We started dreaming about our trip... What was the main purpose and what would be our guiding principles? After many long discussions we decided that it was the chance to fully experience a different culture that was driving us. It was also important for us to try to link volunteer work or some sort of community service into the experience, but really it was the new cultural experience that was motivating "The Big Trip". We wanted to experience something really new and we wanted to expose our two girls, Yasmin and Roya, to more than just Canadian culture. Beyond the new cultural experience, we also set a few more principles to guide us. The places that we went would have to be safe and have access to health care.
So we began to look at the globe and narrow the possibilities. It was fairly easy to rule out the United States, Europe, and Austrailia as we decided they weren't different enough, and besides we'd already spent some time in the US and Europe. We were then left with Africa, Asia, and South America. After a bit of research we ruled out Africa, in part because of the high HIV-aids rates and high rape statistics. From there we narrowed the trip to Asia, simply because it seemed the most different to us.
Our first idea was to pick a country, find part-time work and live there for pretty much the entire year with the excepton of some side trips to neighbouring areas for site-seeing purposes. We initially thought we would enroll Yasmin and Roya in a local school so that they too could meet new friends and deeply understand a new culture.
So we began to research the countries in Asia...
