A Continent Away

How We Measure Up: February to June 13th

8/5/2023

Stella & I are back in Ontario, Canada.
It's great to be home! However, we certainly miss France, friends and our many adventures.

We got to visit some pretty amazing places together: Denmark, England, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Norway (just a quick stopover), Scotland and Spain.

I wanted to post a final follow-up to assess our progress against some of our initial goals. One definite lesson learned is to be flexible and to set more realistic goals in the future.

Ambition + Realistic goals = A better approach

This past year was filled with countless discoveries.
Our travels taught us how we might do things differently in the future. These lessons learned are invaluable and they'll help us with future planning and travelling.

We are so grateful for this experience, and I am looking forward to continuing to post on this site.

As always, feel free to check out Stella's adventures in aerobatic flight on our Head in the Clouds blog. For those of you not familiar with or from the Niagara Region, it's a chance to learn more about flight, aerobatics and to tour a bit closer to home alongside Stella & Lizzy.

Are you ready to for an adventure?

Skewbing & Cubing Abroad

5/20/2023

It was just someone's birthday last Sunday on Mother's Day. Stella is officially eleven now, so I thought I'd post about something that she loves. Cubing. Stella consistently started to solve her very first Rubik's Cube this past December while sitting on a bus on our way to San Sebastián. Guess what? She's been solving ever since. Stella had her first Rubik's Cube competition in Bayonne this March. Her next one is at the end of June in Waterloo.

Check out the World Cube Association (WCA) website to see all the various competitions, competitors and their rankings. It's pretty impressive to see the list of all of the competitions taking place around the globe and how many competitors there are from various countries. It'll be interesting to see how speed cubing continues to expand & evolve and how many records can be broken.

Stella wanted to put her cubing skills toward teaching others how to cube. This post is all about her teaching the beginner's method for the 3x3 and then solving the cube using a more advanced method called CFOP. She'll then show you her Skewb and 2x2 solves. If you are new to cubing and none of this makes sense to you, don't worry. Half of the time I have no idea what she's talking about when it comes to cubing. Hopefully though it'll at least make more sense by the end of this post.

Go grab a cube and follow along as Stella shares her love of cubing with you. Pause the video, skip ahead, go back and follow along at your own pace. Who knows, maybe in the future you'll sign up for one of WCA's competitions.

Ready to solve?

Looking Back: Measuring our Progress

4/11/2023

How'd We Do?
Measuring Our Progress: November to February

I wanted to go back and look at some of our goals that we initially set out to accomplish. Here they are:

1. Improve our French, Spanish & Japanese
2. Spend more time outdoors
3. Learn to live with less
4. Become more trip savvy

How'd we do?

In some areas we were able to stick to our original goals.
For others, like the initial budget and time spent learning other languages, needed adjustment. That's fine.

We are learning as we go, revising, and testing out what works best for us.

You can check out how we are doing below

B3: Bilbao to Berlin to Billund

3/6/2023

Reading Tickets

Stella and I went on a trip to Bilbao, Paris, Berlin, Kolding and Billund in November & December 2022. This meant that we got to do some really cool stuff. We visited several Christmas markets and even travelled to Billund to do all-things LEGO. All bricks aside, LEGO House turned out to be one of our all-time favourite places to visit. I highly suggest that you go. However, we'll need to save that for a future post because right now we're going to focus on tickets.

Can you guess what kind of tickets we'll be talking about?

HINT: It's not tickets of the speeding kind, although we did travel on some super fast trains.

We're going to focus on reading bus, train & plane tickets since that's how we got around.

Are you ready to learn more?

Adventures in the Alps

2/5/2023

Do you like to ski?

Stella and I certainly do. We found an awesome place to ski in the Hautes-Alpes. For five fantastic days we spent our time skiing in Arvieux and it was awesome!

The weather was amazing and the trails were well maintained. Plus, the price was totally affordable and we had the option to pay a bit extra and ski at another three nearby locations. Collectively known as "La Queyras" the combined option to visit other slopes using shuttle buses is an outstanding offer.

However, we stayed true to Arvieux and spent our days getting to know the terrain here. We'll definitely plan a return and also visit Ceillac, Abriès and Molines-Saint-Véran when we do.

If you want a more leisurely look and fully functional links then check out the Stella Goes Skiing slideshow instead.

Stella Starts Surfing

12/10/2022

Have you ever tried to surf before?

I have, and it's not gone very well. However, one of our goals this year was to learn to surf.
And guess what?
We finally did!

This is a compilation of what it was like for Stella and I to learn how to surf. We had an excellent instructor and that made all the difference.

Surfing is a humbling sport.
You don't need much equipment, but you do need lots of perseverance and patience. In my opinion, you also need a mentor or guide if you want to cement the proper technique and actually get up on your board consistently.

Here's a glimpse into our experiences learning to surf with Salem at Onaka. Definitely check them out if you are in Hendaye and wanting to learn how to surf. As always, try to support local.

Packing & Purchases

11/28/2022

I'm now much better at packing. That's come with lots of travel, experience, making mistakes and learning from others.

Knowing what to pack isn't aways easy.

For such a long trip, our packing decisions were mostly influenced by:

1. Airline allowances on all flights
2. Extra baggage costs
3. How much we could realistically carry
4. The need to include books and equipment for homeschooling and learning other languages; as well as sports
5. The weather
6. What we could easily (and for not too much money) buy once we arrived
7. Size & weight. The smaller and lighter the item, the higher its priority

Here's a glimpse into what was in our bags.

Our initial plan was to just travel with carry-on. For ten (10) months away, that became unrealistic for us. We ended up with one checked suitcase, one inflatable paddle board for Stella, two backpacks and two two carry-on bags.

We've not had to buy much and there's still some stuff hat hasn't even been worn or used yet. We'd definitely pack even lighter next time around!

Tracking our Goals

11/26/2022

#Goals

I'm all about three things: lists, goals, and tracking our progress.

Our time away is tied to some pretty specific goals:

1. To improve our ability to speak other languages
2. To get outdoors more often
3. To live a simple lifestyle
4. To reduce what we buy, use, throw away and our overall environmental impact. This includes our carbon footprint.

No doubt, we'll mess up along the way. However, if we aren't tracking what we are doing it's tough to make any necessary adjustments.

Here's some insight into how we are measuring up thus far, where we've hit our targets, and where we need to improve.

We'll keep working on getting closer to our targets. For now, we are loving our time in Hendaye and the opportunity to devote more time to what's important to us. A huge part of that is definitely being outside, being more active, and living a super simple lifestyle.

A Continent Away: Our Why

9/28/2022

My goal is to give young travellers and their families a glimpse into our adventures. This will include ideas and insights that are infused with lots of learning. Think of the site as:

education + animated adventures + travel insights

The site is designed with young travellers and families in mind. This 1st post is all about our why, our itinerary and our goals. I am really striving for a simplified life. I'll be homeschooling Stella this year, so our adventures need to focus around academics and developing life skills. A big part of this includes navigation (getting around), planning, research, creativity, physical fitness and being outdoors.

Wanting some Stella's7Stories swag? Click here!

Here's to another awesome adventure!

Authors

Stella & I like to travel. Are you ready to join us? We'll explore new places and foods and improve our French, Japanese and Spanish. We're excited to share what we learn and help to make young travellers even more trip savvy. Are you ready for an adventure?

Stella & Sheri skiing in Arvieux

A Continent away