131: Embracing Freedom: How Unschooling and Worldschooling Has Changed Us | The Conrads in dialogue with Heidi & Andrew Schrum

Autogenerated Transcript

Jesper Conrad: 0:10

So today we are yet again together with Andrew and Heidi Schrum, and the reason is that they had a lot more questions that we would like to ask and also that we enjoyed hanging out with them.

Cecilie Conrad: 0:22

We would like to answer them.

Jesper Conrad: 0:24

We would like to answer them.

Cecilie Conrad: 0:25

Yes, and you would like to ask them.

Jesper Conrad: 0:29

So first of all, welcome. It's super nice to see you again. I hope you have had a wonderful time since last.

Heidi Schrum: 0:42

Yeah, good to see you again. I hope you have had a wonderful time since last. Yeah, good to see you too. Yeah, thank you for having us again. Fun, always fun. Yeah, one thing we're talking about was I really love to hear people's stories and we're curious about how your unschooling journey has kind of unraveled since you started. I mean, we've probably heard it a few times in other podcasts, but just to kind of get like a general kind of like how it all unfolded for you.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:07

And this is a new version of the question, because it's not why did you start home? No, it's how it unraveled, it's like how did it unravel after you started unschooling? So we're not sharing why we started unschooling.

Jesper Conrad: 1:19

No.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:20

It's. How did that play out? It's still playing.

Jesper Conrad: 1:25

It's still playing. It's a good question, thank you. So I think that when I look back at what has happened since we started unschooling, then I believe that the biggest change is in me more than in the children. It is like being on a holiday in the summer. For the kids, if they have been in school normally, if they have been at home, as our kids had, then it's actually just not starting school, it's just life.

Jesper Conrad: 2:03

But my perspective has changed and the fun part is that I think I feel more in sync with myself than before, because my personal story is that I was not a bad student in any way. I was personally not very interested in what happened in school. I had a lot of ideas, projects I wanted to do. So I have almost all my you can say young life not as a child, but from I was 14, 15, been creating different kinds of projects and learning through making and creating these projects. And in the start, when I said yes to okay, we can homeschool this weird thing and all that, then for some reason even though I myself have learned through creating projects or have just created projects and picked stuff up under the way then I thought that my children should learn inside what looked like school. Somehow that part has now totally been removed from my worldview. Now I am fascinated by seeing my kids pick up an interest or finding a fascination with some subject, and then I trust that they do it because it interests them.

Jesper Conrad: 3:41

I am often overwhelmed and surprised by the amount of their knowledge, what they have learned and I don't know often where they have picked it up from Some of it is definitely from YouTube videos or podcasts, et cetera, where they then ponder around it or hear more and pick more up along the way. So for me, what has unraveled is my own. I've become to say it very shortly I've become better at relaxing, trusting that my kids will figure out what is fun for them, and I can see that when they have an interest in something, they just do it and enjoy it. And then, if I put on the old, do they learn anything? Glasses that you sometimes have or people people sometimes have, and I can myself sometimes feel the need to explain oh, they actually know stuff and this. When I put on those, then I can also see that, yes, they pick out, also pick up a lot of stuff along the way of knowledge. But the wide thing is, it is in no way different than how I learn or how almost any other adult I've met in my life learned.

Jesper Conrad: 4:59

I have had the joy of being at an office for more than 20 years before we started full-time traveling. I got fresh out of university. Students who came and were there and needed to go into a job, who came with a long university degree, but they hadn't learned how to work. What they ended up becoming good at were stuff that they learned at the job. They had some knowledge they could drag on, but it was not knowledge that was directly one-to-one usable in the job. So if you, I think the biggest thing that I believe my children learns through this is if I want to know something, I can figure it out. I can. I know how to get knowledge when I want to. Yeah, so that was a long back and forth answer to the question, and I want to hear Cecilia's.

Cecilie Conrad: 5:59

I think unravel is a very good word in the question, I think, unraveling the whole fabric of ideas that we have spun around the idea of educating our children. It's a process. It takes time. Since we are schooled I suppose you are schooled I'm schooled 10 years more than my husband. I was schooled for 23 years in a row School, high school, university. It was a long journey and it's probably still ongoing to uninstall that whole mindset. I don't think probably not really any hacks to it or fast track lanes. Really it takes time and trust. I think what really, now that we're somehow at the other end of it? If you think about mandatory schooling, the compulsory schooling, the involuntary schooling of children under the age of, let's say, just 15, just to say something, that kind of schooling is what I'm personally very much against. And we're at the tail end of that. We have one who is 13 and a half, so he's almost over that phase of life, and the others are older. I think the most interesting thing that I can observe from this other end of that story is how, letting go completely of that agenda, letting go completely of academics, letting go completely of academics, letting go completely of thinking in these concepts, it's been a long journey. For me it's been really easy for the children to just be who they are. And now that they are here they are 13, 17, almost 19. Now they're walking into a phase of structure. Now they say even the 17, almost 17-year-old girl that we have who has never shown any interest whatsoever in math, just like our other daughter, the one who's 26, it's just not her thing, it's not a girl thing in our family. It's very gendered. We never pushed. But now she says kind of think I'll go through that math book just to figure out what it is. And that's the IGCSE. So that's an A-level math course that her brother is taking, who's very passionate about math. She's like I could do that. I'll do that, I'll take that exam next year. And she's like I could do that, I'll do that, I'll take that exam next year. And she's 17 and she's never. Well, she said it last year. So she was 15 the first time she said it and she's not jumping at it. I'm pretty sure she will take that exam.

Cecilie Conrad: 8:46

And it's not to say that all unschooled children will be very academic at the other end, or it's like waking up or anything like that. It's just interesting how their ideas about their own education actually emerge from knowing that it's nice to know things and knowing that it's fun to study. And the funny thing is really and that can be very hard to understand and I explain this often the funny thing is for our children living this free life, having the time and the resources and the mind space to study the way that you would, that some people would hope that their kids would sit down and study. That's a privilege for them. If they have that, they jump at it.

Cecilie Conrad: 9:44

If we stop and there's a desk and there's a pile of books and a pile of yarn and a computer and some art supplies and a kitchen to play around in to learn some new skills there, they are jumping at it. They are looking at new cuisines to explore. They are jumping at a new language or the same language to keep studying. They want to learn new techniques with I don't know a needle. They want to learn to code in the computer. They're exploring new games. They're really going into focus mode and they love doing it. They really do.

Cecilie Conrad: 10:21

It's the other way around. We don't push them at all to do academics for them. It's like so kids who are in school and who are pushed all the time. When they come home and and someone says, hey, how about we read some Shakespeare? They're going oh, go away with that ugly book and leave me alone. Yeah, and I understand it, because someone's pushing them all the time to do things that it's kind of brainy.

Cecilie Conrad: 10:49

But our kids, who have the challenge that we're traveling all the time and there's always someone to meet and somewhere to go and something to see and somewhere to adapt to, and we have to go look for gluten-free in this new country and we need to look up the word and we don't know what we're doing.

Cecilie Conrad: 11:04

They just love it when there is space for studying, and that has been true for a very long time now, also when they were way younger. Now that they are older, what I see is more structure, I see more focus and I see more goal setting and more clear. I want to go this way. I want to read a poem every day, or I want to work with my math skills every day. Or our 19 year old son he picks up really complicated philosophical works and he sits down with a notebook and he's just pushing through until he's done with it and and he's not been in high school and he's not. He has no formal education, but he really enjoys doing it. And then he lets it out on me when I'm unfocused and I learned something really interesting.

Cecilie Conrad: 11:58

I'm like, and he's like no, it cannot work, okay, but anyway.

Jesper Conrad: 12:03

Yeah, that's just the reality of it I actually think that the more I learn, the longer time I've been in this process, the more I am in doubt with the whole schooling of the young child. I think it is the wrong focus If we instead focused on helping our children develop as natural, normal human beings, gave them time to mature, had time to take all those talks with them about life, social life, he said. She said what went on there? Why did I react like this? How, why did I feel like this? And if we gave ourselves the time to care for them and be there for them and Basic thing, can I sorry?

Cecilie Conrad: 12:52

Basic thing like letting them sleep enough.

Jesper Conrad: 12:55

Yeah, yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 12:57

If I revel back to before, when we still had kids in institutionalized life, even the fact that I had to wake them up, Exactly, that's crap.

Jesper Conrad: 13:09

Because you guys started.

Heidi Schrum: 13:12

Sorry.

Andrew Schrum: 13:12

Because your kids started in school, right? No, no, we had our oldest.

Jesper Conrad: 13:17

We had them in institutions in my kindergarten one of them, so we had them before and after I had cancer.

Cecilie Conrad: 13:24

I had cancer when our oldest was 11. The second was she 11? Yeah, second must have been something like four or five. And the third one was she had her two years birthday. I was bald, yeah, yeah, and well, we had one more after and before that. We knew about Home Ed, and we had them in a Waldorf school. The oldest one was the Democratic school.

Cecilie Conrad: 13:52

Yeah, waldorf Kindergarten, and I kind of I kind of wanted to be a stay-at-home mom and jasper thought I that would not be a fulfilling life for me and we couldn't really agree and all these things, I don't know I mean.

Cecilie Conrad: 14:03

So they had this part-time and then I had cancer and then things changed. So two middle children have never been to school. School the oldest one of them have been like dipping a toe for a week kind of situation. The third child have never been to school ever. Funny enough, yesterday we were celebrating her boyfriend's birthday and there were something like seven or eight teenagers in the same room, all home educated, unschooled, actually all of them, and they were talking about this being unschooled. They make all these jokes Can you read? You know, I've never been to school. It's really funny, Really funny. Amazing young people. And then we realized that she was actually the only one in the room who had never set her foot in a school. All of them had somehow had some sort of toe-dipping situation. Some of them had even been to school for several years. So that's the story. The fourth child had never been in any kind of institution.

Jesper Conrad: 15:44

When I look at the age our children have and see how a loss for taking in knowledge, how it emerged, then I think back to something Sugata Mitra said on one of our podcast episodes. He said that learning is an emergent phenomenon. It will come, it is in us, it will naturally occur and it does so when we are together in groups, and even more in groups than when we are individual. But when I look at all the years we try to get kids to learn something, I'm very afraid that what we learn, or what we teach them, is to be annoyed with learning, that it's not a joy for them, that it's not a happy thing for them.

Jesper Conrad: 16:35

Because I can see how in my kids who have had time to be young, they have learned to be children, you can say, and they have had this slow pace of being able to mature into wonderful human beings. And then comes the teenage years and if you don't have the time to encompass and care for them, then it can go really wrong between parents and children and reality is they need a lot of love and care in that period and school on top of that. That is, in my mind, just crazy. They will find the loss to get knowledge. Nobody likes to be bored In the first, many, many years. They should be allowed to get knowledge. Nobody likes to be bored In the first, many, many years. They should be allowed to be children and not be small adults.

Cecilie Conrad: 17:21

But can I rant on the whole concept of the curriculum? I mean the whole idea that we, the adults, know what the kids need to learn and we can come up with this list of things that they need to learn and we know better. So we steal about six to eight hours of their day every day for about 10 years of their life to make sure they learn these things that we have decided they need to learn, and lots of them. We teach them in ways that make no sense to them, at points in time when they have no interest in it. We tell them that, even though you define this really boring, you have to learn it, and even though there's something else you're really passionate about and your mind is spinning about it, you have to ignore that because we know better. That's just uninstalling the agency. The child has the feeling of being in this world with personality and using your emotions and your motivation as a compass, as a guiding system to find your way through your days. It's not just about what we learn. It's also very much about how we hold our being, how we feel, how we can carry ourselves through this life, and that's what childhood is about about becoming something, someone who can carry themselves. That's at that point you don't need your parents as a carrying system any longer. You need them more as a lighthouse or a backdrop for your life, a guiding reference point, and and that's what we're doing as parents, carrying them to that point. And if we're carrying them to that point and leaving them insecure and and confused, with no experience in making any good decisions for themselves, no experience knowing what they like and dislike, no experience in making their own mistakes Because we made 100,000 mistakes on their behalf and only the narrowest window of exploring who they are and what they want and what they feel like, and that window, by the way, very often you have to hide it because your parents will disagree with what you're doing. You should rather do some more of that Shakespeare thing or whatever it is. It's really ruining it and I think that's the reason I'm so hardcore against this compulsory schooling of the young ones, because we're ruining their self-esteem, we're ruining their presence in life, we're ruining their agency and just making things harder for them. So if we could stop and think for a while, do I really know what they need? And if I really strongly think I do like?

Cecilie Conrad: 20:09

I personally believe that my children should learn a lot of languages. I usually tell them you should be able to speak five languages and I think I know it sounds very ambitious, but actually I don't think it is. I would never shovel it down their throats. I would never shame them out of not studying languages. I would rather say I know this is a very important key. It's a very important key. It's a very important key in life, especially if you're a nomadic, which we are. Learn languages, learn more than two. Preferably learn at least five. Then they will know to jump at it. If they have the option which is different from me forcing them to do it four hours a day there are other.

Cecilie Conrad: 20:53

There's one more thing that we push them or I put kind of push. I state very clearly they need to learn, but now I forgot. Oh yeah, it's literature. I have a really hard time but I haven't. I don't have the need, but I would actually struggle, I will agree.

Cecilie Conrad: 21:10

I will admit that, even being a radical unschooler, I would struggle if my kids didn't read books, because it's just such a big part of what life is to me. It's such a strong and huge part of art and we need art to be human. So if they couldn't venture into novels and have an experience like that and come out bigger and stronger, if they had no experience and no inclination and no way of doing that no need, no motivation I would struggle. I will admit it. It would be really really hard for me to unschool that one. Fortunately I don't have to, but of course there are things. It's just that it's navigated in an organic way. My kids read books because I read books, because we read books, because we talk about books, because one of them is an author, because it's a big deal in our family, and that's not the same as me telling them what to read, when to read it and what to think about it. Yeah, okay, I'm ranting, ranting over Cecilia out what to think about it.

Andrew Schrum: 22:16

Yeah, okay, I'm renting renting over cecilia out and how does travel kind of affect all of that? Unschooling, so like being nomadic, obviously has a big implication to your day-to-day. But how does unschooling and being nomadic kind of go hand in hand? And how have you seen your kids grow, maybe exponentially or not, because you're traveling around and you're seeing different cultures and all of that?

Jesper Conrad: 22:41

I have an answer where we'll look inwards first, which is what can I see?

Jesper Conrad: 22:49

it has done for me to travel, and I don't know if it's a word, but unstuckness, otherwise it should be a word unstuck, and unstubborn, yeah, yeah I can see that the fact that I'm changing my environment often makes me look at and reflect on what I'm doing, how I'm doing it in new ways.

Jesper Conrad: 23:25

I co-live with new people, I see new places, I learn new cultures, and every time it's like a mirror on my own life where I need to ask myself if the pad I'm on or the line of thinking is how it should be. It is a kind of effective way to break your echo chambers, which we all have. We, of course, also have them as we travel with a lot of like-minded people, but living in a different culture shatters your echo chamber of sitting in your own little street with the same neighbors doing the same thing, going in the same place to shop. It changes your perspective on so many things when you take yourself up with the rules and throw yourself into a new place. I would say that the nomadic thing is very different than being a tourist, because as a nomad you try to anchor yourself in the culture, for or we do, at least for a certain time. Sometimes we are tourists, absolutely. We have taken a route that was wonderful, scenic, from turkey to denmark, where we just stopped one to two days days out of seven years.

Jesper Conrad: 24:55

Yeah, yeah that's what I'm saying. But where we just stopped one to two days that was 10 days out of seven years. Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm saying. But where we just stopped next to the big cathedrals, we played.

Cecilie Conrad: 25:01

American. I'm sorry. No, we saw, we've done that. Yeah, yeah, taking the photo, taking the photo, but it was stunning to see the different cathedrals in different countries, but then we were in tourist mode.

Jesper Conrad: 25:12

Yeah, then we were in tourist mode. When we are in nomad mode, we more go into culture. This summer, here we are, one a month, maybe one and a half in UK, and it's different than being a two.

Cecilie Conrad: 25:24

Yeah, no, no, no, we were in Germany 22 days ago and we're leaving in a week, so maybe we're only two weeks so whatever Less than a month, but we're around a a week so maybe we only so whatever, yeah, less than a month but we're around a month in uk and but it gives another time.

Jesper Conrad: 25:41

you, you end up using time and thinking about why do they drive like that in the streets? Uh, how, how are they? You, you, you sink down into the culture in a different way, which make you unstuck in your thought patterns, and I think that is the same for our kids. So now I have defined a lot of what isn't happening. It is the stuckness that isn't happening. So you become and I think my kids also become way more resilient in the way that they know where they are, they know, have their own personal roots and anchor in us as a family and you get to figure out that you can be anywhere.

Jesper Conrad: 26:29

You, you learn to interact, you learn to do a lot of the things. If we should put on the learning glasses again and talk about it as world schooling and talk a little educanese kind of educationese language, then one of the very big things is when you see a culture and understand the culture and you are there, then it gives you a perspective you cannot read about. You can read so much in history books, but but, for example, there's a lot of people who love the second world war and read about that et cetera. Yeah, but we have been in, oh my God, many countries that was affected by it and have seen how they were affected by it just learned something new about it, which actually it did surprise me when we were at that, uh, the dover castle yeah I, I mean, I, I.

Cecilie Conrad: 28:11

Second world war grows old in a way. Lots of things happened in history and it just keeps being Second World War. I mean, we lived in the Jewish ghetto in Poland. We did so again in Budapest.

Jesper Conrad: 28:25

We have learned a lot about Second World War.

Cecilie Conrad: 28:28

And I didn't know that it would surprise me to learn something new. I'm like, oh, that was actually an interesting new perspective. So yeah, but in a way it's quite obvious that traveling around feeds the unschooling in a way that can intuitively be understood by schooled adults as healthy. You know, it's a different context, it's a different feeding system relative to staying in one place and we love it and you're going to probably love it. Some people really thrive staying at home. I'm not going to as much as I'm against compulsory schooling. I'm not against people staying in one place if that's what they want. I think that can be great and sometimes, actually just a few days ago, we were discussing whether we would go to Nepal over the winter and one of the kids said you know what? We could also? Just not, we could just. What about just staying in one place? We could just. How about just staying in one place? Just, you know, take out the instruments, take out the books, just chill. And then he started talking about all the things you can do when you don't move around, when the context is not interesting. He said how about France? We've been there so many times. It wouldn't be fair. We would go see two or three things. And then if we stay in one place, we've been there, we've done that and whatever. And he's right. So I'm not saying it's better to be nomadic when you're unschooling. It's just a different way of unschooling and obviously it has its pros and cons. And obviously it has its pros and cons.

Cecilie Conrad: 30:23

I think as a beginner unschooler, maybe you could be very obsessed with the. You know the teachable moment and and and be very. You know we're here. Do you want to hear about the second world war? And you know you have all of this teaching agenda and maybe the kids are interested in the rocks or the color of the flowers or something they just learned to do in Minecraft or something completely different than your idea about why you went to the place where you went, and of course, both are legal. You know you can say, hey, I know you're very, I will sit down and see your Minecraft achievement, can you please? I want to show you this. I'm passionate about showing you this and hopefully you have a mutual respect for each other enough to pay attention.

Cecilie Conrad: 31:08

But on the other hand, I would say it is kind of a danger zone if you want to do your de-schooling and you want to be an unschooler to not show up with that agenda all the time. That said from someone who thinks my kids should learn five languages and all these things. No, but I mean, I think so, but I'm not. I'm not against it if they don't, so it's. It makes it way easier in the context of other people. So if you're an unschooler, a radical unschooler, and you share with other people, we don't teach our children anything. They will be like wait what? But if you say, oh, we're traveling the world, seeing all these people and places and cultures, and we're not doing formal education, we're just playing it by ear, people would just be impressed.

Cecilie Conrad: 32:02

Yeah, it changes your social credit score credit score quite a lot and also the toll it takes on you to be in this explaining mode all the time.

Andrew Schrum: 32:15

That's really nice, but the unschooling, the mechanisms of unschooling, they are the same inside the family, I would say, how much do you let your kids kind of and help you make decisions on where you go next and what you're doing?

Jesper Conrad: 32:32

and so it changes with their age, of course. Right now we are in UK because they wanted to attend a home education family festival. We are here where we are right now because our daughter wanted to celebrate her boyfriend's birthday and hang out. And then we are creating this event in tarragona, this world schooling village in tarragona, because our kids, they want to hang out with some friends they have there and all their other friends. So we was like, hey, let's, let's create a community for a month there and then we will go to rome, because their friends are in rome, then we will go to Rome because their friends are in Rome, then we will go to Nepal because their friends are in Nepal.

Cecilie Conrad: 33:23

Then we will go to Norway, because their friends are in Norway.

Jesper Conrad: 33:28

And the same way. So if our kids aren't happy, we wouldn't be able to travel.

Cecilie Conrad: 33:33

How much do we let them decide?

Cecilie Conrad: 33:36

I think, there's something with the question bothers me a little bit because and you probably don't have this opinion I'm just saying it because I we like to be very leveled with our children, so I'm not like allowing things um and I don't let them do things as if I couldn't tell them not to. Does that make sense? I don't have that kind of relationship with them. We cooperate and obviously Jesper and I well, not any longer. Let's roll back seven years, you know, to when our kids were more like your kids age. We are the responsible adults At the end of the day. It's our responsible to keep the family, family healthy and safe and thriving, hopefully. And so we have the final say and which also means we have the final responsibility. It's our fault if things go wrong, if we're not having fun. I'm not blaming it on the kids, saying you wanted to go here and now see it sucks. You know, I would never do that. Now we have more of an actual adult who's almost 20 years old. We have a almost 17 year old daughter who's very much, you know, has her own agency, and then this teenager who is 13 and a half. So we call it the family braid that, and it's very much my job.

Cecilie Conrad: 35:08

So I have conversations. I spend most of my day talking, uh, in not that I talk all the time, but in conversation with the children and also occasionally gets to have a say, just learning about what they're passionate about, what they're working with, what they want to share, and and also about the traveling. I talk to them. You know we have these options, I see these perspectives and what do you see? Sometimes they come to me and say all the friends are going to do that thing in London in December. Can we join? Or I've seen that concert or that festival or that whatever. Or I want to see.

Cecilie Conrad: 35:44

We just went on a road trip because of some art one of the kids wanted to see. So that was the dots on the map. So I just listened to all these needs, also a need to could we slow down, could we stay in one place for a while because I'm a little tired of moving? Or I need to be in a city because I want to explore xyz, and then I take it on me mostly and we all obviously we discuss it. We're very good at talking about it when we drive, yeah, and we just take all these different options and needs and feelings and state of minds and make this complicated braid that you could see in some Lord of the Rings kind of situation and try to get it all in there into the plans, and the plans they change all the time, so the braid has to be redone all the time, but it's that kind of process. So even though some of them are adults, I think I still have sort of the final responsibility. Yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 36:47

But we are doing things they want to do. I've let go completely the past year. I've let go completely of having my own agenda. I think you know, at some point and I see that point not too far away on the horizon Jesper and I are traveling, just him and I, and I can go see all the things I personally need to see in my life, which at that point might have changed completely, and be all my grandchildren. I don't know, but you know, if there's anything that was on my bucket list that we didn't do when they were smaller, there many years after that, but yeah, sometimes it's also a question of understanding the wish said out loud.

Jesper Conrad: 38:02

For example, I often has this dream of being in the same place at the same for a longer period and were there a beach in front of me, that would be fine. But then I ask myself and, in dialogue with Cecilia, is talking about but yes, but what is it it actually represents for you? What is it you want to achieve? Instead of a specific destination, what is it you feel is lacking in your life? And it's the same level of dialogue we have with our, if our, kids.

Jesper Conrad: 38:31

Sometimes it's very easy to figure out what the the actual wish is. If it's, hey, I want to go up and hang out with this friend, it's because they want to go and hang out with this friend. But for me sometimes it's more a oh. There's an inner mind state I haven't achieved where I am more relaxed in my work life balance, and part of me thinks that if I just sit down in the same place to say all the time, then I would find that relaxation. And then we have tried it and it doesn't work, as you say. No, but it's, it's a question of it's not the place, it's not the space, it's the, it's the mind space, it's the way of thinking that needs to be addressed and and worked on I think.

Cecilie Conrad: 39:22

So the past year has really been different than the years before. I'd say the past three years things have been changing, but the past is we've just let completely go. It's just it's all about where the kids want to go really, and they want to go where their friends are, and now one of them is in a serious relationship and we have to sort of accommodate that, not sort of we have, we have and want to accommodate that. So it's all about aligning with that actually really, and with it's a great group of friends they have and they're all nomadic.

Cecilie Conrad: 39:55

And so it's just a question of where does the group go? Have we aligned? But they have a few really good friends that are not nomadic, so we put that in the calendar as well, and there are very few things like full solar eclipses that we all want to see as a family, so that goes in the calendar. I just think for them it's about the friends first and foremost. Now wasn't always, but now it is and that could change again.

Andrew Schrum: 40:30

So and are those friends, just like you know, friends you've made on the road yeah, yeah, it is.

Cecilie Conrad: 40:38

I mean it really within the first. This was the first big, no, the second big epiphany. We had one real big realization before we even left, which was we're buying this bus and converting it just because it's kind of a ticket out that we need. We probably don't need the bus, but we need the ticket out. This is the way, this is what will kick us in the butt enough to let go. So we're doing it. That was the before big insight. And then the first surprising insight, the thing we hadn't really fully understood before we left was how important it was to be together, all five of us, all the time.

Cecilie Conrad: 41:16

So the fact that he was working now 100% from home. That was a game changer. We had not seen how big it was. We knew we were looking forward to it, but we had not seen how big it was. It was really big. And then the next one was we thought that we were traveling for places, for culture, for arts, for mountaintops, for little villages, for big cities you know that kind of bucket list. And before the first hundred days were over, we knew we were traveling for people, the real adventure is the people.

Cecilie Conrad: 41:50

The people we meet is just. It's just. You cannot even compare how much more of an adventure that is For us. I'm not saying that's true for everyone. For us it's the key into the places. It's just been so amazing and we've met you couldn't have planned for it. We've met the most overwhelmingly interesting, fun, loving right now.

Jesper Conrad: 42:16

I was thinking about we have a castle in normandy. Who's?

Cecilie Conrad: 42:21

the most amazing man. Oh, and then when we met at that castle in the north of Spain, when we just got there with the beard, remember, I mean it's just been overwhelming. So all of our dots. Now, if we had one of these maps that we don't have with all the places we've been, it would have faces on them, it would be people.

Andrew Schrum: 42:46

And it's not necessarily like through hub, like World School Hubs.

Cecilie Conrad: 42:49

It's just going places. It has also been. Going places, but I mean your life will and reaching out to homeschool groups where we go was the hack in the beginning. We've also not hubs not like La Herradura hubs, not like, you know, permanent hops but we've been to events and that has been a game changer and we highly recommend joining events for world schoolers really.

Cecilie Conrad: 43:15

It is a game changer to meet people who's been doing it for years and to meet other people who are new to the game and just hang out for a while. We did the first one in 2019, which was just a year after we started and then we didn't, for some funny reason. We didn't do any until 23.

Jesper Conrad: 43:33

There was this little thing called the pandemic in between. Yeah, I know.

Andrew Schrum: 43:38

There wasn't a lot of activity. That was annoying.

Cecilie Conrad: 43:41

Yeah Well, we did do a lot of things, but there were no big gatherings for some crazy reasons. Some people thought that everything was dangerous I don't know whatever.

Jesper Conrad: 43:50

Not discussing that, we talked about for this lifetime but it's a really good thing to go out and say where can I meet people? Go to events, go to. It could be people reading out of their books, literature, whatever, but go out and and immerse yourself in people. There is wonderful people out there, but it doesn't have to be planned for.

Jesper Conrad: 44:14

It doesn't have to be planned for, no no, but the openness is something that is easier and it's also a personality thing. We got invited. We were almost we gate crashed a 40-year-old birthday yesterday when you did, yeah, I did and I loved it and we were invited. No, no, we talked with the kids. We were out just walking the dogs and it seemed like a really good party, but at the same time we were also like yeah, okay, but the kids want to actually go home and just chat. It was their last night together.

Cecilie Conrad: 44:48

And a birthday for one of the boys. Yeah, he was like I'm joining another person's birthday.

Jesper Conrad: 44:53

But it's about being open and most people are happy to share and happy to share their time together and happy to share whatever they have. And one of the biggest lessons I've had in my life is, if people are passionate about something, they love to talk about it.

Jesper Conrad: 45:16

Just look at us being asked by you and we're like, oh, someone want to hear what we have to say. It's wonderful. But this has given me so many good experiences. When we meet someone and it can be a guitar builder we met at eco village I'm like so how are you building this thing? Yeah they just share, and the amount of passion and lust and and sharing, and it is so difficult not just to enjoy and learn and be like, so much been the friends of the children, though no, is that is?

Cecilie Conrad: 45:50

that there's more like you walking up to people and I just love chatting but I think for the family life really it's been couldn't have been planned for. We've been working for it and that's mostly been me, I, I, me. I won't do much social media any longer. I feel it's become a little to the toxic side, but it was better seven years ago and I did whenever we went to a new place or thought, okay, let's go in this direction, I would join some of the home education groups and just reach out and say, hi, we're coming this way and we're this danish family and we have these kids and we'd like to meet some like-minded people. And sometimes people want to and sometimes they don't. Sometimes I had high hopes for an area in portugal at some point because there were so many expat home educators in the area. Language, obviously, I, obviously I say five languages, but it doesn't happen instantly.

Cecilie Conrad: 46:48

So it's quite nice if there are some who do speak the one language we are fluent in, or like the second language we're fluent in. But that was just a really hard community to penetrate, really. It really was. And then at one of the Canary Islands, it was overwhelmingly easy. So it's just. And there was a city in Mexico.

Cecilie Conrad: 47:08

It took us like three or four days and we had close friends and were part of, you know community work. So it is also just to try to reach out in these groups and see sometimes it's WhatsApp now more than it's, you know, facebook and also just what they call coincidences. There's been a lot of those where we meet people and you can kind of see if people are unschoolers actually.

Jesper Conrad: 47:38

Do the boys have long hair?

Cecilie Conrad: 47:40

I don't know. There's something about the way they move as a group. So often we've been to places and then we see, oh, that's an unschooling family for sure and or at least you know, a traveling home education family and we walk up to them hi.

Cecilie Conrad: 47:55

Um, sometimes they're usually they're very open. Sometimes people walk up to us. That happened in portugal. Actually, funny enough, it was a Danish family, but they had some kids and they were traveling and unschooling and and one day at one of the Canary Islands I sat down at the beach. It was packed. It was La Palma. It doesn't have a lot of swimmable beaches, so those that are pretty full it was the. It was just around Christmas lots of tourists on the island and sat down and I needed to say hi to the guy next to me because it was so packed that you sat so close. You kind of say hi, and that happened to be one of the three home educating families on the island oh wow, yeah, it happened and that kind of thing just happens all the time.

Cecilie Conrad: 48:41

I feel like, yeah, yeah, you can plan for it, you can work for it, but also just maybe just pay a little bit of attention and it there's, this inflow of people yeah, yeah do you want to ask one of these?

Andrew Schrum: 48:55

it was just kind of more of a question on work life, like, because you both still work yeah like just how that works on the road and I wish I could answer that question I don't know, but we're still here no, so I I recommend the book pseudo, pseudo work, pseudo work, however you pronounce it in english, by dean dennis normag and a Anders Fogh Jensen.

Jesper Conrad: 49:25

I will make a link to it. It is in English as well, because that is changing. It helps open many people's eyes to what work is Basically. The whole idea that work should take 37.5 hours, as it does in Denmark, denmark, is a weird one. In reality, if you're really good at what you're doing, you can solve things very fast. People pay for things to be solved, not the amount of hours you put in. And when I and that was one of the things that ended up frustrating me going to full-time work was I didn't want to hang out with my colleagues that much. It's not that I didn't like them, but it was not.

Cecilie Conrad: 50:15

He actually liked me more.

Jesper Conrad: 50:16

Yeah, like my wife and the kids more and I wanted just to hang out with them, or people where I shared a lot, just to hang out with them. Or people where I shared a lot. I've always been able to figure out someone to talk with or someone who had if I couldn't find a good subject, then they had a similar absurd humor where we could use our minds in being more and more absurd and had a lot of fun over lunch. But it's weird to be in prison for so many hours to get a paycheck when it is as lucky as some of us are to have what you could call mind work and not being in the service world where you are standing behind the counter for eight hours where you need to stand there. It's way different.

Cecilie Conrad: 51:03

Of course it it is can I say something really practical, because I'm trying to wind back seven years and I remember how I mean we would set aside actual time for you. Yeah, that would be. Now. Dad is working and now he has a call, so you have to be quiet and we would make sure to find a way where it would be navigatable for the kids to be quiet so that he wouldn't be. You were way more stressed out about it at the beginning that you know what would the clients think?

Cecilie Conrad: 51:32

and would they know that he was in a car and would that be a problem? And we only had the bus at the time so we had to all be in there if it was raining, otherwise I could obviously go for a walk with the kids. So they have had a lot of years of training. They just know we actually I just snap like this and I tell them that's on a call and they shut up. They know what to do and and they respect that. They know that's our bread. It's mostly him working when I work. It's just it looks different when I work as a psychologist, as a coach or a therapist.

Cecilie Conrad: 52:10

I work from the phone and I leave the family. I can't be around anyone, so I just go for a walk, leave the group. Obviously, the kids are so old now no one has to look after them as such. We had to do that in the beginning. They were younger and it's just been a learning journey for all of us. How do we make this work? And sometimes we have to stop and do a few days of just working. That doesn't happen very often. Sometimes Jesper fantasizes of a house on a beach with a nice view and a comfortable chair and a wife who would serve him little meals and and happy, quiet children in the sunset and just getting things

Jesper Conrad: 52:53

done yeah, um, that would be so. Never happens, never ever happens.

Cecilie Conrad: 52:57

Never have, even if the house is there and I serve him little meals, you know anyways it's, it's just, you know. So we often talk about how great it would be, so maybe we could recommend other people doing it to actually sit down, let's say once a week, and just think about okay, what do we need to get done this week and what are the time slots where we are trying to work, and how do we make those time slots work for everyone? That would be really smart.

Jesper Conrad: 53:25

We're not doing it.

Cecilie Conrad: 53:26

No, no, we're playing it by ear.

Jesper Conrad: 53:36

I will share the biggest wins of it and the most stress from it. So the biggest wins of going from full-time office work to full-time nomadic is I own my mornings. Oh my God To not have to be a specific place at a specific time, the freedom I have that I decide when I say yes to a meeting. I try not to say yes to meetings before 10 am because I like my mornings to be wake up, lie in bed, read my book a little until I'm probably awake, go for a run, do my yoga, make my wife a coffee, drink coffee, take a shower. I like to use two to three hours every morning on just enjoying life.

Cecilie Conrad: 54:27

I didn't have time for that. It's a part-time job. You know that, yeah.

Jesper Conrad: 54:29

I didn't have time when I had to be in an office. That is such a big gift. I'm so grateful for it. And then I'm grateful for actually having clients that want to work with me. So I have something to do, because I am still trained as this mindset that for me to feel valuable, someone needs to pay me to do a task. It I I'm. One day I might come out of it, but I'm still in that loop of thinking where I am more valuable as a person when I have done a task and they say, oh good boy, and I get a paycheck. Then I feel good as a human because, oh, I can serve my family.

Cecilie Conrad: 55:17

I have no problem spending the money. No, no, yeah, yeah.

Jesper Conrad: 55:22

So the wins is owning your time, yeah, yeah. So the wins is owning your time. Also, for me to work in the evening sometimes or oh, now we need to go to a museum or the beach is right there, then I can postpone my work, that is also wonderful. The biggest stress is, as I base my income on working with different clients. Then I'm really never off. I'm not really good at not working, so there's always this in back of my mind. So, oh, maybe I should do this instead, or I could also you were never good at not working no I mean no, really, when you had an office job.

Cecilie Conrad: 56:03

He wasn't the kind of guy who would come home and just play soccer in the garden?

Jesper Conrad: 56:08

No, no.

Cecilie Conrad: 56:09

You'd come home and start some sort of project with your computer.

Jesper Conrad: 56:11

Yeah, yeah, I like doing stuff, and if you go.

Cecilie Conrad: 56:15

I'm just saying it's not about the nomadic lifestyle, it might be just more about you.

Jesper Conrad: 56:19

Yeah, it might be more about me. And then I think there is something to learn about the whole. Why do I need to feel valuable in that way? But at the same time, there's also something very good and healthy in, hey, I'm providing for a family. It's, it's okay that it gives me joy to provide for the family. Yeah, so the freedom is good.

Jesper Conrad: 56:46

I felt a shift in me after here recently. What happened was I separated with a client after 10 years and it was the last client I had from a day job in Denmark job in Denmark. They didn't start this yet to me yes, but you can go travel, but one year, then I don't want you back or we should figure something out. And then they kept on. I was there three years before we started traveling and they kept on having me as a freelancer for seven years until there was like maybe you're actually not coming back yet, maybe it's time to cut our ties. It was really good, but it changed. So it has been good 10 years with them and I still go have a lunch with them when we see each other.

Jesper Conrad: 57:31

But I can now see that I feel different being on a call with them, because I felt that they because it was one of those clients I had from before I was nomadic. All the clients I have now they know I'm nomadic, so I have no problem saying to them meeting Thursday, I can't, it's a day of transition. I will be driving the whole day. And then there's acceptance. But the biggest acceptance comes from me daring to say it. I'm pretty sure my old boss, who I love and respect a lot, he would have been totally fine with me saying it, but I had some insecurity in it and maybe you can get over that insecurity faster than I can. Hopefully it took me seven years. Maybe that's too long time. Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Schrum: 58:27

Great, I don't. I mean, maybe this is a I don't. I think I know the answer to this question, but do you ever feel a pull to to stop?

Cecilie Conrad: 58:38

Yes, and yeah, and like what?

Andrew Schrum: 58:42

what makes that like what? What is it that? The thought process and what makes that like what? What is it that? The thought process and what causes that like, are there things that you're around or like. And then what do you do with those feelings? Do you kind of be like we have, but this is still great, or? How do you deal with that?

Cecilie Conrad: 58:59

we sometimes feel a pull to stop, but it's usually just overload, yeah, and we know we don't really want to, we know it's. It's usually just some sort of frustration, some unmet need we. We know we don't really want. You know, like all people sometimes feel frustrated with the life they live. You know and and so do we. Obviously, sometimes the closest we get to actually acting on it is when we say how about we slow down for a little bit? And then we explore that idea long enough to actually hype ourselves up to think that we will slow down, and then it doesn't happen Because other things are more interesting and more important. We do sometimes take a month in one location.

Cecilie Conrad: 59:48

That happens fairly often and that's nice, but for the most part, it's a month in one location, where a lot of our friends are in the same location, and you know, yeah, not chill time, it's party time in reality.

Jesper Conrad: 1:00:05

Yeah, yeah I think that the dark days when they come, as cecilia say, it is when we have been too busy and estranged. But what I long for is slowing down more than returning to one place, because I know some people actually just rent a house and it's like, okay, we live here for half a year or a year. In my mind I'm grown up with this idea of you buy a house and then you live there kind of forever and take a 30 year mortgage on it, as my parents did and Cecilia's parents did and we did in the start. Now that thought is actually more scary for me than than not traveling. I could see myself maybe in in a half half a year. No, not even half a year is a long time. I can see life change in the way that when we get grandchildren I maybe want to be around more.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:01:09

Of course, yeah, but the risk is that we're going to have grandchildren in four different countries. Yeah, but then.

Jesper Conrad: 1:01:14

I'm supposed to be around in four different countries.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:01:17

Yeah, but that's not staying in one place.

Jesper Conrad: 1:01:19

Then sometimes I consider, if I miss seeing things grow, I have planned it myself. So there is this idea about maybe getting something and having a base that we return to, but right now I would feel obliged to return to that place.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:01:43

The thing is, the base is a trap. Really, it's very hard to not grow a little bit lazy. Our bus worked as a base for a long time, as we drove it for three months and then we parked it at a great place and for many, many reasons, it never left. So we left many times. We bought another vehicle, started traveling based out of that and coming back to the bus. So that went on for about four years until we sold the bus. And it was a trap. We had fun, but also it was a trap. It was oh, this is easy, this is free, this is safe, this is comfortable. We know the people in Spain. Sun's always shining, people are nice, we speak the language, we know what we're doing, and so you stay. And then you stay a little longer. And now when the kids talk about those years, they do talk about it with fun memories, but they also say that was boring. And every time we came back we did the same thing over and over, over and and over and over and over and over, and it wasn't that interesting.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:02:49

So I think, wherever we would set up a base, it would be very easy to go there. We would have that mind. I could have it right now. Okay, let's just go home, have a pause, just do our thing. But how much energy would it take to move on? How much energy would it take to get going? Would I pay for an airbnb somewhere else when I have a free, or at least already paid for, accommodation in my home, in my base? Yeah, maybe not, and so I think it's sort of a trap.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:03:22

I kind of like the idea, but then, on the other hand, I think it's a trap. I think it would stop us from doing the things we really want to do, and we need to meet that need in a different way. So traveling based out of a van has created that safe space of and stealing us home. Our van is very, very comfy and personal and and well, you know the Danish concept hygge it's very much, uh, our place. And you know, I actually sleep in my own bed, no matter where I go, or at least I can go. If I have an Airbnb, at least I can go to my private personal space where I feel at home, at the parking lot and sit and do my writing or my meditations or whatever. So we have that in between and the kids have that in between feeling that we have our home with us and the fact that we don't have a home anywhere else makes this our actual, real home. That's parked outside of wherever we are. That works for us, I think. And then I think, looking at the need for stability, for roots, for peace, for contemplation, for slow living, all of that can be met without setting up a base.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:04:53

You can return to the same places. Yeah, have favorite places and go there and feel at home. Uh, we do. We have that in many places, where many places where we, we just love. We love that walk in that forest in that country and that specific little city, or we love that restaurant there, or we love that cafe, or we love that museum, whatever, and we go every time we stop right there and go home. So we just feel at home at maybe 20 different locations in Europe instead of one.

Jesper Conrad: 1:05:24

Which is kind of cool, and an example on how life also can be is my parents. They had a vacation home, like one and a half hour away from their home, so one of these like a cabin. It would be in the States or whatever, where you go, and then, oh, it's just relaxation time. It's close to a beach, it was great, but it also meant that so many of the vacations and the weekends were there. So the question is, what are you not experiencing? Yeah, that's a lot, and I mean there, of course, is something to the circulariness of going to the same place over and over. It's very comfortable, you feel very secure, but it's a really big world and I don't mind seeing a lot of it. I see a lot of it, I enjoy a lot of it. I learn so super much from it.

Jesper Conrad: 1:06:26

And one of the things that is fun is returning to the same friends, and I feel the same. But we have some friends who are really good at recognizing where you are as a person, and one of them, dore, is a great friend. She's every time we meet her, like once a year or twice a year. She's like, oh my God, you have moved so much in your mind the last year, and it's nice to be seen, because it's not always you see it yourself when you travel. But we grow a lot more than I would have done as a person living in the same place, a lot more than I would have done as a person living in the same place.

Andrew Schrum: 1:07:07

One of the questions is kind of like van life versus airplane life, and I don't know if you've done both, or we're going to about to do transplants and automobile life and try to cram it into minimalist and be in a carry on suitcase style if we can, so I don't know any any thoughts on all of that. I mean, basically we're taking our entire life here and lots of toys and that we're not gonna have with us, you know we're not gonna have mountain bikes and rafts and all big things, you know, and and just trying to feel how that's gonna play out and it'll, it'll be fine, I know it will be. But any advice in the airplane travel life?

Cecilie Conrad: 1:07:53

I think that you are going to travel in many different ways in the years of your travels and I also think that the sum of money we spend on the bus to begin with, we could have bought a lot of plane tickets and taxi rides and bay and amusement parks and you know entertainment or rented bikes or you know. So if you have that mindset of okay, we didn't buy that huge vehicle, so maybe we can afford a box of Lego that we are going to donate when we leave this whatever hotel we're living or whatever makes happy some toys, some balls and maybe, yeah, you know, and just leave it behind when you go or send it back to a storage whatever.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:08:36

Whatever say it was sales about really. Um, yeah, we've done backpacking. We've done most van living with a lot of airbnbs. We don't live in the van, we move around in the van and do road trips between stops in the van. We've had our reasons to stay in europe. It's very comfortable to have a van with us. You know we have three tons of things no, including the van. Um, yeah, and so we have our coffee machine and the skateboard and it's way less than if we lived in a house, but it's way more than the carry-on. We did a carry-on backpack trip for almost eight months last year and so we came back in May 24 from Mexico and the US and when we were thinking about going again to India and Nepal last year in November, so come September, we started to look at, okay, are we doing it and where will we go? We were all like I just can't go into a backpack again.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:09:48

It's only been six months. I just need more of a break. So now we're doing it by the end of this year or the beginning of next year. Any good advice?

Jesper Conrad: 1:09:56

I have one.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:09:58

Yeah.

Jesper Conrad: 1:09:59

So mine is. What I really like is for my kids to feel at home where they go. So if there's something for them it could be a poster, whatever that if you move into an airbnb, they could have a little corner where they put their toys, something that is carrying life with them home with them. And then one of the ways we have learned to leverage being in an airbnb or a rented place that I've talked with some people who are surprised by hey, can you do that? It is, it is yours for the time you're there. You are allowed to move the furnitures around, be kind enough to put them back, of course, but, oh my, we have to come into many an Airbnb and being like I want the desk over there.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:10:52

I want the sofa to face the window. I don't want to look at that television I want to hang one of my scarves on the TV because that big black thing is disturbing my mind.

Jesper Conrad: 1:11:03

So yeah, that.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:11:05

That is a really good hack to making your place for the time being it's really been the worst decision I did about the backpacking was that I didn't bring my big camera. I like taking pictures and I thought the camera is a really big one maybe. Maybe in such a small backpack that was a bad choice, Whereas clothes you don't need clothes, you can buy clothes everywhere. Wherever you go, there will be a thrift store or something.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:11:34

With clothes for the season, with clothes for that area and it will cost you like $50 to get dressed. So if you go and you don't have a have warm enough sweater or cold enough shirt or whatever, that's not the no reason to take up a lot of space in your backpack.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:11:52

Bring the stuff that you need, buy the clothes and donate them again before you fly next time and then have all the little. So what we also do is we have these really thin tote bags you know you use for shopping, some really thin tote bags you know you use for shopping. So when you embark on an airplane you wear like three or four layers of clothes and your pockets full of those bags and then you take it off and you have a lot of bags with you that work. Like you have to fly and you just found a sweater you really like and you want to bring it to the next place, just wear wear it, wear it yeah.

Jesper Conrad: 1:12:24

Yeah, yeah, but seriously make the places your home. Yeah, you're there because no one likes to live in an Airbnb. Go down to the local thrift store, buy some trinkets.

Heidi Schrum: 1:12:37

Whatever you need, Don't get too attached yeah.

Jesper Conrad: 1:12:40

It's fine.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:12:40

And all barefoot shoes.

Jesper Conrad: 1:12:42

Oh yeah.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:12:49

They take shoes. Oh yeah, they take up nothing. I don't know how you, how you shoe, we don't. We walk barefoot a lot, but in, in, to the extent we need shoes, we use barefoot shoes.

Jesper Conrad: 1:12:53

They just don't take up a lot of space and we travel one pair of shoes each and uh well, we travel with our yoga mats or buy a new one, but it's really the shape so that it can get in.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:13:06

So I mean, it's just, and probably you're going to pack a bag and uh, then call me again after living in that bag for six weeks and tell me how much of what was in it to begin with is still there and you will learn it's not yeah, not yeah and maybe some people. Actually, we know, we know a lot of nomadic people, and some of them, uh, they have just chosen to not carry on.

Andrew Schrum: 1:13:33

You're like you know what?

Cecilie Conrad: 1:13:35

This is my full-time life. I move once a month and I'm just having my big, big suitcase with me with all the stuff that I want to have with me to feel happy, and I'm not doing the thrift store thing.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:13:49

I want my jeans, I want my boots and I want my high heels, I want my slippers and I want my sneakers and I want my work and I've got all of it, I've got my blender with me, I've got my guitar with me and I am going to go through all of that every time I fly, because that makes me happy and there's no shame in that maybe an entire suitcase just for the lego, I mean some people. Just, you know, shouldn't be about how, how big your suitcase no, and the whole issue is traveling fast.

Jesper Conrad: 1:14:21

It's expensive if you move once. Yeah, oh, oh, my god.

Heidi Schrum: 1:14:25

Especially us yeah.

Jesper Conrad: 1:14:29

When is the travel?

Cecilie Conrad: 1:14:31

When are you starting?

Andrew Schrum: 1:14:32

Yeah, we're in the final three weeks or so here. So yeah, we're in the Pack up the house and get it all put away.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:14:43

Why don't we talk again in six weeks from now?

Jesper Conrad: 1:14:47

or like when you have been on it for from maybe a month or two it's almost the same.

Andrew Schrum: 1:14:52

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that'd be great, yeah that would be cool yeah well, how exciting.

Jesper Conrad: 1:15:01

Yeah, I'm jealous of the life ahead of you, life you already have no, but it's a big shift. It's a fun shift. It will be fun.

Heidi Schrum: 1:15:10

I hope you'll have a lot of. Where are you going first?

Jesper Conrad: 1:15:13

Yeah.

Heidi Schrum: 1:15:15

Well, we're going to do. We're doing like a two-week kind of road trip in the US and then we fly to Mexico.

Jesper Conrad: 1:15:25

Ah nice, Are you going to San Miguel de Allende?

Heidi Schrum: 1:15:28

We are. You'll be there for 11 weeks.

Jesper Conrad: 1:15:31

Yeah, yeah it's a great place, just reach out, reach out, say hello to all of them from us, the ones who are in the river, great people, beautiful city, nice, nice.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:15:43

We wanted to come back ever since we left but you know.

Andrew Schrum: 1:15:46

That's so funny that you called that out. Well, there are some places in.

Cecilie Conrad: 1:15:50

Europe, it would be La Herradura it's a good starting place. Oh yes, it's a good place to start. Yeah, all right, I really need that coffee now all right.

Heidi Schrum: 1:15:58

Thank you so much, enjoy it it was fun talking bye, bye, bye, bye.