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Globe Trotting
Gaining a Deeper Sense of Family Through Travel
By Jenn Director Knudsen
"Through traveling, I have encountered many children, about my age, and whenever I took the time to get to know them ... I realized that they weren't all that different from me, on the inside," says Alex's sister, Katie, now a seventh-grader, poet and linguist studying for her bat mitzvah. "If we are all alike, how could we refuse to help another person?"
Extensive travel also opened the Dodson family's eyes to how other people around the world live. Inspired by her long-time friends, the Simons, Stephanie Dodson, 44, says she is so glad her family, too, planned for and embarked on a nearly four-month journey.
Dodson, her husband, David, 44, an investment banker, and their three daughters, 14, 12 and 9, last fall visited Nepal, Bhutan, Vietnam, Tanzania, Bangkok, South America and Antarctica.
In Bhutan, a tightly controlled country ruled by a king, the Dodsons observed people very happy with their lives, despite tight government control of them. They also were struck by the central role spirituality – as opposed to materialism – played.
Dodson, from Weston, Mass., says now that the family is Stateside, her kids aren't "donning sack cloths or getting up at 5 a.m. to pray or anything," but her daughters' perspectives certainly were changed. "I think they're profoundly effected for the rest of their lives," says Dodson.
The Dodsons spent one and a half years planning for their trip. The Sagers and Simons, too, carefully plan well in advance for all their lengthy treks. The parents study up on not only where to go and what to do once there, but how to finance the journey in the first place and keep their kids up-to-date in school while abroad.
