Meet The Family Behind Ligrones en Ruta

Please introduce you and your family.

We are a Spanish family of 4 from Tenerife, Canary islands. After 1 year of selling our things and preparing to start a new life, 6 month ago we left our rental house, step in to a ship and left Tenerife in our Campervan, our home on wheels. We have this “No plan”, with the objective of create our own life listening to our needs as individuals and as a family. We wanted to meet people, other families, communities, that were already doing things in other ways, walking conscious of their steps…

After travel Spain and Portugal for three months, we parked our campervan in Barcelona and took a flight to Chiang Mai, Thailand, to assist to the Project Worldschool Family Summit, and then we stayed there for two months. Now we are back in Spain and the “no plan” took us now to set a camp base for a period while we work on setting up our business which we are creating for us.

What does worldschooling mean to you?

Simple, move through different countries, cultures or just with different people, listen, observe, ask, learn through the experiences that life brings you from the moment you cross the door of your house and step in to the world to live in it.

Describe how you and your family approach education and learning.

In Spain, kids usually go to school when they are 3. Our oldest is nearly 6 years old, so at this point I would say we are unschoolers. In Tenerife, we went to a project created by families based in non-directed education, respecting rhythms and wishes of the kids and listen to what they were motivated to do, facilitating then, materials or wherever they need to work.

We do not do different at home because life is a continuum. We respect their times and needs, with everything: food, sleep, play, screens… And if they want to know about something we research with them, if they want to construct something, we look for materials, make a design, or whatever they think they need to achieve what they want to do. Life is amazing and we learn a lot as parent listen to their ideas and their solutions!

How long have you and your family been worldschooling?

Intentionally, I would say since we start planning the trip. Because our kid lived all the process, they had to choose and select the toys, the books and the things they were going to bring in the van, and the thing they were going to leave. We looked at maps many times imagining where we were going to travel. Many people from outside our friend circles, start becoming friends through social networks, and we did video conferences with those people that were just aligned to our interests. The trip starts when you set a date and worldschooling start when you change the way you see the world, when you are open, receptive and intentional.

Share an “aha moment” you’ve experienced on your worldschooling journey:

Discover that worldschooling embraces every kind of education methodology. That is something that is there you wanted or not. That even without being intentional or conscious of being worldschooling, you cannot help being in the world just as you cannot help learn from every situation you experiences in your life. And I love that!

What role does community play in your worldschooling experience?

Community is a very important pillar in worldschooling, especially when you travel 365 days a year. You need to interact with people, with other families, and it becomes easy and more relaxed when you can identify with other families and interacting with no judgement of your life style concentrating just on share the company, activities, chatting or whatever. So community, is just amazing.

What has been your greatest worldschooling challenge?

In our short experience of trips with a very different cultural views, I would say that get in to a red taxi (songtaew), a tuk tuk, motorcycle with sidecar or whatever transportation in Thailand. I had to push at the deep back of my head all the information I red and studied about car safety chairs for kids, rare-facing chairs, etc. We were very strict on that in our occidental life…. But! No sense in Thailand. So, erase, re-learn with the new conditions. That is “survival”, that is growth, that is worldschooling.

Your greatest worldschooling achievement?

We are already unschooled as adults. So I thing we are just now in that moment… We are facing a year of work, of development of our own business, business designed to fit the life we want to live and make real our worldschooling live without time limit, without local dependence. This is not achieved jet, but is what is in our view at this exact moment. I’ll say that arriving at this point is our achievement, to have being able of constructing this opportunity.

Share one travel hack or a few words of advice you’d like to share with fellow worldschoolers:

Our trip, like every trip, is a personal one. We always say that we are “chasing butterflies” because we are doing everything that excites us, everything that put us in this place of “I’m going to do tha!t”, although everybody else put this face of “you are crazy” or “that it no sense”. Because we step out of the comfort zone to walk in our stretching zone, and in this zone is where the butterflies are.
So we say:

Butterflies are not in a very far far away place that you have to visit

Butterflies are not in that person

Much less in materials things

Butterflies are not in having kids or a pet, this house, that van.

Nor in the bottom of the oceans nor in the pick of that mountain.

Butterflies are not in any one of these places

And in all of them they are

Because butterflies are in you.

The day you allow yourself to discover your butterflies

and feel them

You can fly.

What were the biggest takeaways you experienced at a Project World School Family Summit?

It was almost like an “aha” moment. To discover that for many families there is the same starting: Selling everything, leave their houses and just start from zero, to discover: who am I when I put away everything that had been modeling my life since I was born. That put us close to those families instantly, and it seems like a necessary step for many. I just felt that we were connect, or that we fit somewhere….

What were your favorite moments?

When we meet for excursions, after the summit, expending the day together as worldschooling families. So, I think this is just experience the community.

Also, I love listen to the different life experiences that make each family arrive where they have arrived.

What would you say to someone who was considering coming to a Summit?

If you are considering coming to a summit, you are already with a foot somewhere different from where you are now. You need to come eventually and check for yourself what is it what is calling you.