Visual Quote: The world is a book and people who don't travel read only one page.
I really didn't know anyone that had done this before.
Some of them didn't believe me at first.
Tom Anderson on Fox News Talk.  KOAN.
Tom Anderson Show right here on KOAN.
 When you get a family like this with such a neat story, it's something that should be shared with the public because even if you can't afford to take your fifth grader –or yourself- to these places, you can maybe live vicariously through their videos, through Corin's experiences,  and his mom's.
Chapter: MARY and CORIN
Mary- I grew up on a farm in the Midwest.  I made my first film when I was eight years old- I was the playground photographer. My father had an 8mm Bell and Howell camera so I've been looking through the lens for a long time. And I've been making documentaries in Alaska- I've been documenting all of our social issues challenges, and a few narrative pieces. I've made films for many many years all around Alaska- and outside Alaska.
 I've traveled around the U.S. making films as well.
Corin: You start spinning this around, going up and down. And then I drop this other one, and then I keep on going up and down and their going to go opposite directions. Unfortunately, I'm not very good at this so it's not gonna work. But I'm going to try anyway.
(A little about me...)
I have four loose teeth, one of them's about to come out. This one, this one and this one. I am five foot one, and a hundred and three pounds maybe.
(Corin is about to go around the world---with his mother)
Tomorrow we are leaving to go to New York. And then we are going to go to Ireland. And what I hope to find in Ireland is a four leaf clover indigenous to Ireland.
(What do you think you'll learn on your trip?)
That I'll be able to learn Kung Fu.
(And hope to see?)
The Taj Mahal. The Pyramids of Giza. And the Great Wall of China. I hope to go to all of them.
(Any big fears or worries?)
I don't get to sleep in that much. That's probably the hardest part.
Before we signed on for the big trip, we took a three week practice trip to Greece over spring break.
This is Greece!
It's named after a Greek monster with nine heads. It's in the name of what we're taking to it. Have you guessed yet?
Hydra!
Right now we're in Athens.
Yes. And what are we going to do?
We're going to the Parthenon!  Let's go!
OK, let's go!
It's way bigger than I thought. Way bigger than I thought.
I'm showing the Greek countryside...between Lavathia and Thessaloniki.
I wanted to see what it was like traveling with a child that age, across ten time zones,  in a country that didn't speak that much English, and it was really good.
But at one point we got separated in a crowd, in Thessaloniki where there are not so many English-speaking people as there are say in Athens. Our plan in place was that if we got separated, ever, that we would go back to the last place we had seen each other and wait. Well, what I didn't figure was that we might have different perceptions of where that might be. It was crowded, everyone was wearing black, it was a mess-and I was on the verge of panic, on the verge of tears. I went back to the street corner where we'd been separated and I waited and I looked and I combed and finally I went back to the hotel thinking I'm going to have to call our emergency number and say "We've been separated and I don't know where he is"- he was on the bed, in the hotel room, watching cartoons. Not only had he found his way back through these hordes of people, he had talked his way into the room without a key with a manager who didn't speak English. And that's when I knew we could take the trip.
Chapter: A Reason to Go
We did have a family tragedy, we did lose my sister's son. And what that did for me was to bring home the fact that – I mean we  know this already- life is short- but if something like that were to happen to me, I would want to know that I had spent as much quality time with my son as possible.
It was then she proposed the question- "Do you want to go around the world?"
(Yeah, Tom, I think this is just an amazing opportunity, I wish I had the (?) myself and...would love to do it with my kids some day.
Chapter: Planning the Biggest Field Trip Ever
Vitamins, medicines, school supplies, electronics, mommy's clothes, little towels, iTunes gift cards- very handy-what she said-a hundred bucks ha ha ha-iPads- we both have iPads-our introduction to our Servas Network-so that we can stay with people-yay- coupla maps-we've got our carry on knapsacks and our passports and our shot records. We got lots of shots.
Here are some of the things we hope to do:  Walking tours, bicycle tours,  a barge trip, a cruise, a safari, cooking classes, language immersion and staying with Servas.
The red and greys are mine, the green and golds are yours.
The first step was to sell our house.
Which went really quickly like in three weeks.
Got rid of the car, got rid of over half of our material possessions.
They had to call in a second truck. Good Bye piano.
When you get down to it, you can travel for the same amount that you can live in a house- if you're smart about it.
Chapter: How We Did It
Had a 15 year mortgage, sold after 7 years, Value went up 35%, banked 50% of the profit, used 50% for the trip; worked part-time, worked deals- last minute ticket sales, negotiated prices for rooms and cruise.
People always ask, "Didn't you feel sad, didn't you feel nostalgia when the moving truck pulled away and you left your house for the last time?"
One spot in the living room that the sun always came out and hit that direct spot- so I'd always lay there in the sun so I got a chance to do that before the house was sold. We sold most of our stuff in a big garage sale.
(I wanna really get that)
I mean some of the stuff I wouldn't sell- got to keep a little bit of Legos like Star Wars of course. It made me think, wow, I have a lot of stuff.
My first emotional response was relief. Out from under the mortgage, out from under the taxes,  the car payment, the car insurance- all the responsibilities- we were free.
(A rare journey with mother and son)
WORLD SCHOOL opening title.
Before we left, we sat down and made a list- our wish list. And wherever that overlapped, we made sure we did that.
We really just decided where we were going either from where the cruise ship was going to take us- or what countries were the closest.
What I was hoping to see was that unseen sight. That thing I haven't seen before- that taste I haven't had before. We're not the center of the universe. As we may have been brought up to believe.
We probably took- would you say- everything? Camels, cars, taxis, trains, hydrafoil, segue, cruise ship, air plane, bikes- if you can think of a way of transportation, we probably did it. I was studying European art. It's like being in school, and being teleported to the places in your textbook.
He was noticing and seeing things that I wasn' t noticing and seeing so that was an added bonus- seeing the world through a ten year old's  point of view.
When I started the trip, most of my traveling before this was around the United States to Hawaii but I had gone to Mexico before and some of Central America. I was a little bit bored of school. I hadn't been traveling much, but I knew my mom had traveled before.
Alaska offers many different options for homeschooling. So we chose a program that was more science-oriented.  It was great- I mean he really got a pretty good education in that suitcase full of books.
Well, I always wanted to go to Ireland because I'm half-Irish.  We didn't plan much.  We just bought a one-way ticket to Ireland, thought let's go to Europe first, then a little bit of Africa,  and Asia.
Chapter: Just Go
Well after Ireland, Scotland was right next to it, so poof- Scotland!
I was thinking it would be fun for Lachie to show- he mentioned he likes to do gardening-
Yeah, yeah-
To put his Wellies on and show Corin his garden. That would be very regionally specific. This riding on the other side of the road- I'm still not used to it.
Yeah- you keep trying to get in to drive the car.
Trying to take over the car.
We would stay with people who were friends of friends, or friends of friends of friends. All it took was an entrée, an introduction- could be by email- we also used the Servas method- it's a wonderful family exchange situation- it's very compatible because a lot of these people have their own children and you get to see the inside from that level as well.
Potatoes in the top, and here we've got soup.  Double trouble.
Oh, you love him don't you?
And we have a roast beef. Which is ready to rest in the bottom oven.
And you do all this while driving four different children four different places? All daylong.
That's it.
That's impressive.
I had a friend named Lachie.  His family was a friend of one of our friends that lived in Scotland. We got to know their family and eat melted candy bars on top of ice cream.
"Specially thick version tonight"
Whoa.
Now what time do you usually go to sleep on a school night?
Nine. Half nine.
And does it make it hard to go to sleep when you've had melted candy bars on ice cream? Is that yummy? What do you think? Is it a keeper? Oh my you're gonna have me eat it? Oh my goodness, OK. It's safe to say that ice cream is universally appreciated by ten year old boys. Or twelve year old boys?
Every single day of travel with your child is educational.  There's no way that it's not educational. Between the money, the language, the good, the map-reading-I don't even need to spell it out. I think everyone knows that innately – that traveling with a child is an eye-opening experience.
Hi camera. Nice to meet you again.
She's a filmmaker- so she films everything.
The good news is you wear the same outfit every day so we don't have any continuity problems.
Yeah. Everything was documented.
If it caught my eye when it was happening, I photographed it.
I took at least 12,000 photographs and 12 hours of video. I'm not a professional videographer- I do consider myself a professional photographer but not a videographer. And I brought light-weight but quality tools with me. I brought a Canon stills camera- the G11 and I brought a Canon Vixia. Then I also brought an iPad but found out rather quickly that it did not meet my needs and so I had to get my laptop FedExed to me in Scotland.
Corin is doing his schoolwork this year on the road.  He's traveling all around the world and learning what education is like in lots of different countries.
We had a huge pack of stuff- books and CDs and all that stuff.
He went to school in six different countries- from European to Asian to African. I thought it was important for him to be able to connect with other children.
(Czech exchange)
You're cold. It's cold and windy and we don't know for sure where we're going.
I was put on a sixth grade curicculum for the main part because of the geography was following exactly where we were.
Hello- nice to meet you Maria.
My name is Corin.
Guys this is Corin.  He's our guest student for the day.  You should be excited. Your first class today is going to be Chinese.
When I went to schools, I had this presentation that I showed to the classes.  It consisted of a slide show and some objects from Alaska like Eskimo yoyos and some pictures of Alaska, some facts, and the slideshow was really how big Alaska was- proving that we didn't live in little ice huts –
I would like to compliment the class because they know more about Alaska than people from NY -because people from NY think we all live in igloos, we all wear parkas because we are Eskimos and all we live on are fish.
Six 42s plus
The schools around the world in comparison to the United States- most of them are a lot more challenging I noticed.
Do you call it primary 1 or do you call it grades or years?
We call it grade.
Are you in middle school?
No, I am in primary.
(Icelandish exchange)
In Iceland, I was there at the school for an entire day. The only people I could really talk to were people in English class.  I had a guide, a friend that I made there.  It wasn't really as strict as American schools. It was more like learn this and you're good.  They tried to teach more practical things than like Algebra.  Like real life things. It was more of a field trip than it was a school day.  It was definitely different but there are always little things in school that never change.
The things I saw that children everywhere have in common is that they want to be liked; they love to play with balls, that they love sugar, and they were fascinated with the iPad.  While there was certainly electronics, no question about that- the video game was as alive and well as the soccer ball- but it didn't dominate their lives the way it does here.
Nobody's fat- and if you think about it, if you started your day with one to three hours of exercise, I don't think we'd have that problem here either- and especially if you went and you ate rice and vegetables the rest of it.
I think there's a lot to be learned from other cultures. I'd love to see our parks filled with communal exercise in the morning in the way we saw in China.
The lunches definitely were more healthy than they are here.
Chapter: New Flavors
I see every type of lunch. Show us what you have- oooh, that looks delicious.  What flavor are they? 
This is egg.
And what do we have here?
Fish cakes. OK
I've had my son eating everything since he was one year old. I've taken my dinner and stuck it in a blender because I wanted him to like all flavors. So food was never an issue. There was always something in every country that we could eat and we'd be fine. So if you want to travel with your kids, you should start them early.
I would pretty much try anything. Except maybe roasted beetles. I'm pretty sure that's not an experience I want to have. But yeah, I'd try everything else.
I saw many different styles of eating when we were traveling. A lot of locally grown produce served family style where the kids just took  the amount they were going to eat instead of all the mandated vegetable this and that isn't even tasty and winds up in the trash-  50% of the vegetables here wind up in the trash.
Apples- everybody wants the apples for dessert. Is that what's going on?
Whereas these kids actually like their food. They also participate in the maintenance – they weren't waited on like they are here where we have janitors who clean everything and that taught them from a very early age to not be slobs.
Chapter: Just You and Me
Where are we?
We are in Prague.
Where in Prague.
Where in Prague? I'm not sure. On a tram?
And what does she say when she stops?
I do not know.
How will you know when to get off?
I'll leave that up to you.
I woke up every morning excited about what we were doing, where we were, and that we were together.  And that we had unstructured time.
She was really excited about getting on to the new places.
Saigon.
How you feeling this morning?
So if she really wanted to do a certain thing...I was going.
We're here?
Yeah, we're here.
Here you go.
He was young enough that he could share a room with his mother and it wasn't awkward -yet. But we were getting there. So I think it was the perfect time. And all prices for children go up at age twelve.  And he was 11 when we came home. So what a spot where he gets the youth discount and you get the senior discount- that's a tiny window.
Depending on where we were, sleeping was a big up for me.
I don't see anything.
Err he does not want to get up today.
So what are you thinking you'll order?
When I traveled around the world with my mom, I certainly got to know her a lot better.  Learned some techniques to stop her snoring.
This is my dinner partner.
Chapter: That Thing
As I was going through the countries, there was always that little thing. For that moment in your life, you had to have that thing. I learned how to negotiate with her a lot better. Just thought that would be really cool to have- like a little bag of marbles.
OK my favorite is this big, second favorite is this big and third is this big.
Well being little would be an advantage, wouldn't it?
No, not really because this is my hitter marble.
Everyone wanted to sell you something.
(montage of selling things)
One hundred.
I'm not buying another one. I paid one hundred for this.
I would rather get a twenty-five cent really cool little thing rather than a hundred dollar eh kind of thing.
Chapter: The Cruise
We are in between Rome and Cittivitica and we are about to get on a cruise.
Oooh savings coupons!
Savings coupons? OK.
Couch- we have a couch. Um there's a table, there's two stands-a flat screen TV- oooh we have a flat screened TV!
Oooh a flat screen TV.
I think this is a queen bed.
Oh, well yes but it's big enough for two. It's two singles put together.  Ok and here is what the money was for- this little balcony with fresh air- yay-ohhh!
I thought it was perfect for a mother and son traveling. We were safe, we could eat the food and not worry about food-bourne or water-born illness and we had separate activities. When he wanted to play ping pong, and I wanted to read or I wanted to go to the port lecture, we could do that.
We were gonna be on there for a month, which turned into two months but I was like, that's cool, free food.
These are called the exotic cruise itineraries-  they are not the Bahamas- they are not Florida. I mean some of these places had only had cruise ships coming for the past six months. It was raw, and every port was met by local people dancing, singing, drumming- you'd wake up at six o'clock in the morning in a new country.
And we're now pulling into Tangiers.
Awesome.
And there were even times when he was tired of sight-seeing and he stayed on the boat and played on the water volleyball team while I sent to the voodoo village and watched the chicken get beheaded.
Good morning. Two passports please.
Stateroom number?
4-0-1-6
I just need you to sign for both. Make sure it is under your name- see this is for Master Corin. One is kept by the immigration official and one is kept by you.
We'll be collecting your passports in January as well.
You got our passports?
Yep.
And what are you going to do with them?
I'm going to give them to them and hopefully they'll wonder what this is.
Funny funny.  Somehow I get the feeling messing around with immigration officials is probably not gonna yield anything positive.
Because we were traveling during the school year, there were no other children. But on the sweet side of that, he formed friendships with adults.
Besides me, my mother was the youngest person. There was the odd nineteen year old that I could say, hey, I'm actually within a decade of you.
One day I couldn't find him on the ship and I was going round and round- I went all the usual places, the internet café, the library-
I learned how to spend time with adults-
I come around the corner and there is Corin playing Mahjong with five –
70, 80 year old women-
I just stopped and looked and thought oh my God, this is priceless!
Chapter-World Schooled
Welcome to Golden Triangle.  Thailand, Myranmar, Laos, three countries- that's why the name of Triangle.
There's so many things, there is no way I could have learned in a book.  I guess I was world schooled.
The pre-teen years- they're still very open.  I'm so glad we were able to travel when he was that age.
I guess my mom was more interested in the social interactions- that type of stuff- I was more interested in like the animals.
I had to understand while I was always looking out the window at everything and taking pictures of everything, and I would say "Corin, why aren't you looking out the window? I mean we'll be here one day." His answer was always, "Well, I'm gonna be back.  I'm gonna be back with my wife or my kids or as a college student."  My thought to myself was ‘this is it' – the chance of me coming back to the same place again in my lifespan with my resources is not so likely.
I have no ambivalence about showing poverty to my son. My son's response to most people's questions about ‘what did you come away from your trip with?' was always, "I'm lucky" and that's big because I think a lot of American children grow up feeling entitled and that this is just how it is. But he realizes that it might now be that way for everyone.
Basically most of the world is like that.
You think so? Really? You think more of the world is like that than the way we live?
That's actually normal.
Hmm.
The day that we went to Laos, and we saw real poverty- I mean kids were hungry, kids were reaching for his little snack, he couldn't eat in front of them, he gave it away and it was devoured- that left a profound impact- it left a profound impact on both of us- I took some of my most moving photographs that day.
So then what do you think about the way we live?
We have a really good life.
Do you think we could ever live here?
Nah. Too hot.
Chapter: Hurdles in the Hemisphere
Being filmed and taken pictures of all the time, got a little old.
Mom, really?
It's a sleepy head. Doesn't want to get up.
What are you doing, mom?
Watching you get ready.
No. Turn that off.
We are in Reykjavik- this is what it looks like out our hotel room window. And here we have Corin working hard.  It seems like I've made a couple mistakes with planning.  One was counting on the US postal service to deliver an international priority box in ten days like they said. Here we are on Day 11 not here, we leave tomorrow- very scary. I've also made the mistake of booking two flights too close together at different airports in London and I'm feeling very exhausted by it and wondering, questioning many things about what we're doing on this trip right now.
Nothing much was scary about the trip except for this one interesting experience in Senegal.
The taxi situation he describes could have been dangerous. No question about it.
He misses the turn to get back on the boat- and the second turn, and the third turn-
And I mean there's a vote to do only cruise sponsored activities because this is something we arranged on our own. We took our chances. I feel like that could have been a bad situation.  Fortunately we were with another mother and child and the other mother was very assertive and said "There's no good reason to go and open the trunk. And we're outta here." And we took off on foot and went against traffic- that's another thing learned- always go against traffic.  Prague was challenging because it's not your conventional grid and you can't just say "Turn right at the beautiful church- because there's a beautiful church on every corner" and you can't really see the sun so you're disoriented to that way...
Lost in Prague- we have been lost now, how many times? I've never been lost so many times in traveling as this city- because while they do have squares which are really more like octagons- they have streets that go off it like bicycle spokes.
The things that I missed most about being in the US- rootbeer was a big one- because Europe doesn't have rootbeer, Africa doesn't' have rootbeer, and Asia doesn't have rootbeer.
I planned to travel for the school year.  What happened was six months into the school year, Corin really wanted to come back.
 
What day is it?
Halloween!
And what's going on outside?
There's a major storm and the ship's about to sink-
No, the ship' s not about to sink.
 
I never felt lonesome on the trip of people company- but I did feel lonesome on the trip of children company- just because it's an entirely different thing of grown ups and children. With children you can talk about the most random things and laugh all the time but with grown ups, if it doesn't make sense, it doesn't work.
 
Do you miss your friends?
Yes, I do- a lot.
What do you miss most?
Playing with them. Especially Force Unleashed II.
That's just a video game.
Mom, but it's my favorite video game of all time.
Here you are traveling around the world and you're missing playing video games? Really?
Just one of them.
 
Over the course of this trip I grew like four or five inches, I gained at least fifteen pounds, and my voice dropped. I lost nine teeth.

Another tooth came out? Oh no.
One that was needing to come out.
Where'd you put it?
In my pocket.
Did it hurt?
No, not really.
 
He literally became a man on this trip. His voice dropped, he grew five inches I'm pretty sure because we're almost looking eye to eye now and we left I could rest my chin on the top of his head.
I was taller than normal- I mean even in America but some countries like Asians they're a little bit shorter so I felt really tall.
I was never lonely- I mean tap tap tap and you're in touch with people- we Skyped a few times, I wrote lengthy letters to my family that my friend would print out and mail to them so that we were sure they got to them. I could have kept going.
It was only out of honoring my son's homesickness that we came back when we did.
 
We traveled to 27 different countries. Some for only one day- some for several months.  I think we did a good amount of countries.
 
Where'd you get the pomegranite?
In Barcelona.
What?!
Wait-no- I mean, in Morocco.
Right. In Casablanca.
 
I think my top three were Ireland, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates.
Ooh really- you went to the United Arab Emirates?
Yeah- inside ski slope, biggest water resort in the world-
 
Some of the most fun things I did was the biggest water park in the world in Dubai
 
Dubai appealed to Corin because it was filled with big boy toys. It's not a place that you would really thrive as a working, professional woman that I could see. But it had the biggest and the best and the wildest and most extravagant item that you could imagine and of course that's appealing to a ten year old boy.
Chapter: Lifelong Connections
On Facebook, most of my friends are actually from Thailand.
Show us where we've gone. What's this map of?
We shared so many experiences on the trip, there's always that thing- that hey this reminds me of that one place in Vietnam, or hey don't you remember that one place in Africa that we went? And yeah...
 
You don't need to know about all those different types of words and sentences and all that-
To me- that's the fine art of it all- that's the fine dining of language
Yeah I agree with you on a level-
 
Here we were in a rickshaw going through a very old part of Beijing, but what I remember about it is the conversation I had with my son. We were in engaged in a conversation about something that was completely unrelated to where we were but we were connecting on a new way- in a new level. And that's the beauty of a trip like this.
If you'd like I will sing a folksong for you.
 
Corin was most fully engaged in when we were in China.
In China, there were really three things I really wanted to see: one was the Great Wall of China; second was the Terra Cotta soldiers; and the third was the Three Gorges Dam- I got to see all of those.
 
Excellent. Was it fun?
Yeah. Alright. Where are we?
Um, China!
 
How long have you been waiting for this moment?
Well since I heard about the Great Wall.
How far do you think we'll get?
Well, we- or I?
That's mean.
I know.
 
There he is, at the very top. OK, he needs to come down- I'm not going that far.
Hi buddy!  Hey!
You see that tower up there?
Yeah
- you can barely see it over the ridge but there's another tiny tower on top of it-
Yeah
 and there's no stairs to get up it you're not supposed to go up it but Scott boosted me up and we went on there.
And how's this feel? This is really the end of our trip.
Feels great.
This a good way to end our trip- you ready to go home? What are you looking forward to most?
It's too hard to choose: Nerf guns, Wii, friends, my DS, playing around the neighborhood, my bike- all that stuff.
There was a quote by some ancient Chinese wise guy- and the quote was: you are never truly a man until you hike the Great Wall.
 
Mary first you and then you Corin- what did you take from this as a mother with your son -beyond just I love my son and it was good to be with him?
Well I mean yes, before we left we were doing a lot of rushing- rushing from school to cub scouts, eating fast food in the car, and what I wanted to do was embrace this fleeting moment of motherhood, childhood- it goes so quickly. And for that we were able to savor that time and we will have that forever. But I think the ultimate lesson is we are global citizens.  We have one perspective when we're raised here and we when we get outside and hear how other people think about us and what they think about us -it's quite enlightening.
Truthfully, when I look back, the world does smile on a family seeing the world. They are proud to show their world, they are in awe that you took the time and spent the resources to come and see them- and there's a silent code to leave a mother and child- or a family alone.
 
It's one of the best things I've done in my life- and it would be great if more people did this – I think the world would be a much more connected place.
I'm pretty sure that when I'm in my wheelchair -or having my walker, that I'm going to say this was one of the highlights of my life.
 
CREDITS