New ideas for middle-class parenting: children take turns to study in 30 countries, which is cheaper than Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou

In recent years, the wind of "global sojourn" has been blowing more and more fiercely.

It's no longer a novelty in China.

But there are always people who say:

It's not because they have money and no children.

How much does a world trip cost?

Is it necessary to have both sojourn and education?

One contacted three parents who lived with their babies,

None of them are rich families,

But in different ways,

Realize the vision of traveling the world with children and learning as a nomad.

And they all said,

Treat the world as a classroom,

In fact, it is not as far away as imagined.

Editor: Lu Yuhan

Editor-in-charge: Ni Chujiao

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Smile and her daughter in Turkey, Egypt, Peru

Smile was born in 81 years and has a 11-year-old daughter who lives in Turkey

In 2022, I read a book called "4 Hours a Week", which mentions a concept: "geographic arbitrage" (making money in a high-income country and living in a low-consumption country, so that you can enjoy a richer and higher quality of life at a low cost).

After reading this book, I felt like I was empowered. I've been running an online store in New Zealand for 12 years and I've always done it remotely online. Prices in New Zealand are particularly high, and if you move elsewhere, you can save more than one or two times the cost of living.

In September 2022, I rented out my house in New Zealand and started a global life with my 9-year-old daughter Xuanxuan, planning to travel to 30 countries on five continents in three years.

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The first stop of the sojourn is to drive in North America

For a year and a half now, we have traveled to the United States, Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Canada, the Philippines, China, Egypt, and now Turkey.

Many people have a misconception that they always think that they need a lot of money to travel around the world, but in fact, the cost is really not high.

When I was in my 20s, I only had 10,000 yuan with me, and I dared to set off to travel around China, and I traveled to 30 countries before I was 30 years old. Now that we have lived for more than a year, our average monthly expenditure is more than 20,000 yuan, and many families in big cities in China have to spend so much a month.

I also have friends around me, and my children go to private schools, and the tuition fee is more than 300,000 yuan a year. In addition to the usual training classes and going abroad during the holidays, we will spend at least 500,000 yuan a year on children's education, which is much higher than the cost of living around the world and learning while playing.

Before Xuanxuan studied in a primary school in New Zealand, New Zealand's happy education was too lenient for children's learning. In addition, the knowledge structure of primary school is relatively simple, and it can be fully satisfied through self-study and network resources, and there is no need to stay in school all the time.

In addition, New Zealand is a small island country in Oceania, surrounded by the sea, and has always been here with limited knowledge. At the age of 9-12, it is more important to broaden your horizons and explore your interests than to stay in school. Anyway, it's all about playing, and instead of playing in such a small place, it's better to let her go outside and learn on the way to see the world.

Therefore, to a certain extent, we are out of the "system" of the school, and choose to use the home school method to find the curriculum content suitable for children.

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Learn wind surfing and archery

In the process of sojourn, "geographical arbitrage" can also be used in children's education.

For example, Xuanxuan wants to learn Spanish, and when we were in Latin America, we went to a local language school to take Spanish classes, and one class was only 40 yuan. We can also communicate with the locals, and the vegetable market, restaurant, and supermarket can all be our classrooms.

For example, when we were playing in Hawaii, Xuanxuan tried a surf lesson and fell in love with surfing, so I took her to the beach in Colombia to learn it. Surf lessons cost 720 yuan in Hawaii and 80 yuan in Colombia.

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Attend the Day of the Dead in Mexico

My daughter and I both like horseback riding, and the horseback riding class in New Zealand is more than 500 yuan, once a week, the class lasts 45 minutes, and the road to and from the racecourse is 2 hours. I learned a little bit in class this week, and I forgot half of it in class next week. I couldn't ride a horse and jog after a year of study.

But in a small town in Mexico, we met a very good horse riding instructor. We lived near his horse farm, a 10-minute walk away, and stayed there for two months, purely learning to ride horses, going six times a week for an hour or two each time, so that we could easily ride our horses. And each hour of class is only 180 yuan.

Later, when I came to Egypt, an equestrian lesson was cheaper, 117 Egyptian pounds, equivalent to only 16 yuan, and the environment and instructor level of the horse farm were no worse than other places.

Any country where we have been in for a long time has something interesting to do. If there is a local sport, we will experience it, and the cost of time and money is much lower, and the learning effect is better.

At the same time, basic education is completed through online classes and learning apps.

The first category is language, English is her first language, I heard that it is no problem, she will read the news and English books every day, write on the topic, and exercise her comprehensive ability.

Chinese is a second language, and I communicate with her in Chinese every day, taking reading classes twice a week to continuously increase her vocabulary.

Spanish is a third language, and three times a week I have Spanish classes, so I can find a native Spanish teacher to chat with her, practice speaking and learn grammar.

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Left: Xuanxuan studying at home

Right: Monthly learning summary

The second category is general education, such as mathematics, science, history, and geography. Mathematics and science online classes, history and geography are project-based self-directed learning, and every time I go to a country, I will ask her to collect a lot of information, visit museums, visit historical sites, and combine independent learning with in-person visits, which is particularly impressive.

When I returned to China, Xuanxuan said that she wanted children to play with her, and I also found an innovative school in Dali that accepted short-term study tours. She has made great progress in Chinese here, and has made good friends, and she doesn't want to leave every day after school.

I play as much as I play, I study hard when I learn, and I don't really want to mix them up. We are now in Turkey, and for the first 10 days we just went around playing, which was part of the "brigade".

But when we returned to Istanbul and stayed, we entered a state of daily life. I will return to my work, and Xuanxuan will also enter her study mode, studying for five or six hours a day, and the rest of the time we will go out to eat, hang out, and play.

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Paragliding in Turkey

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Learn to surf in Peru

This kind of education is also a lot easier for me. In New Zealand, I used to pick up my daughter to and from school every day, spending at least two hours during peak hours. Now that time is saved, I can do what I love, and it's like I've "earned" two extra hours a day.

Sometimes we ate out and I was doing work here, and she was on the other side chatting with a table in her 20s next door and playing cards together. In the course of her sojourn, she came into contact with all kinds of people and saw different ways of life.

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Smile和女儿正在土耳其旅居

Our post-80s generation, desperately studying and squeezing into a good school, in order to find a job and choose a major, everything is following the crowd, getting a college diploma, looking for a job, and I am still at a loss about the direction of my life, I don't want my daughter to take such a detour again.

Therefore, I hope to guide my daughter to find her passion, what kind of life she wants to live in the future, and then work backwards to what kind of abilities she needs to have, and then study with a purpose.

For example, she now likes to dive, she loves surfing, and she knows several languages, and she says that she can be an instructor and dive and surf all over the world. Turn love into skills, and skills into means of livelihood, so that you can enjoy life better.

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Smile records her sojourn life on her self-media account

After I started living in the world, I shared our lives on Channels, and naturally established a community of "Global Residence" to share our sojourn experience. Before my daughter and I came to Turkey, there were a few friends with their children who flew over from China to play with us, which was equivalent to a small "study camp".

I played and played, I learned and learned, and by the way, I also made money.

Therefore, this kind of life does not have to be financial freedom to achieve, the key is to change the thinking and not limit life. Cultivating children to become global citizens in a more cost-effective way is a good choice for the middle class.

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Chestnut and daughter Muen in Armenia

Chestnut was born in 88 years and has a 6-year-old daughter who lives in Armenia

My daughter, Muen, is over six years old and has been living with me all over the world almost since she was born.

I started as a backpacker in 2011 and became a single mom at the age of 30. I also traveled a lot when I was pregnant, and I only returned to my hometown when I was about to give birth, and I took my daughter on the road again after confinement. First, I traveled a short distance in China, and after I got her a passport, I went overseas and traveled to seven or eight countries.

After the epidemic, I also hoped that my daughter would stay in China for a while and consolidate her Chinese, so we returned to China, bought an RV, and walked around China.

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Chestnut's daughter, Muen

It wasn't until Mu En was almost 4 years old that she told me that she didn't want this kind of life, she was in the wilderness every day, living in a camp, and she wanted to have her own friends. I think it's probably time to think about sending her to kindergarten.

I didn't make this choice because of universal values that say children must go to school when they reach a certain age. If she hadn't said "I don't want to ride in an RV anymore" but "where I want to hike", I would have satisfied her, and I did it.

At the same time, I will find a balance because my life does not revolve around her. Although I have given up this constantly moving lifestyle for the time being, I don't want to give up my sojourn status.

In the end, we plan to find a suitable country to meet her current needs first, experience and grow in the process, and then see how to arrange the next step.

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Chestnut took her daughter on an outdoor hike

If many parents want to send their children out to study, they will first consider some developed countries. As far as I'm concerned, no matter where they are, many people still live in the same set, and there is not much difference in paths, except for different material enjoyment.

But material things are not my necessities, I value life experience more.

The reasons for choosing Armenia are simple, first, the ease of applying for visas and residence permits, and second, the low cost of education. With a basic education in Armenia, we can have a lot of time to do other things, to leave blank spaces, to dig.

When I first arrived, I first enrolled her in a local kindergarten. Armenia has two mother tongues, Ameya and Russian, which are a must-have for everyone and must learn in kindergarten. In about half a year, she learned the native language, at least she could understand it, and she could communicate basically.

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Kindergarten in Armenia

In September last year, I enrolled her in an English-only international school to improve her English.

It's a very natural process, and it's not deliberately arranged. Since you want to play with your friends, you need to learn their language. Then learning is not an end, but a means, in order to make you play better.

I also have families living in the country, and my children may have been in Armenia for several years and are still afraid to communicate in the local language. There are also children who have lower and lower self-esteem and are bullied in kindergarten. But my daughter eats very well in kindergarten and has formed her own little gang.

Children's abilities are beyond our imagination, for them, learning is the easiest thing, but the motivation to learn is very important.

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Muen is on the football team

At the same time, I began to arrange various hobby classes for her, the first half day was kindergarten, and the remaining half day let her get in touch with art and sports, such as football, art, gymnastics, painting, acrobatics, Latin dance, ballet......

Because it's so cheap here, each project is only a few hundred dollars a month, at least 8 classes a month. For example, rhythmic gymnastics, the teacher is a very famous world champion in Russia, and the class is more than 8 hours a week, only more than 500 yuan per month.

Some people will ask me, your child is tired of learning so much, she is tired. I just thought that it had something to do with being tired, we all treated it as fun, to entertain ourselves and make ourselves happy. She doesn't play with that, she wants to play something else.

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Practice figure skating

This age is the time for children to see the world. We think it's a hobby, or a skill, but in her eyes it's a game. Basically, we persisted in every project for three or four months, some for half a year, and some for a year.

In the process, she will find some aspects of her that are relatively expressive and easy to achieve. For example, she will be more active in moving things than in quiet things, and she will be obviously more interested in sports.

Especially in figure skating, her coach praised her as the most talented child she had ever taught, and many movements did not need to be demonstrated by the coach himself a second time, and she learned it herself.

So now we're focusing on figure skating. Since the second half of last year, there has been only one day off every week, and classes have been held on the other six days.

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Muen is on the figure skating team

She will be competing in her first open competition in May, so her training will be longer. I have to spray her with Yunnan Baiyao every day, and there is always a large bruise on her knees and legs, which are all broken out during the practice.

In this process, she has never complained once, never cried, and will not even be hypocritical. Even every day when she comes home on the sofa, she pulls up her pants and rubs her legs while talking to you about other things lightly, she doesn't care at all.

Since she is good at it, she likes it, and she is competitive, I plan to focus on skating in the future. I've also been to Turkey, Serbia and Kazakhstan, which has been a world champion. The plan for now is to stay in Armenia and see how far we can go in this matter.

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Muen, chestnut and figure skater Trusova

My parents divorced when I was a child, and I was a left-behind child, and I have changed many schools, and I have always been in a very disconnected state, but I have adapted well. Suddenly, I was transferred to a different school and got to know different classmates again, which allowed my emotional intelligence to be trained.

Since I was 23 years old, I've been traveling all over the world, not in groups or with a partner, just by myself. In this process, I also really saw the various states of life.

Most people are probably just 9 to 5, it's just a "state". But I have met many people who have traveled all their lives, and along the way they will also encounter a series of problems such as how to solve economic problems, how to live in a foreign country, and so on. Everyone is in the "hundred states", from 0~1 to create their own way of life, which also opened up my own cognition.

Now I am in Armenia, I don't have a high degree and don't know the local language, but I can still find a job in a large foreign company to support my daughter and me.

Following the heart, rather than following the rules of society, is the most correct thing for me.

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Tony and his son Tangyuan in Bali

Tony was born in 90 with a 5-year-old son and lives in Canada

I'm a dad who lives around the world with a baby. In July 2023, when my son Tangyuan is 3 years old and 7 months old, I plan to temporarily abandon the traditional education model and take him to see the world.

I also set up a "three-year global travel plan" for my children. In 2023 we spent three months in Japan, two months in Bali, and one month in Thailand. In 2024, I plan to spend 18 months in Canada, and after learning English well, I will go to South America to learn Spanish in September 2025, and return to Dalian in September 2026 to start elementary school.

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During a trip to Japan

My son's name is Tang Yuan, and after he was born in Canada, we took him back to China. My daughter-in-law and I are busy working in Beijing, and our children are taken care of by our elders in Dalian. Until the child was three years old, I felt that the child still needed to live with his parents, so I took him to my side.

In Beijing, we first put him in kindergarten for three months. But to be honest, I feel that there is no light in Tangyuan's eyes. In my opinion, the growth of a child should be as much as possible to get in touch with nature and release his nature, rather than instilling book knowledge at a high intensity at the age when he loves to play.

At this time, I came up with the idea of taking my children to live around the world. I've worked in three different countries myself and have travelled extensively to many countries. In my opinion, the journey itself is an encyclopedia, an object of study that children can learn from all countries.

At that time, I also received an offer of 500,000 yuan in annual salary, but I resolutely decided to give up this opportunity. Because accepting this offer is equivalent to losing the opportunity to grow up with your child. So I quit my job in June 2023 and set out on our journey in July.

We chose Japan as our first stop for our children. Because the Japanese culture is relatively similar to ours, the eating habits are similar to ours, the text can be understood, and it is relatively clean and safe, so that children can have a buffer.

In fact, I also took my children to live for the purpose of going out to play on my own. But it's really tiring to take him with me every day, I can't play well myself, and he doesn't feel well. Then I thought about finding him a school so he could go to school during the day and I could go out and play.

So for the second stop, I chose Bali, an island in Southeast Asia, and sent my children to Empathy School, a bamboo school.

The first time I saw this school, I decided that it was my dream school. The school is located in a large rice field, integrated with nature, full of green, the classrooms are also made of bamboo, children are happy to run around the school barefoot every day, and often climb trees to pick fruits, full of light, go to school at 9 o'clock in the morning and end school at 3.30.

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Tangyuan at Bali Bamboo School

Because Tang Yuan didn't know much English at that time, but he liked insects very much, there was a teacher who took special care of him, and accompanied him every day to catch grasshoppers, geckos, crabs, and teach him the words of insects, so he knew a lot about the words of insects.

When Tangyuan went to school, I could play outside. I rented a motorbike in the local area and went to the spa, diving, hiking, surfing, and other outdoor sports. On the weekends, I take the dumplings out with me to see dolphins, snorkel, dive and so on, and explore the wonders of Bali together.

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Bromo火山

I don't assign study tasks to Tangyuan, I always learn on the road. When he sees something that interests him, he asks me, and I tell him what this English is.

After leaving Bali, we also went to Thailand, where we also wanted to have Tangyuan studying. However, after visiting several schools, I felt that Thailand is too commercial, and the proportion of Chinese children in the schools is too high, and it is difficult for the children to feel the real local culture, so I only stayed in Thailand for 20 days.

In February this year, I also brought Tangyuan to Vancouver, Canada, which we are more familiar with, as planned, and officially started our trip to Canada.

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Comparison of Bali Bamboo School and Canadian Kindergarten

Canada and Bali are completely different styles. When they were in the bamboo school, they mostly stayed outside, and they often got their hands everywhere and painted their faces in various colors. Canada might be a little more delicate, and the teacher takes them to make cookies, pick up branches, and take them to the fire station to see the fire truck.

The form is completely different, but the essence is to give full play to children's own creative ability and broaden their horizons.

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It's cherry blossom season in Vancouver

Tangyuan is also just 2 weeks of kindergarten, and I like it very much, and every day after school, I am noisy about whether I can play more and then go home.

We expect to stay here for 18 months, and when we learn English, we will continue our studies in South America and learn Spanish at the same time.

I've always worked in international supply chains, so I think language is particularly important. I hope that by the time I go to elementary school, I can learn English and Spanish, plus Chinese, and I can communicate with nearly 79% of the world's people.

Moreover, the culture of South America is complementary to our culture, our character is also more introverted, and South America happens to be more passionate and willing to express itself, which also helps to shape the character of Tangyuan.

When he is old enough to start primary school, I will take him back to China. Because the quality education in primary school in China is still quite good, he can study until the fifth or sixth grade in China, and then study abroad, so that he can continue to eat his old books and eat until high school.

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Because of Tangyuan's mother's work problems, Tony was on the road alone most of the time

To be honest, I think the essence of "elite education" is that it is born and can be worked on the day after tomorrow, but it is also difficult to change the essence. So I care more about whether the rice balls are healthy, happy, and have the right values in life.

After living in sojourn for almost a year, the changes in tangyuan are really great. When I was in kindergarten in China, I felt that he was very restrained and introverted. Although he only spent 6 weeks at Bamboo School, he became much more lively and cheerful. The 100 students in the class come from more than 40 countries, and he doesn't speak English very well, so he has made several friends.

When he first arrived in Bali, he was prone to illness, and his body began to itch when he fell asleep at night, and he went to the hospital several times. But I've always thought it's good to expose my kids to more viruses, and I'm really good now.

If it used to be a flower in a greenhouse, now it is like a free-range puppy, healthy and free.

The most important thing is that he has seen the world, so that he will have the ability to distinguish right from wrong. For example, when we were children, the apples we saw in books were all red and crisp, and only when we actually went to the market did we know that apples were also green, yellow, and sour.

I will never regret my decision to bring him out. Only when you come out can you truly understand the meaning of "reading thousands of books and traveling thousands of miles".