was sent on her way with theblessing of our teacher, and told to learn a lot while traveling.If travel used to be an educational experience, why isn’tit now?Our family has driven up and down the East Coast manytimes over the years. Sometimes we have traveled to an adjoiningstate; other times we have gone anywhere from SouthCarolina to New England. We have friends and family fromcoast to coast, and numerous military friends who have passedthrough our home in southeastern Virginia. Other than familyvacations, it’s usually Mom and the three kids traveling, whileDad stays home to work and pet-sit.When we travel, we take along a unit study: if we go toNags Head, North Carolina, we take the “Ocean” box; if wego to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, we take the “Amish” folder;if we go to Vermont we take geography material or familyresearch projects. No matter the destination, the kids are inpossession of a highlighted map tracing our planned route.Sanity depends upon listening to taped children’s literature,playing games such as guessing mileage every hour, takingplenty of snacks, and making a stretch stop every threehours. To remember our trip, we might take pictures of “Welcometo…” state signs, collect brochures (and often rocks),and then scrapbook our adventures after the trip.Real-LifeGeographyLessonsDarlene LevyInternational StudentsMy children occasionally study geography from books.More often, however, due to our love of international students,they get to know people from other countries. Overthe past 10 years, we have hosted internationals from Korea,Africa, Ecuador, Japan, India, China, Philippines, France, Latvia,and Lithuania. Wall hangings, fans, dolls, trinkets, flags,and other gifts from each of these guests, aged 13 to 45, arescattered around our home.Our scrapbooks are overflowing with photos of faces unlikeour own, friends from far-away places we have met throughthis hospitality ministry. We maintain contact with most ofthem through Christmas cards or e-mail, as they always seemto remember our family’s love for them.We work with a local ministry to international universitystudents, providing monthly family visits to make the students’stay in the USA memorable. Some students we greet atthe airport as they take their first step on American soil; otherswe may visit monthly for six months to five years as they doundergraduate study.We invite them to our home, take them to “cultural”events like garage sales, leave baked goods at their dorm roomdoor, help them shop, take them for an ice-cream cone, andtry to celebrate birthdays with them. As I write this, an Indianstudent we hosted for four years is in town to show her youngersister the university, and to “set her up” with our family, asshe had been, during her college years.World MissionsCombining international ministry and world missions isthe perfect fit for our family. Our church has sent missionaryfamilies to Africa, Switzerland, Papua New Guinea, Poland,China, Japan, Hungary, Greece, Russia, and other countries.One couple serves on a mercy ship, others with military ministriesin the U.S. and abroad. Many are open to our familyvisiting or serving with them short-term.We travel to Pennsylvania every fall to work with JoshMcDowell’s Operation Carelift ministry to Russian children.(www.josh.org) It is the most family-friendly mission trip weknow of. Not only is it only five hours away from home, butit also offers free housing with local Christian families. It runsfor two weeks of 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. days (any hours and days wewish to work). The clincher is: they LOVE kids. All childrenare found jobs, no matter their size or age, as they are viewedas the future missionaries to Russia. We have many friendswe met at the warehouse ministry years ago who we only seethere each fall. It’s like a reunion every time!Our ultimate geography lesson came in 1998 when our11-year-old daughter and I spent two weeks in Moscow withOperation Carelift, distributing the goods we’d packed backin Pennsylvania in the fall of 1997! Besides being able to ministerand preach, we viewed the breath-taking arts and architecture,became familiar with the history and economy, metlovely people throughout the area, and sampled the cuisine.(continued on page 28)12 l The Virginia Home Educator