Fun Family Heading to Europe!

We can do the happy dance now because  - "EuroTrip 2017" is happening!   We will leave our friends and home in Portland, Oregon and spend 50 days touring/homeschooling  (May 11-June 28) via planes, trains, ferries, footfall and cars, in order to bring history, language and culture to life.  Üla Camargue will frolic within her namesake, the estuary where the Rhône river meets the Mediterranean sea.  Esmé Saira, whose middle name means "traveler," will leave her native country for the first time.  

We are actively looking for a few more families or friends, who would open their homes for us to spend a night or two.  Would you like to show off your town or city?  We would be happy to cook you a meal. Esmé makes the most amazing French toast.  Üla loves to draw and I paint quick watercolor sketches.

On our trip of 50 days, we plan to learn 50 idioms we don't use in America; sketch 50 architectural structures (Pisa tower, Roman aqueducts, il Duomo, YOUR Home);  discover 50 historical figures that impacted the world; and taste 50 different types of cheese and breads.

We do have places to stay in Brittany, Frankfurt, and Manchester. We would love to find a family that we could briefly stay with in Paris since we fly in and out of Charles De Gaulle. My daughters hope to swap English jokes and idioms for French ones.

The other places we are looking to camp or stay:  Venice, Florence, Geneva, Amsterdam, Avignon & the Camargue, Plum Village (East of Bordeaux), and anywhere in between.  Of course the occasional hotel will get booked.  But we want to splurge on eating our way through Europe, not sleeping.

For years, I envied the families who homeschooled while traveling.  And now it is my turn to give my daughters a deeper sense of things they have learned while homeschooling: Roman expansion, French cuisine, Volcanoes, Modern Olympics, the Renaissance, lighthouse lenses, Romance languages, modern and classical art, violin and piano, World Wars, and so much more.  

 
We are a fun crew of three: Esmé just turned 10, Üla will be 13 next month, and I will still be in my 40's.  We are looking forward to walking city streets, sketching  in museums, learning different languages, seeing what other people do for fun, visiting a factory, foraging for edibles like mushrooms, building fairy houses on nature hikes, eating our way through local traditions and best of all making NEW FRIENDs.  You can forward this link to anyone you think might like to host us (we are really good at sleeping in small places with out falling - imagine a kitten pile).  Feel free to email me (jessica@birthheart.com) or ask any questions in the comment section below.