The Home Exchange Life of a Curious Family

At HomeExchange, we love letting the people who know best do the talking: our members. This testimonial was written by Bronwyn and Simon, a New-Zealand couple with three children, Kayla, Jayden, and Lauren, who traveled around the world for over 22 months.

What an epic adventure! We have just arrived home in New Zealand after 22+ months of international travel with our three home-schooling teenagers. There have been highs, lows, once-in-a-lifetime experiences, everyday work and education, fantastic new friends and wonderfully faithful old ones.

It started for us with a calling to go to the United States. Our teens, Kayla, Jayden and Lauren (then 13, 15 & 16) had never left New Zealand before and they were very excited at the prospect of seeing a new country. Having not yet heard of Home Exchange, we prearranged a couple of house sits in New York to get us started, then packed up our home, sold our car and set off, quite literally, into the sunset. We were going on faith that we would have what we needed each step of the journey.

Our kids were already into the swing of home-schooling, Simon was already working online as a design engineer, and we had the beginnings of a family YouTube channel up and running, which would prove to be a great place to document our journey for friends and family back home as well as our growing community of international friends.

After our initial six weeks of house and pet sitting in New York City, we ventured upstate to the Canadian border and then back down the east coast of the US, caring for homes and pets as we went. We happily came across HomeExchange at this point and started expanding our searches for people who might like to swap homes with us around the world.

Our first international home exchange was in Paris and it was a huge blessing to be able to stay in such a popular city centre without spending riotous amounts of money on accommodation. Simon and I loved showing our kids the sights and tastes of Paris. It was so exciting for them to climb the Eiffel Tower and try out their textbook French at the local boulangeries and patisseries, where they were served some of the best food on the planet.

We then continued to travel in and out of America as tourists, interspersing our stays with lengthy trips to other countries, where we often relied on Home Exchange. To date, we’ve had the privilege of staying in homes in France, Spain, Italy, Croatia, Namibia, Paraguay, the UK and the US. What should be simply unaffordable for a one-income family-of-five on a poor exchange rate, has been a working reality for us, thanks to the generosity of home exchangers and hosts who have opened up their homes to us.

We’ve also had the benefit of having fellow home exchangers care for our home in New Zealand while we’ve been away, keeping it full of life and love and purpose. It’s so good to know that we can help others achieve their travel dreams too and provide a place in the sun, often for a much-deserved holiday. The Home Exchange system is awesome!

Getting back to our adventure… some favourite highlights have been… getting soaked by the spray at Niagara Falls aboard the ‘Maid of the Mist’,... spotting two leopards up close on our self-drive safari in Etosha National Park,... and teaching our kids how to ski for a day on the French-Spanish border.

We’ve visited famous structures such as The Edge in New York City, Buckingham Palace in London and The Colosseum in Rome. The Grand Canyon was truly awe-inspiring, the Namibian Desert, mesmerising, and the lush, friendly surrounds of Paraguay, a wonderful home away from home.

Being home-schoolers - or rather world-schoolers - we’ve had the flexibility to visit many incredible museums and art galleries as we go. The Smithsonian Museums in Washington DC are completely free to the public, as is the National Museum in London. Many other museums, galleries and outdoor historic places are very affordable and were an amazing way for our teens to expand their education in practical and fun ways. Home exchanging has kept our accommodation-related costs to a minimum, so we’ve had funds available for the sight-seeing that would otherwise seem out of reach.

While we all have to knuckle down and do the less glamorous tasks of work, study, book-keeping and house care, there are benefits to doing these tasks while living in other cultures. It may not seem like much of a benefit when you first arrive in a new country, jet-lagged, bewildered by a new language and hungry to boot, but learning to go out for groceries under these conditions is immensely good for one’s character! Every time we found ourselves in a new place, attempting to find the butter in an unfamiliar grocery store with foreign words or strange symbols, the process got a little easier. It’s such good learning to be the foreigner in a different culture and I was reminded regularly how important it is to be kind and patient with foreigners in my own land. They don’t always know where the butter is either!

I’m pleased that our kids have had the opportunity to learn how to assimilate into new environments, often with new languages, and I’m especially pleased that they have been learning it while we are all travelling together as a family and are able to help each other out. This kind of learning is priceless and sets us up well for navigating life and relationships.

One time we had such a thoughtful surprise from our home exchange hosts in Barcelona. Raquel and Cristian knew we were flying in late and so they left us a simple, tasty meal of traditional Spanish food to try for our dinner. We were immensely grateful! Not having to track down food in the dark while trying out an unfamiliar language in a completely new country was a welcome treat. The kind-heartedness of strangers is a truly valuable gift.

I mentioned teaching our kids to ski, and this was brought about by another amazing host. Christophe, an experienced home exchanger and keen outdoorsman from France, arranged to take us out cross-country skiing with a friend of his, who is a guide. They transported us to the mountain, trekked us to the top where a spectacular picnic lunch was provided and then they helped our teens navigate the slopes down. It was a deep-end experience and rare opportunity that fulfilled a long-time desire to get out on the snow with our kids.

We are still reciprocating with Christophe and also stay in touch with many of our hosts who have become friends. We absolutely love being part of the international community and we enjoy welcoming guests back into our home as we form on-going ties and friendships with them too.

Another huge factor that has aided our success is the help of our neighbours, friends and family members who have been keeping an eye on our home and property while we’ve been away. We have an incredibly reliable local housekeeper who comes in between GP stays to clean our home to a high standard, a super helpful neighbour who helps mow our lawns even though we know she has many demands on her time, and we’ve had parents and other good friends come by to fix things, check on supplies, remove problem trees, do a little spring cleaning, and generally just be there to offer us support and love from afar, not to mention the occasional Grandparent gift of spending money. All these people have made our home exchange lifestyle possible and we are immensely grateful to them. We are also grateful to God for watching over us and helping us have all our needs met as we go.

A final note… I’m so pleased that we've been journaling our travels on YouTube and would highly recommend it to other travellers who have the time and inclination. When we are having a down moment or wondering where the future might lead, it’s massively encouraging to watch our past experiences on video and see how everything worked out well in the end. We’d love for you to check out our channel and see some of the amazing places we’ve experienced.

We really hope that our story will inspire others to take the leap of faith and travel their dreams too. We are not a special family with lots of resources or fame or financial backing but we are a Curious Family and we love to feel alive and go where God leads us. Our nomadic lifestyle is not always easy but it is worth the effort. Would we do it again? Yes! Will we do it again? Yes! We look forward to many more exciting adventures, but for now we are taking a little breather in our piece of paradise that we like to call home.