The Road Less Travelled...

photo from here

I've just finished a half-hour conversation with our insurance agent, the 3rd such call in the last week.  He was very helpful, but I felt sorry for the poor guy.  What we are doing seems to be quite unusual.  Diplomats, military folks, academics, retirees -- they all do stuff sort of like what we're doing, yet when we try to explain our plan to folks like poor Edward at the insurance company, we get blank stares and confusion.

What we ended up with for insurance, by the way, is a cobbled-together policy that actually costs a bit more than our usual home insurance, and offers far less coverage.   It's due to the fact that we're renting out our house to strangers, yet leaving all of our stuff in it.

This is a good place to mention the one book we've found that has been super helpful:  The Family Sabbatical Handbook, by Elisa Burnick.  It's full of practical advice about how to prepare, what to expect, and so on.  It's the bible of the take-your-family-abroad community.

The internet is full of good stuff too, of course.  Over the next few weeks we'll try to build our 'blogroll' of cool sites we've found, by folks that are doing similar things.