Business mama travels: Preparing for the journey around the world!

The final countdown has started and our whole family is full of excitement! After today there is only three days left before we will press the pedal and start our big journey around the world. You can read my first blog post about our plans considering the journey from here. The kids are now really dedicated to making plans about what toys to pack, and they have plenty of questions such as: ”Who is coming to my birthday party?” and ”Is the ship to Sweden bigger than the Titanic?”.

We have made lots of preparations for the journey during the last few months. Many things are already behind us, but there is still some things left to do. Would you be interested in hearing what kind of arrangements we have gone through?

 

 

So how did we prepare for the journey?

The first things we sorted out were; what kind of vaccinations do we need and what kind of people do we need to hire for our companies. At a very early stage I made a rough packing list. What a coincidence, Santa Claus brought us many things that will be useful during our trip, such as: water bottles, light duvet covers, insect nets and trek towels, to mention a few. 🙂 Other things we also needed to purchase were a smaller SLR camera – and a bigger car! We will start our journey from Europe by car, and we wanted it to have the possibility to sleep in it, if necessary. So we updated our Skoda to a 10 years older MB Vito van. Let´s hope it is a good deal!

 

 

In the weekend we finally started packing and I made a detailed packing list before we started this huge operation. My friends have asked me many times how we know what to pack and what kind of things are we going to take with us. The good thing is that, because we are traveling first with the van, we can take more belongings with us and then reduce the amount of stuff later. Here are some of the most important things from our packing list:

– Money and credit cards
– Passports
– Tickets
– Insurance certifications
– Vaccination certifications
– Medication and first-aid
– Phones
– Camera
– Laptops and iPad
– Chargers
– Adapter
– Toiletry items
– Laundry detergent
– Flashlight
– Folding knife
– Plastic tableware
– Electric kettle, French press and thermos bottle
– A Cooler
– Trek table and chairs
– Water purifier
– Playing cards
– Sleeping bags and pillows
– Sheets and towels
– Clothing and shoes
– Rain clothes
– Insect nets
– Drinking bottles
– Sunglasses and sun lotion
– Swimming suits
– Maps and travel books
– Pens and notebooks
– Books for kids
– Calendar
– School books for Kosti
– Backpacks

Uh, did I forget something important? The snorkels, of course!

 

 

At the end of last year we also started to plan how our older kid Kosti can carry out his studies during the year. The best alternative we found was Kulkuri school which offers distance education for Finnish kids who live abroad. Another option we were excited about was Tabletkoulu (a digital e learning platform). But after chat with their customer service we found out that Tabletkoulu is not yet ready for the private customers. But anyway Kosti is now studying mainly via the internet and there is only a couple of books needed, which is great!

We found other traveling blogs very inspiring and got a lot of help for the arrangements from blogs such as: matkakuume.net (Finnish), vaihdavapaalle.fi (Finnish) , oneworldoneyear.com, takingontheworld.net, and sailforgood.org.

 

 

Our TO DO –list is still quite long ;). There are things left to do, such as: getting another key for the car, buying medicine, going to the hairdresser, rental agreements, company papers that need to be signed before we go, etc. If everything goes well, next Thursday (23rd of June) we will be on a ship heading to Sweden and we will celebrate Mid summers Day in Gränna. It seems unbelievable! Time has gone so fast!

 

Next time I write a blog post we are already on the road. I think I will tell you more about our route plans and first feelings from the journey, so stay tuned!

With love, Anna