At Home in the World: Reflections on Belonging While Wandering the Globe

by Tsh Oxenreider

As Tsh Oxenreider, author of Notes From a Blue Bike, chronicles her family’s adventure around the world. Americans Tsh and Kyle met and married in Kosovo. They lived as expats for most of a decade. They’ve been back in the States—now with three kids under ten—for four years, and while home is nice, they are filled with wanderlust and long to answer the call, so a trip—a nine-months-long trip—is planned.

At Home in the World follows their journey from China to New Zealand, Ethiopia to England, and more. And all the while Tsh grapples with the concept of home, as she learns what it means to be lost—yet at home—in the world.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, Memoir, Audiobook, Biography Memoir, Parenting, Biography

288 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2017

About the author

Tsh Oxenreider is the author of several books, most notably At Home in the World, a book about her family’s year traveling around the world out of backpacks. She enjoys leading trips, writing a weekly newsletter, podcasting, teaching high schoolers, and raising children and chickens in her small town with her favorite husband. Learn more about all these things on her website.

In 2014-15 Tsh traveled around the world with her family of five, and it was as nuts and exhilarating as it sounds. It confirmed her suspicion: a passport truly is a portal for the world’s greatest textbook—the actual planet and all her inhabitants. After meeting her husband in war-torn Kosovo, raising babies and toddlers in a Turkish highrise apartment overlooking the Mediterranean, and living for a few years in idyllic central Oregon, they now live in a historic small-town just north of Tsh’s hometown, Austin.

She loves traveling the world, and equally loves snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef with her kids and puttering around her own backyard with a drink in hand.

Reviews

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent travel memoir, but lacking in anecdotal stories. Anyone who travels around the world with husband and three kids in tow must have made some great gaffs that led to better, deeper understanding of different cultures, but this book felt fearful of exposing those vulnerabilities. There are definitely a few beautiful moments that happened in the places the author returns to, which supports my thought that she is more comfortable writing about that which makes her comfortable. I didn't come away from the reading feeling like I could imagine any of the places she travelled any better, and I have actually been to at least a third of the countries the family visited. I wanted more detailed descriptions and to hear about more cultural experiences. My take away was that most countries around the world have some version of pizza, ice cream, and playgrounds.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Confession time: my whole life, I've towed the line between deeply homebodied and restless adventurer, filled with wanderlust. I thought this was... a personality quirk. That at any given time, I just had to fit myself in one mold or the other, hoping that the other, just-as-valid piece of my personality didn't show itself too much. I thought it was just me who felt this way.

Until– you guys. UNTIL! Tsh's book rocked *my* world and showed me that a) I'm so not alone and b) I didn't have to deny either part of myself in my desire for adventure AND sense of place. Reading this book was like coming home– and striking out into the world– all at once.

I loved every second of this read! (It's well dog-eared already– that's how you know it has a place in my ❤)

[Alice · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm pretty sure I'm not the target audience for this book, but it was still quite disappointing to me; I really feel like this book just scratches the surface of just about everything; the places, the people, the travel. Not my jam.

[Emily · Rating 1 out of 5]

First: I generally like travel memoirs. I like Bill Bryson. I love Maartin Troost. One of my favorite books is Into Thin Air (I've read it so many times it's falling apart). It's not the genre I object to.
It's the privileged-ness.
The fact is that you have to be very healthy, wealthy, and have REALLY easy-going jobs, to be able to do something like this. Let's state that, first and foremost. That was never really acknowledged. Second, there's a sort of veil of immaturity over all of this. I'd love to travel. I haven't gotten to do much of it, but I want to. She doesn't really acknowledge the good parts about the U.S. She wrestles a lot with herself, with introspection, but she does that while she travels.
Essentially, she's looking for things in places other than in her own backyard--she's thinking that if she goes somewhere, something will change. I don't know. There were a lot of eye-rolling moments. It's shallow, basically. She goes to these places, and she doesn't really go into it. They visit their sponsored child in Ethiopia. You would think this might induce her to talk about how LUCKY she and her children are, to have what they have. Nope. There's just no awareness.
If you want to read a good travel book, don't read this one.

[Kori · Rating 2 out of 5]

The writing is lovely, but I didn't get much out of it - I think this book was adapted from blog posts, and unfortunately I did not feel it carried over well as a cohesive whole. On their own many individual chapters made good reads about places, but reading them from chapter to chapter too many words and pleasant sensations are repeated.

[Kaytee Cobb · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely adore this travel memoir from Tsh Oxenreider. I'm a longtime fan of her blog, The Art of Simple, and her podcast, The Simple Show, and this book is like a longform version of both. Tsh's voice is clear, lyrical, and honest. She absolutely brings her #WorldWideOx travels to life in these pages, and you'll find yourself both eager for adventure and grateful for home, exactly as she intended. You'll enjoy your own prefect tension between wanderlust and cozy hominess, both/and. You'll want to scoop up your kids and take them to see where you met your spouse, and watch their eyes light up at a great wonder of the world or UNESCO world heritage site, and see them make friends everywhere in the world despite the lack of a common language or culture. I can't wait to read this book again and to give it to friends to read for the first time. And I'll be honest and say I found myself tearing up on more than one occasion while reading.
Perfect gift for the parents that gave you your own wanderlust, the recent graduate, the empty nesters debating their next adventure, and the mom sitting next to you at school pickup every afternoon.
*I received an advance copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review*... but I also bought a hard copy for myself with my own cash-money!

[Jenny · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well over 100 pages in, I felt myself wondering "when does the story begin?" with this book. The book's dust jacket describes the author's journey with her family as "a rather ordinary nine months" spent in an extraordinary way. Unfortunately, this book focuses on the "rather ordinary" side of life more than anything. It came across to me as mostly patched-together blog posts and meandering thoughts, containing very little travel memoir, which could have helped to pull it together. When it wasn't "rather ordinary," it was self-important, and that put me off to the point that I didn't bother to finish reading the book.

[Katy O. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aspirational and inspirational and oh so good. I want to pack up and leave TOMORROW ❤️

[Roxana · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was excited to read this as I’ve toyed with the idea of doing something similar, but in South America. But, in all honesty, I gave up without finishing (read most of it). I was always left wanting more, with a bunch of unanswered questions. There’s no storytelling, it’s mostly a linear account of their almost year abroad with minor, superficial (and religious) reflections. I learned nothing about doing this with kids or the nuances of leaving everything behind.

[Dee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was very fortunate to be on the advance team for this book! Reading it was like taking a hot bubble bath, eating just-out-of-the-oven chocolate chip cookies, or a sipping glass of wine on your back porch. Definite comfort reading!

As a wannabe traveler, I ate up all the locations Tsh and her family of five visited: China, Hong Kong, Chiang Mai, Sydney, New Zealand, Kenya, PARIS!, Venice, Bavaria, Croatia, and on and on and on. This wasn't an "If it's Tuesday, it must be Belgium" express train travel trip. This was a 9-month excursion through guest houses, AirBnBs, and friends' houses. The grown-up, modern version of hosteling it across the world (and actually they do also stay at a hostel!).

My only complaint of the book was its brevity. Tsh spends about a chapter on each location but I wanted more, much more. She gave you the overall, authentic view of each stop, but it's still a snippet of their time in each location. It had a little bit of the Europe in 8 Days feel to it because just as you began to sink into a place, a new chapter and a new location began. I realize that a slower pace would've been a much longer book. I also suspect that Tsh didn't want to give you the warts-n-all experience, but rather she wanted to leave you with a hunger and a thirst for travel as well as the belief that you CAN do it, even with children. I don't know what it says about me that I wanted to hear the kids argue, to experience when the parents were just sick of one another, or the serious question of whether there's enough money to finish the trip as planned. Conflict...I guess I just wanted a bit of conflict.

I recommend the book highly, though. It's a palate cleanser when you've had too much high drama, too much negativity (and haven't we all). It's a survey of the world, and not the kind you'll get from Frommer's. It's a glimpse into real families living real lives in ways that often are not much like those in the States.

Grab a glass of wine and a cookie, get in the bath, and enjoy!

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have used the word "smitten" to describe my feelings after reading this book. A memoir about travel and about home: what home is and what home means. A must read for anyone who loves travel or loves the idea of travel.

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

A disappointing read lacking any meaningful insight.

This book reads more like a travel log than a thought-provoking memoir. Some parts are so excruciatingly slow, and for no literary purpose other than to fill pages... i.e. descriptions of driving into a driveway, passing the keys from her hand, closing the car door, walking to the door of the house, and it goes on and on.

Frankly, I've been more entertained by AirBnb reviews.

The two main reasons that I picked up this book (detailed below) are completely missing.

Reason #1. I was excited to hear about the insights and learnings gained by the author through her travels. The book read like it was adapted from a travel itinerary, describing the places but leaving out what she gained from the experience. There was no emotional or spiritual journey that author had to share. The book is a lengthly list of where they stayed, what tourist attractions they saw, how they got motion sickness, and how uncomfortable the beds were. I expected a "home is where the heart is" message, but I thought that there would be something more. I wanted something that I could take with me the next time I explore the unknown.

Reason #2. I was excited to learn more about how the author educated her children on the road. Other than saying that they would be taught through lessons on iPads and from tourist attractions, this part of the book is totally missing. I'm not convinced that her children were able to stay on top of their schooling, and in this case, it feels like the trip was a reckless decision to vacation for a year.

Fair warning to others intrigued by the book description: This book is not as advertised.

[Costel Paslaru · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title and the premise of the book seemed extremely captivating however it was a struggle to finish this book in the end.

To sum it up in the author’s own words I’ve lived in twenty-two houses and five different cities, and I always, always dwell first on the negative.

Whatever passage I was reading, it seemed to have this nuance of negativity from the author’s side. Sure it must have been an amazing adventure and yet there was not much a reader could take without feeling that the author was rather too tired or too annoyed with her surroundings or turn of events.

In the chapter dedicated to Australia, I feel there was a lot of potential to change this entire book into a captivating one. As a reader you would be introduced to different terms used by Aussies: My swimsuit is a cozzie, a bather, or togs. Kyle wouldn’t be caught dead in a budgie smuggler, but I’m still not sure if he wears boardies. It goes on and the next line had me laughing: Reed says a few days after our arrival here: I like Australians. They almost speak English.

This kind of writing I could not find further until the end of the book so the experience as a whole was rather extremely disappointing. Other readers suggested it sometimes feels that you are reading a group of blog posts and not a book. I am not sure if the book was collected as such as I am not familiar with the author, however it definitely feels like it.

[Ashley Boggs · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this more. I thought it was a little too much "first we saw this, then we saw this." It felt just a bit shallow? It needed more story telling, more details about the places and people. I also think they would have benefitted from slowing down, much of the stress was due to running around, constantly on the go.
I met some badass traveling families on my year abroad and almost wish I had read their book instead!
Anyway, I hope this book pushes more families to travel with their little ones! I wish it included an estimate cost/a few helpful tips. It's well within reach of many if you travel to the budget friendly countries, but I don't think this book did a good job convincing people it's possible.

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm determined to travel with my kids, so I was really excited to read this book. That said, I'm struggling to decide how to rate it: there were things I really liked and aspects I didn't. I loved the honesty of this book and the humanity of it; you can truly feel a sense of optimism for the goodness in people. However, I would've loved more details about the places they went.

The book did feel repetitive at parts and her choice of words/phrases felt a little forced and overused. Maybe that seems nitpicky, but it took me out of the book. Some parts felt a little self-important, but not too obnoxiously so.

Still, an enjoyable read and I hope to follow her example in various ways.

[Kamilė | Bukinistė · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mano nuomone, mūsų pasaulėžiūros, tolerancijos ir laimės hormonų lygį tikrai kelia knygos ir kelionės. Tiek vieną (turbūt jau pastebėjot), tiek kitą - aš labai myliu. O čia tie du dalykai ėmė ir susidraugavo Tsh Oxenreider istorijoje. Tai ne kelionių romanas - o tikras moters ir jos šeimos prisiminimų rinkinys, apie tai, kaip jie po visą pasaulį keliavo ir tame pasaulyje norėjo jaustis - kaip namie. Šis pasakojimas gan paprastas, lyg atidirbtas, išgražintas, apgalvotas dienoraštis. Net drįsčiau teigti, jog tai istorija be pradžios ir pabaigos, todėl kartais vis apimdavo jausmas - na kada jau čia viskas prasidės? Ir dar kartais apimdavo jausmas - jog ir aš galėčiau paimti ir tiesiog ramiai aprašyti savo keliones po pasaulį, ir iš to išeitų labai panaši knyga. Na taip - aš greičiausiai neturėčiau tiek drąsos, kiek autorė - susirinkti tris vaikus, parduoti namą ir metus keliauti be sustojimo, tačiau ir be šio fakto - knygos turinys dramatiškai nepasikeistų.

Man patiko Tsh požiūris į keliones, į kitas šalis, jų kultūrą. Kaip ir man - jai buvo svarbesnės mažos detalės, kasdieninės smulkmenos, kaip virtuvės rozetės, nuomoto namelio puodukai ir knygų lentynos, vaizdas pro langą, vietinių lankomos kavinės ar prekybos centro sūrių skyrius, nei didingi monumentai ir turistų nuklotos vietos. Keliaujant norisi tuo laiku įsijausti į tos vietos žmonių kasdienybę, pažaisti „namais“ kitų žmonių šalyje, pasimatuoti gyvenimą „o jeigu“.

Ir résumé - kad ir kaip būtume pamišę dėl kelionių, kad ir kiek nenuilstume nuo pažinimo, naujų skonių, kvapų, žmonių ir mūrų atradimų, namų jausmas mumyse neišvaromas. Tačiau išties pradedame ilgėtis ne namų - kaip materijos, bet mūsų nepaleidžia raminantis namų jausmas: linguojančių kiemo medžių vaizdinys, čirškiančios cikados, galbūt medaus kvapas, tarp pirštų slystantis prisiminimas, vaikystės akimirka.

[Jenn "JR" · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was intrigued by the premise: a couple traveling the world with their three young children in tow. I've never traveled with children, but I did take my mother on a 3-week trip through England, Wales and Scotland. Travel tests relationships: it makes them stronger or breaks them, but not usually anywhere in between. I was hoping to get some more data points about what it's like to travel with close family from Tsh Oxenreider’s book “At Home in the World.”

The author feels a keen sense of wanderlust and a desire to explore the world, to learn what makes each place "home" -- but also, paradoxically, loves her own little home. She feels an acute conflict between these two feelings, and draws on her spirituality for answers. The answers appear to be all around her in the ways in which she is able to connect with community wherever she travels.

Early in their travels, especially in Asia, the author feels overwhelmed and needs time out to recharge. While she doesn't dive too deeply into the relationship with her husband, Kyle, she does give us some insights into how they fit together as a team:

"Kyle is cut from different fabric than I. ... we are very different people. I like to think of myself as flexible, that I’m good at going where the wind blows, but when I need to adapt to unsavory conditions that test my senses, my body and brain overload."

Kyle may not be a "highly sensitive person" but he's in tune with her needs. "He is the yang to my yin. He anticipates my needs, my moods."

Kyle shepherds the kids out of their guest house for a couple hours to ensure that she has time to process and regain her equilibrium. It's not entirely one sided -- she takes on the boys while her husband and their daughter go for a special birthday hot air balloon ride at sunrise in Africa. Kyle runs around and plays with the kids so Tsh can catch up with her friends in other settings. There’s a strong sense of tag-team and balance throughout the book.

Traveling with a spouse and your three kids seems like it could have the potential to be incredibly overwhelming. The author and her husband have had warnings from other friends about issues that cropped up between them (as a married couple). "the family togetherness had taken a toll on her sanity." With this warning, they are deliberate about making time to connect and discuss things.

"...Kyle and I spent hours walking up and down our neighborhood street while the kids watched a movie. We confessed grievances about each other’s personalities, our struggles working together, day in and day out for years, and what would be our mutual dream scenario with the kids and our careers back in the real world."

"Every time we crossed political borders, we collected more conversations, more honesty, more willingness to take risks.”


"As Hemingway says, “Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.” "

For Tsh Oxenreider, their mindful approach pays off -- instead of their 6 (almost 7) year old having fits and acting out, he's able to really clearly articulate his needs -- and she's able to accept and respond by letting go a bit so he can grow:

“Mom—I have something to tell you,” Reed says. He breathes deep and wipes tears running down his face. “I’ve been almost around the whole world now, and I’ve done a good job. I haven’t gotten lost or gotten hurt. I feel like I’m growing up.” He pauses. “Do you think you can stop holding my hand so much?” I look down at our hands; I’m still holding on and Reed is cupping his palm free. I release my fingers and he slides his hand in his jacket. “I love you, bud,” I say, messing his hair. “Love you too,” he replies, and runs ahead.”

The whole trip isn't without trouble -- they talk about bouts of cleaning up vomit, losing articles of clothing, getting chilled with temperature changes and the closest thing to a catastrophe is an accidental playground head butt that results in seeking a local dentist for the eldest child.

The family experiences waterfalls, massive monoliths, markets, churches, forests and a safari. I love the description of the drive to Christchurch -- which they expected to take 5 hours. As they set out on the road, the world around them is blanketed in purple lupine, and they stop so frequently to explore and enjoy the natural beauty that they arrive 10 hours later at their rental. I can just smell the flowers -- having experienced fields of lupine myself -- and smile to think I would have done the exact same thing.

Is it better to travel -- or stay home? If you travel, are you avoiding something? Do you learn more by removing all the exciting distractions of the "unknown" in search of the known they may hold?

"The nuns at Our Lady of Mississippi Abbey say that by taking a vow of stability, they are “resisting all temptation to escape the truth about ourselves by restless movement from one place to the next.” Resisting all temptation to escape the truth about ourselves. That’s an easy thing to do in our rapid-fire world."

This reminds me of advice I hear about relationships - something along the lines of "If you want to learn more about yourself, stay in a relationship for a long time, if you want to learn the same thing over and over, have many short relationships." I think you can justify in either direction.

At the end of her tale, Tsh shares an observation of mailboxes, rapidly disappearing in the US, being like portals to the rest of the world: "Mailboxes are portals to the rest of the world, where, with just a few stamps, we have access to almost anywhere on the globe. This was a marvel before the Internet, and if you think about it, it’s still astonishing that we could send a postcard halfway around the world in just a few days."

She also talks about how easy it is to travel and just go places -- in ways not available to previous generations. It's important to point out the privilege of recreational travel is not something within the reach of most people in the world. More people have not ever been on an airplane than have been -- and even more people have never traveled far from home. Recent studies indicate that from 40-64% of Americans have never left the US, and at least 11% haven't left the state where they were born. In countries that have less wealth, aside from wars that force emigration, people don't travel all that much due to the expense.

Is it the relative wealth and possibility of being able to sell one's house and buy a plane ticket to travel the world that creates the dissatisfaction in "home" and creates a wanderlust that drives us to seek it in strange locales? The grass is always greener on the other side -- live without regrets. See what’s on the other side of the world, the continent, the state – even if you are perfectly content with your little corner of the world. Home is always where your heart is – deep within yourself.


NOTE: I was lucky enough to get this book through Goodreads Giveaways

[Maureen L. · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was a chore to read this book. The author purports to be this worldly vagabond who loves to travel and yet, she spends the first half of their trip taking exception to everything. She writes not about going here, seeing this, doing that, but rather of her distaste for foreign food; of her dismay at the crowds and noise in Asia; of her displeasure at the “invasion of privacy“ when Asians want to be photographed with Westerners, whose appearance fascinates them; of her loneliness and pining for home and things familiar. (Seriously, if you don’t like crowds and the unfamiliar, go to Canada, where there are fewer than 40 million people spread out over the second largest country on the planet and the Western culture shares many similarities with America. But no! She picks the most densely populated area on earth and then is shocked and horrified at the masses of people thronging in the streets.)

The more I read of this book, the more irritated and impatient I became with this woman’s ridiculous fragility and astonishing narrow mindedness. Here is her description of her meltdown after her kids played crafts and coloured with crayons for a few hours over a leisurely lunch at a restaurant—serving Western food—followed by an hour of quiet time in their hostel:

“Lunch takes hours, and afterword, I sense the need for a serious break. I’m trembling, weak, overstimulated. We take a bus and head back to our hostel for mandatory quiet time, where everyone in the family is required to stay on their beds with curtains drawn and do whatever they want so long as they don’t talk. It’s mildly stressful. At the end of an hour, my head still spins, my muscles ache … . I feel my insides spiralling downward, wonder if my outsides will soon follow suit. I am swimming in cacophony. ... I like to think of myself as flexible, that I’m good at going where the wind blows, but when I need to adapt to unsavoury conditions that test my senses, my body and brain overload.” Wow! Just, wow.

The book doesn’t offer any meaningful insights about their travels. It’s just a litany of extreme miles logged to arrive at a destination, arriving at said destination utterly jet-lagged and so depleted that they seek out the safe and familiar—pizza, ice cream and playgrounds—while they rest and recover from the arduous journey over multiple time zones and then repeat this ridiculous pattern over and over.

Their trip to Sri Lanka can be summed up as:
1. a brief terror-stricken visit to a crowded temple (during which Tsh has what can only be described as another panic attack);
2. hightailing it back to their accommodations; and then,
3. fleeing the country by first taking a motorized rickshaw ride to Colombo airport.

Not surprisingly, the overwrought author is petrified on the rickshaw ride, while her husband is exhilarated. She closes the chapter on Sri Lanka by saying the country remains a mystery! Small wonder if you’re too delicate to explore the sights, sounds and smells of the land; too fragile and jet lagged to get out and about amongst the people and drink in the awesome cultural diversity that you are blessed enough to experience.

I’m not sure how or why I continued this slog , but I did finish the book. Shockingly, she loved Africa (in spite of their ridiculous itinerary) and not surprisingly, she enjoyed Europe, so the book did pick up in the second half, although on the whole, it was deeply unsatisfying.

Confucius said, “Wherever you go, go with all your heart.” The author completely failed at this. Her book would have been more aptly entitled “Ill at Ease in the World” or “Longing for Home.”

[Jessica · Rating 1 out of 5]

i struggled with this one so much! i really, REALLY wanted to love it -- because it SEEMS like the PERFECT fit for me: memoir, road tripping with kids, traveling the world -- but it fell so flat that i couldn't even finish it. it read like a straight travelogue (i.e. first we went here and then we went there and after we went here, etc.) that didn't help me to live the experience vicariously. and i didn't think there was any humor in it, which when you're traveling with kids, there's GOT to be more crazy/funny shenanigans and anecdotes to relate. i haven't traveled the world with my 6 kids, but we've become big road trippers across the U.S. over the last few years and i feel like if i wrote a book about our adventures, it would be a comedy. i found this to be a bit boring at times and i found myself thinking "so what?" or "what's the point?" several times throughout the book. also, and this is getting nit-picky, but the whole premise of the book -- taking a (school) year off to travel the world and gain real life learning and experience -- (as well as her tone) reeks of privilege of some sort. this is just not the kind of experience that anyone can embark on and replicate. and i get that her whole thing is that she's torn between being a homebody while also experiencing wanderlust, but i found the tension of that paradox and her waffling to be kind of annoying. DNF -- although, i got about 2/3 before i had to stop.

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think Tsh probably has an interesting story to tell about her family's nine months on the road... but this book is not it. Overall it feels like she typed up her travel journal rather than constructing a well-thought-out narrative focused on the most interesting aspects of her experience. The book tries to be both travelogue and family memoir and doesn't really succeed at either. There's a lot of text spent on the what and little on the why, how, or even the who. A lot of time describing their travel from one place to the next but relatively little about what they do there - and even less about why they make the decisions they do, how this changes them as people, and how they manage to pull this off with three kids.

I initially enjoyed her thoughts on being torn between home and travel, but it soon gets tiresome. She never goes any deeper than that, instead trotting out endless versions of the same metaphor: she wants a backpack and a place to hang it, she wants a passport full of stamps and a drawer to put it in, etc. And despite her frequent insistence that she does, for much of the book it sounds as though she doesn't actually enjoy traveling.

For someone who claims to have traveled pretty extensively, her observations struck me as pretty trite. Chinese people want to take photos of her blonde kids (she emphasizes a lot that they are blonde); how crazy is it that Christmas falls in the Australian summer; cars in the developing world are often run-down.

A lot of her description just comes in the form of long lists, especially of what she sees on the drive from the airport to the guesthouse in whatever country they are saying. And her writing is overly verbose. A creek isn't small, it's "diminutive." It reads like a high schooler who hasn't learned yet that bigger words does not = better writing. She has some other odd tics, like ending sections with sentences like "I eat the samosa. It is delicious." as if that's some kind of profound thought.

In addition to the weird writing, I felt like this book could have been written by anyone who went on the trip-not by Tsh traveling with her family. It's stripped of all the specificity that could make it worthwhile. It would make this book a lot more interesting if she opened up more on her actual feelings and family life. How has her experience of travel changed since she first started in her 20s? If your marriage is founded on a love of travel when you're 25, and you get to do that with your kids when you're 38… is it everything they hoped it would be? How have their vision for their family and their marriage and their views on travel changed in the past decade? (Instead, we get two pages of "our marriage is doing great! Everything's fine!")

(Without that insight, I speculated whether Kyle was actually the one pushing for this trip, and "traveler" has been part of Tsh's identity and the identity of her marriage for so long that she went along with it even though she doesn't really enjoy it much anymore.)

Similarly, what do her kids think about the experience? (Beyond being excited at the playgrounds.) How does she see them learning and changing throughout the year? I wished she took us further beneath the surface than she did. She's clearly a religious person, but there's little of that in here, as if she's afraid she'll alienate readers. What we're left with is a lot of watered-down references to spirituality. I would have loved a deeper dive on her spiritual life, even if it's not one that I share.

To each their own, but they make some odd travel choices. They hit four or five African countries for a few days each-with lengthy and expensive travel in between that counteracts whatever savings they got from being on that side of the world already. A safari in one country, a visit to a village in another, a visit to Victoria Falls in a third. Most baffling to me was their trip to Morocco, a country they claim to have wanted to visit for years… and stay in for two days, one of which is spent entirely inside. Maybe they had good reasons for doing this, but again, I wanted to go just a bit further beneath the surface and hear about why they chose to go where they did for the length of time that they did. Did Tsh and her husband have different ideas on where to go? Did the kids have any input? How did they decide to do this specific trip and not the many others possible?

On top of their odd travel choices, the pacing of the book is odd. They spend two months in Thailand, where we mostly hear about her therapy sessions (though even there, she doesn't share enough to make it interesting - it's a lot of vague references to midlife struggles) - even though I hope her kids got to see some elephants? There's a short section on their time in France - I was surprised to read later in the book that they'd been there for a month. And there are some relatively humdrum days that she describes in excruciating detail.

This is way too many words, but I book that I wanted to like ended up really bothering me. This book really would have benefited from some editing to clean up the verbiage and give it some structure, and from a writer brave enough to go a bit deeper below the surface.

[mossflowers · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a perplexing book. The tone of this theoretically grand adventure is so consistently flaccid. I'm not sure this woman has ever enjoyed anything; or gotten really mad, either. She sort of limps around the globe, a little sad, a little wan, a little dismissive of local norms. Grateful for every touch of western familiarity, but not actually made happy by them or anything else. She talks often about beauty and joy and wonder but never communicates an echo of it; alternated with litanies of discomforts as if she's applying for sainthood. It's extremely weird how little she actually seems to relish travel or new experiences. Lots of things about travel are disorienting and uncomfortable and likely to go wrong! But people who like to travel usually tell those stories with some irony or levity or triumph, not just weary endurance. except for one moment in New Zealand, and when talking about Europe, her travel mode is to be so fixated on Appreciating surroundings that she never enjoys them.
Her portraits of her kids and husband are vague, and we never really get to know them any better than the visited locations; this book doesn't take place Out There In The World- it's almost entirely stuck inside her head, and she's whingeingly homesick like the whole time.
There's a ponderous quality to the writing as if Wisdom Is Being Transmitted, but it's not good philosophy or good travel journalism- her perspective on each new location is jarring or clichéd:
"Chiang Mai is ancient; Chiang Mai is modern. It is Buddhist monks and smoothies from electric blenders." This is such weird and othering reaction? Why is the coexistence of religious tradition and electricity prompting such confused solemnity? Europe also has these things and she's not confused to get gelato in Rome.
In australia: "Quite surprisingly, we find a Target, and buy new flipflops for the boys." what?

The writing is labored. Overblown metaphors and self-important grandiosity alternate with extremely banal observation. The verbiage is particularly rough - things are always adorning other things, or gracing them.

A similar but vastly more fun book: One Year Off: Leaving It All Behind for a Round-the-World Journey with Our Children is imperfect (it's collected and lightly edited emails they sent home during the trip, and suffers structurally toward the end) but it's lively and wry and funny and fun rather than listless- the family members have personalities, and they have successes and failures and frustrations and joys.

[Lorien Owens · Rating 5 out of 5]

I simply adored this book. Battling near constant wanderlust as well as having a family with a husband whose job is rooted in our community, i completely related to the author. I was able to live vicariously through their travels & learn her lessons. I appreciated her thoughts on the tension and balance of home & desire to travel/live abroad. Simple & sweet & not sappy. Highly recommend!

[yoon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tsh Oxenreider takes the reader along in her family's 9 month journey across the world. They start in China, to southeast Asia, Australia, Sri Lanka, Africa, and end in Europe. Tsh and her husband brave through this adventure with three children (ages 9, 7, and 4!) and this book helps quench a bit of your wanderlust (while simultaneously igniting the travel bug) as you follow along, tucked in your own home. I picked up this book unassumingly, but fell in deeper and deeper as Tsh brings us along, country after country. However, more than being captivated by the amazing sites and the exotic experiences, the in-between moments were the most striking. The people they ran into, the people they met and connected with, the growth of their children and their varying needs, the conversations Tsh had with her husband, and the realizations and reflections she had on her own. Overall, what made a foreign country home, and what directed their steps to settle into a geographical area after they were done with their year-long travel was: community.

[Adrienne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting premise; dull delivery.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. This was wonderful and simultaneously made me want to go on #allthetrips but also hang pictures on the walls and curl up in "my spot" in a home. Full review to come.

[Stephanie Ebert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Something I appreciated about this travel memoir is Tsh does such a great job of putting you in the location--whether it’s the splash of Victoria falls, the spicy tea in Turkey, or the colors of the Great Barrier Reef. She manages to weave in both reflections on what it means to be at home wherever you are, and enough concrete details about the practicality of traveling with 3 young kids. It satisfied both my desire to reflect more deeply on what it means to find “home” even in constant transition, as well my more practical curiosity. (Really? 3 kids? How did you manage that?). This mix of sensory detail, travel strategies, and deeper reflection weaves together into an extremely satisfying read. Exactly what I want in a travel book!

[Jill Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book. Wow. I totally felt like I was traveling around the world with the Oxenreider family. So that was fun. But my favorite part about this book was the discussion of "what does home mean?". This is a question that I have struggled with for years and still don't have a good answer. I related to all of her insights on home and wish I could process through them over a cup of coffee with Tsh.

[Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a woman who dares to go where no mom has gone before...a round-the-world, year-long trip with her husband and three young children. China. Thailand. Sri Lanka. Africa. Italy. France. Germany. Amazingly, their biggest trouble was probably losing a treasured blankey in Africa, and it was returned. They visited with friends, saw the world, and reflected on the meaning of home, and Oxenreider was able to return to Texas and create a new home spot for herself and her family.

[Kayla Peker · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of those books that I wish I could go back and reread for the first time. The author so perfectly captures the essence of living abroad, defining home, and finding community. I found myself traveling right along with her and even rediscovering some of my favorite places in the world. I loved reading Tsh’s words and seeing the world through her pen.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully evocative writing, and a philosophy that deeply resonates with me. This also sounds like quite the fun adventure. I hope I get to do something similar someday.