Nomadic Family Thrives in Writing an Unscripted Adventure

She Who Wanders

Apr 4

A Convo with Andi from @4almondsabroad

Meet Andi. A deeply passionate, wife and mom of two from Colorado who has been traveling the world with her family for almost a year, she is a force to be reckoned with. Andi is a joyful adventurer who is actively making a positive difference in the world while raising kids with a broad worldview and heart for other people and ways of life. From trekking through the mountains of Nepal to exploring the streets of Vietnam, Andi gives her whole heart to every experience. She is a true example of being open and eager to learn from others and to explore new thoughts and ideas. A lover of the mountains, spending time outdoors, and exploring off-the-beaten path places around the world, she inspires thousands of others to think outside the box, live a vibrant life and make the most of every moment. I’m so honored to share her story and hope it inspires you as much as it has me.

Tell us a little about you and your family like where you’re from, where you live now, how old are your kids and anything interesting or unique you’d like people to know.

I’m originally from San Juan, Puerto Rico. I lost my mom suddenly when I was 18 years old (she was 50 when she had a cerebral hemorrhage and died overnight). This fundamentally shaped who I am and made me more conscious about seizing every moment and trying to live fiercely each day, because none of us is guaranteed tomorrow.

Randy and I met shortly after college, when we were consultants at Accenture. We had the chance to live and work abroad in Germany for a year, and we took advantage of the cheap rail passes to explore all over Europe on the weekends. As we wrapped up our time there, we realized we didn’t know what we wanted to do with our lives longer term. We didn’t feel deep ties to anywhere in the States and were fairly untethered - no kids, house, car.

So we bought backpacks and did a gap year, traveling on a shoestring budget through South America for six months and Southeast Asia for another six months. This was in 2001 - 2002. One of our more memorable experiences was volunteering for two months in the cloud forests of northern Ecuador, living and working with local families on an ecotourism cooperative. This was a deeply formative part of our young adult lives. We grew up through the arc of our gap year, learned more about ourselves and what we wanted from our lives, got engaged, applied to grad schools (Randy for an MBA and me to get my degree in journalism), and made plans to move to California upon our return.

We lived in southern California, then the Bay Area for a few years until our son, Finn, was born. At that point, we wanted to put down roots and moved to Colorado. Now, our family of four — Randy and me, along with kids Finn (14) and Aria (11) — live in Boulder Valley, Colorado. We love skiing (the kids are both on the competitive freestyle team in Winter Park, our local mountain), hiking, exploring, and being out in nature.

We’re currently in Nepal for three weeks, exploring this beautiful country and trekking for 12 days to Annapurna Base Camp. We have been traveling full time since June 2022 through 20 countries and Antarctica. We’ll return to Colorado in July, and by then, I think we’ll all be ready.

Other fun facts about me — I am a Black Belt in Muay Thai martial arts. I love baking and am obsessed with Paul Hollywood and the GBBS (Great British Baking Show). I was certified a couple of years ago as a CASA - a court appointed special advocate for children in challenging situations of domestic abuse or neglect. And I was former global director of diversity, equity, and inclusion at McKinsey & Co; I am deeply passionate about the idea of raising more empathetic, inclusive global citizens through travel and worldschooling.

Now that you’ve experienced months of travel and experiences in places all around the globe, what is the most impactful thing you’ve learned about life, the world and/or yourself that you’d love to pass on to someone else if you could?

I think that travel changes us. It makes us more resilient, flexible, better problem solvers, more attuned to the differences — and similarities — across people and cultures.

I am always struck by children playing around the world, whether in the slums in Delhi or the townships of Johannesburg, the islands in Greece or on rural roads in Argentina. Their smiles are so sincere and genuine, their laughter full. Even when they have very little, they are happy when free and outdoors, finding ways to make toys and games out of anything.

We get so caught up in our day to day lives, tied to our ubiquitous tech and schedules and work, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that there are many ways to be happy in this world. We simply need to make a choice to see that and to embrace happiness.

I hope that when we return home later this summer we carry with us some of the reminders that happiness isn’t rooted in things; it’s about experiences, friendships, family, being outdoors in nature, and appreciating the moments small and large that make us feel alive.

The Great Wanderlust is all about women stepping outside of the box and diving deeper in both travel and in life! The mission is to inspire moms + families to feel fully alive through adventure and exploration! What is your great wanderlust? What most makes you come to life?? Take us back to a moment when you felt that.

I am an extroverted introvert, meaning I love meeting new people and spending time with friends, but I do relish time on my own as well. I feel most alive when I’m outside in nature. My soul is at home in the mountains, when I’m hiking in an aspen grove or skiing on a bluebird day. I also deeply love the sound of the ocean, which brings me back to my childhood in Puerto Rico.

Wanderlust is a part of me. Exploring the world, forging new friendships in off-the-beaten-path places, falling deeply in love with a country, wandering down a dirt road at dusk or on a deserted beach at sunrise, letting all my senses come alive.

One moment when I felt that sense of wanderlust — and was struck by it deeply at the time — was when we arrived at our hostel in El Calafate, southern Argentina. We had just spent two weeks in Buenos Aires. As far as cities go, BA is a very livable, lovely city. But we’re fundamentally not city people, so we were ready to get back into the mountains. Our hostel was off a dusty country road with a lovely deck opening onto a meadow with a number of hammocks set up with views of the lake and mountains beyond. As I lay in the hammock by myself, breathing in the cool, fresh air of Patagonia and listening to the birds chirping nearby, I felt free and blissfully alive. Even though I was many miles from Colorado, I was — in a much deeper sense — home.

What a bold move you made in leaving the status quo and choosing to take your family on a trip to experience the world. What was your biggest hope for this experience? In what ways have you seen that hope come to fruition so far for yourself? What about for your family?

We conceived of the idea for our family trip around the world around my 40th birthday. Travel has always been something we have done as a family, but the idea of spending a year together burrowed in, so we began planning and saving toward it a full five years before we left.

A big part of our hope for this trip was to expose the kids to many different cultures and ways of life around the world. We decided early on that it would be a true backpacking trip, meaning we’d explore more places, getting a flavor of a lot of countries versus going too deeply into any one. That unfortunately placed us at the higher end of what we’d need to save but we had time to build up to it (unquestionably, it is cheaper to slow travel than to go to more places in shorter amounts of time).

We planned to world school our teen and tween and hoped that they would mature along the trip, become more flexible and self-reliant, more confident travelers, and ultimately more globally minded citizens.

At the end of the day, I want them to be aware of their incredible privilege and the advantages they have — which is hard to do when staying in one’s own bubble — the immensity of the world, and the role they can play in making it a better place.

I do think I’m seeing our hopes realized. I see the maturation in Finn and Aria. They are absolutely more confident travelers than they were early on, when strange noises or unfamiliar smells had them unnerved. They can now walk confidently and navigate on their own through the streets of Cairo or through the crazy traffic of Hanoi. They can say hello and thank you in multiple languages. They appreciate the small things a little more. They enjoy trying new foods and have adapted well to life on the road.

Do I think they’re the most mature teens ever now with a fabulously well rounded view on global affairs? For sure not!! They drive us crazy a lot of the time. Sometimes I stress over whether they’ll just fall back into old patterns of conspicuous consumption and the time-suck of 24x7 tech when back home. Or whether they absorbed all the lessons they were exposed to through our travels.

But I also recognize that this is only the start of a lifelong love of travel and continuous learning for them, which they will hopefully carry with them as they grow. It’s not an end - nor was it meant to be. Cheesy as it sounds, it’s just the beginning.

I know there are a lot of people who have adventurous visions or ideas for their life, but they’re afraid of all the unknowns and “what-ifs”, so they allow that fear to keep them stuck. What were some of your fears when you decided to take a gap year to travel the world? How did you work through/overcome those fears to bring your vision to life? Any tips for others who want to make a bold move but are stuck in fear or over- analyzing?

I am sure there are many people who think we’re crazy to pursue a gap year in mid-life. At what is ostensibly the peak of our careers. What if we don’t find jobs when we return? What if we can’t find jobs that pay as well? What if our kids fall behind in school? What if we aren’t good enough teachers?

And I get it. Ours is not the typical path, and there is plenty to stress about if one allows it.

For me, the one fear I had is that I/we might not be able to find a job that paid as well when we returned. The U.S. looked like it was heading for a recession when we left in 2022, and we weren’t in our 20s like we were on our first gap year — when I knew we’d find jobs without issue. In your mid-40s (I am 46 and Randy is 49), maybe it would be tougher.

So when we met with a financial consultant five years before taking the leap into full-time travel, I made sure to model out a scenario that had us making significantly less than we did before — as well as one that assumed it took a while (6 months to a year) for Randy and/or me to find a new job. This gave us some peace of mind that we’d have enough of a cushion to go and not be too stressed upon return.

I doubt we’ll have any hitches when we get back after this trip, but even if we did, we’d adjust. We know we can live on much less if we needed to. And the life experiences from our time on the road are so rich; without question, they’re worth any bumps in the road upon return.

So I’d say don’t give in to the what ifs. There will always be reasons not to go. For however long you’re able to make the leap — whether a year or just a few months or weeks — it will be worth the time away. And you’ll figure the rest out when you return.

Tell us more about the adventure of worldschooling your children as you’ve traveled? What has worldschooling looked like for your family, especially considering your kids are on the older side? What have been the biggest challenges and the greatest benefits you’ve seen so far?

Our kids are 14 and 11. They are in 8th and 6th grades, respectively, the bookends of middle school.

When we first started talking about what year would be ideal for us to go as a family, this was it. The year they’d be old enough to do fun activities and remember the experience and young enough to be OK with traveling with their parents and to keep high school intact.

Given that our kids are on the older side, though, I think the onus was even more on us to make sure our worldschooling was solid, to ensure they had the skills needed to continue with their classmates into 9th and 7th grades upon our return.

As former consultants, Randy and I took a business-minded approach to worldschooling. We mapped out subjects in spreadsheets and created Google classrooms. We divvied up who would be teaching what - he would be in charge of math, science, history, and geography. I would be overseeing writing, reading, and languages.

We talked at length to the kids’ teachers, who were very supportive of our plan, to understand what they would have been learning and either mirror or create parallel plans that were tailored to where we were traveling.

For math, for instance, we purchased materials through a site called teacherspayteachers.com that included YouTube video teachings, assignments, quizzes, and tests (as well as answer keys) that would directly mirror the math levels their classmates were covering.

For literature, by contrast, I worked to understand what texts they would have been reading and types of themes they would have discussed in class (e.g., themes of identity, race, coming of age, etc.) and assigned books that I found that were related to the countries in which we were traveling. These could be fiction or non-fiction, ideally by a local author or if not, set in the places we were visiting. In Greece, we read The Iliad while road-tripping across the Peloponnese. In Botswana, we read an amazing memoir called A Childhood of Baboons and Button-downs about a woman whose parents were primatologists and grew up most of her life in the wilds of Botswana. In India, we read a young adult novel called The Bridge Home about four homeless children in Chennai, which set the stage for some of the poverty we saw across the country.

At best, in my opinion, worldschooling is a way to create immersive experiences around travel. It’s about getting more from the experiences you have in person by giving additional context and the opportunity to explore more deeply. In Antarctica, as an example, we read Endurance, the account of Ernest Shackleton’s ill-fated expedition to the South Pole. We also assigned each kid field work - Aria to observe and identify different species of penguins and Finn to talk to scientists on board and keep a field journal to enable him to make predictions about climate change over the next 10 years in the region. I think this intentional scaffolding helped enrich the experiences we had in the region — not just for them but also for us as we had to research and figure out the worldschooling opportunities and learn along with them.

I am hopeful that these experiences will stay with them and make the in-class learning they do in the future that much more tangible. When they study the Vietnam war at some point in school, for instance, it won’t be about some nebulous place far on the other side of the world. It will be more real to them as they recall visiting Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi and learning about the war from another perspective. Or as they learn about the science of climate change, it will feel more critical to make changes STAT since they have seen some of the effects on receding glaciers and recognize its importance.

Lastly, I hope these travels catalyze in them a lifelong sense of wonder, a love of adventure, and a spirit of wanderlust. Having been to many places at a young age doesn’t mean they’ve “done it all.” On the contrary, it means they’ll be that much more eager to explore the world further throughout their lives.

Which countries do you have left to check off on your trip and what excites you most about these places?

We keep our itinerary very loose, but our tentative plan is to travel through Japan, Indonesia, Australia, and French Polynesia. We also would love to go to China, but with current Covid restrictions, that may not be an option. If that doesn’t happen, we might go to Taiwan and/or South Korea instead. Finn has been taking Mandarin classes in school so somewhere in Asia, we will want to find him Mandarin classes so he can (hopefully) continue with that class in school as well. This is the one subject we’re at a loss to help him on. :-)

I am probably most excited to explore Japan. My dad and stepmom will be visiting us there for two weeks, which everyone is looking forward to. The kids can’t wait to travel with their grandparents, and we’re all looking forward to learning more about Japanese culture together.

Is there a question you wish I would have asked or anything else you’d like to share with other mamas relating to travel or life?

One question we get asked often — which is very hard to answer — is what is your favorite country? So I’m glad you didn’t ask me that. :-) It’s like trying to choose your favorite child.

We prefer to talk about our favorite experiences so far. So… if you were to have asked me that — What are our top 10 favorite experiences we’ve had in our 9 months on the road so far? — here’s what I’d have said (in no specific order):

1 - Experiencing World Cup mania in Argentina and being there when they won

2 - Traveling via old US spy ship to the end of the earth, Antarctica

3 - Spending Christmas on a multi-day camping trip in Patagonia

4 - Taking Portuguese lessons as a family for two weeks on the northeast coast of Brazil

5 - Traveling by camel into the Sahara in Morocco and spending the night in a desert camp

6 - Making a pilgrimage to Varanasi, considered India’s holiest city

7 - Soaring over the Valley of the Kings in a hot air balloon in Luxor, Egypt

8 - Zooming around the sand dunes on ATVs in Namibia

9 - Road tripping across Greece

10 - Going on safari in Tanzania

There are so many more, it’s hard to even narrow it down to 10. But these are some of our favorite memories.

Who inspires you to dig deeper in travel and life?

Ooh, tough question. I’d say my kids and husband inspire me to dig deeper in travel and life. It’s easy at times to get complacent or just burrow into what’s easy and comfortable. But I love how we push ourselves to go out of our comfort zones together.

In terms of who you should feature next, that’s difficult… I’ve seen a lot of the interviews you’ve already done and many of the travel families and badass women travelers I follow are already covered! Have you featured @globetrottingfam? They are a good one if not… I like their approach to thoughtful worldschooling.