The family enjoyed lessons under the guidance of expert tutor, Goncalo
Courtney Adamo and her family check into Surfers Lodge Peniche, Portugal, for some expert tuition in the ocean
We planned a ?family gap year? before we knew the term even existed. After 12 years of living and working in London, we came to the point where we just wanted to pause everyday life and spend a year enjoying our family. We had talked about it for years, but with our eldest turning 10 and life racing by, we decided the time had come. So we planned our escape ? a year-long, around-the-world adventure in search of a simpler, slower pace of life.
For several months we did lots of planning. We planned our route and our budget. We sold our home, our car and many of our possessions. We told the kids? school, told our friends and told our colleagues at work. It was simultaneously thrilling and frightening. We began our journey last September with a road trip through California. This was familiar territory for us and proved a nice way to ease into our new pace of life and homeschooling routine. Our first ?exotic? stop after that was Trancoso, Brazil. It was during our three weeks in this magical fishing village that all of our plans started to change. A friend suggested the kids might like a surf lesson with the local instructor, Romualdo. The area itself was not known for surfing, but there were waves and warm water, so we figured, why not" Our three older children, then aged 10, eight and six, wa...