Our sabbatical comes to an end

“There is something exciting about leaving everything behind
There is something deep and pulling leaving everything behind
Something about having everything you think you'll ever need
Sitting in the seat next to you”

July 14, 2025

Dear Friends, Family, and Fellow Travelers,

Sara’s Thoughts and Recap
We are writing to you from Playa del Carmen, Mexico, where we’ve been staying at Hotel Xcaret for the week. Our flight for Seattle leaves tomorrow afternoon. It’s so surreal I don’t even think I’ve fully processed it.

For months, I touted a big surprise to end our trip. We actually didn’t even tell the kids where we were until we were at the hotel, checking in. During our layover in Lima, Jonah and Simon had asked when we would know where we were traveling, and I responded that if they paid attention, they could read the little screen above our next gate. So, Jonah raced ahead of us, crying “Can-cuhn. What’s Can-cuhn?” We were chuckling but as he’d heard whispers that we were going to Mexico, he was just pleased to confirm that he’d been right. Nonetheless, this still didn’t give him a lot of information about what we’d be doing. Our first night, we drove to a Marriot near Xcaret for a one evening stay, discovering upon arrival that there were no restaurants in sight. Thus, we raided the hotel shop for Cup O’ Noodles (Cups O’ Noodles?”) thereby setting expectations nice and low.

The next morning, we were off to Xcaret. As you’ve probably gathered if you’ve been reading this newsletter (or if you know me fairly well) I’m not a huge fan of big bells and whistles hotels. I find them overwhelming and overstimulating, both lacking in authentic cultural experiences and sending us all into decision paralysis. At the same time… you know, we’ve done cultural experience. A lot of it. I was ready to go big and then go home. Speaking of big, Xcaret – already a large property – doubled in size earlier this month, adding several restaurants, pools, and activities. Fortunately, this also meant a huge promotion, where all kids under eighteen stay free. Coupled with the fact that Calla is only allowed to room with us (i.e., 5 people in one room) until she’s 6, financially this was the ideal time to visit. I’ve got to say, Xcaret is pretty incredible. There are 20 restaurants, 16 pools, and numerous on-site activities. Additionally, there are several parks nearby to visit (Xcaret, Xenses, Xenotes, Xplor, Xel-ha) each with different activities, all of which are included as part of our package. (Alcohol is also included, though everything is too sugary and watered down, which I suppose was to be expected.) So, we’re just spending our week holed up in one hotel room, visiting assorted parks to zipline and waterslide, explore cenotes and float down rivers. At the hotel, we’ve been trying out the different pools, and one day, Calla, Simon, and I set up camp in a little cave alcove and explored the small beach front. We’ve eaten at several different restaurants, and I’ve been extremely impressed with the food. One night, our waiter, Izzy, offered to bring us “chef’s choice” of seafood dining at its finest, also regaling us with stories of partying with celebrities in Punta Mita. Another night, the boys ate second dinner when first dinner was too spicy, and on a few occasions, Calla begged us to let her return to the kids’ club for the evening fiesta. After months of cold weather, I feel like we skipped right over spring and have landed into glorious, glorious summer. Our layers are packed away in our biggest suitcase (currently in hotel storage) and we are thrilled to be free of them until later in the year.

Machu Picchu

To rewind a bit, we spend our final weekend in Peru visiting Machu Picchu. We left on a Friday, first visiting Ollantaytambo and then taking a train to Aguas Calientes. Bright and early Saturday morning, - which also happened to be Justin’s birthday – we finally visited Machu Picchu. Justin is going to write more about our experience here, but just to say it was a lovely final weekend in Peru and with our new Deliberate Detour friends. We enjoyed walking around the small town and touring the markets, but at this point I think senioritis had really kicked in and all of us were feeling the adrenaline from being on the final leg of our trip and the kids were really eager to learn what sort of surprise we had in store for them the following week.

Heading Home…

I’m aiming to keep this, our second to last newsletter, somewhat brief (ha!) this week as I am eager to soak up the Mexican sun as well as our final moments of being away. I am feeling ready to go home. I hit this point as we were leaving Lima, and it’s only intensified. While we aren’t returning to the same country we left, our friends and family are there, awaiting us with open arms. I told Calla that I’m really excited to snuggle up on the couch with our big family fuzzy blanket, and you guys….she doesn’t remember the big family fuzzy blanket! She said, “Mom, we’ve been gone for a really long time. I can’t remember everything!” I forget, sometimes, that what amounts to just 1/41^st of my life is an entire fifth of hers. She is eager to see her friends, as well as her Japanese ghost husband and all of her “kids.”

I am somewhat concerned that I may have made too many plans for our first couple of weeks back home, as I’ve been told reverse culture shock is very real and takes time to process. At the same time, there is so much I want to do and so many people I want to see and I am pulsating with anticipation and excitement. I think we all desperately need our own individual living spaces again, particularly those of us who recharge best in quiet, closed quarters. Our children are looking forward to going to camp. We need this. I need this, the time, and long stretches of it to figure out what comes next. And yet, I am going to miss my kids. The thrill of their (not so) small (anymore) bodies being so close to mine, all of the time. Knowing the ins and outs of their days the way I never could when we were at home and they were in school all day. For this frozen year in time with them, I know I will look back and be infinitely grateful, my brain erasing the tantrums, the arguments, the screaming, and the challenges, like water over rock, time and again, until everything is pristine and smooth.

I am not a person who veers off course. I appreciate predictability and security, and this is what we had in Kirkland. Life often felt chaotic, as life does with jobs and three children and no family nearby. It’s been over a year, and I still cannot believe that we did this. What was a random thought shared over dinner more three years ago spiraled and assumed a life of its own, that we actually figured out how to pause our lives and walk away, knowing that this year could change us in ways that we never could have anticipated. Without all the answers, without a clear path, we leaped. I can’t always gauge how much the kids are absorbing from their year away. I see glimmers of changes in them, of course, just as any parent would across watching them over the course of a year. I look forward to seeing how their experiences on this trip reverberate as they transition back home. I hope that we have shown Jonah, Simon, and Calla that even big, scary ideas that feel well beyond the realm of possibility or beyond what people typically do are worth striving for, that it’s okay to not always follow a typical path, and that the norm is overrated. I am already in awe of their bravery, leaving the life they knew behind and embarking on this adventure with us. (Not like they had much of a choice, but still…) I am confident that our children have learned that the world is not a scary, unknowable place. In the context of the current political climate, I am even more thankful that they are learning this young. I have watched them cherish and foster small moments of connection: sitting down to lunch in a family’s home in Skoura, discussing education and peer relationships. In Slovenia, frolicking on open grass with children chattering in French, Flemish and German. Holding a little boy’s hand outside Cusco. Playing soccer with a new friend in Koh Lanta. Fishing in Sapa, communicating only with gestures. These moments, albeit fleeting, are real and true. They are why I travel and, I hope, why our children will continue to do so long after they leave our home.

I’ve encountered far less anti-American sentiment over the past several months than I anticipated. Pity, confusion, yes, but no outright hostility. I’ve encountered far less anti-Semetism that I anticipated, at least directly to my face. I don’t quite know what to make of any of this other than to say it’s been notable in its lack. 

I don’t know how it’s going to feel to come back home. After living out of suitcases for over a year, I imagine that our boxes and boxes of storage will feel overwhelming and unnecessary to us. (That said, I am excited to wear other dresses.) I am eager to go back to work. I don’t quite know what it will all look like yet, but I’ve got some ideas brewing. After several years of near single-minded focus on “what if we took a sabbatical….” there is space for new dreams to grow, new ideas to blossom, and new collaborations upon which to embark. I’ve already made some changes in my professional life that are allowing me to breathe more deeply and settle back into myself. What I do feel, after a year of traveling, is a deeper sense of trust in myself and my decision making, more at ease in my wise mind and a true sense of knowing that even if I don’t know what comes next, I will figure it out.

We plan to send one final newsletter after returning home, most likely filled with assorted listicles. For now, I’m going to drink a too sweet mezcalita and enjoy my final moments here in Mexico with my family.

Justin’s Soapbox

How serendipitous for me that my birthday happens to bookend the start and finish of our trip. A year ago I was having a nice birthday celebration in Ridgewood for my 40th, and on my 41st we ascended to Machu Picchu, a wonderful gift. It’s very convenient that I can mark that the entire of the time I was 40 was during the world trip, since I expect that as I get older I’ll get even worse at remembering when we did what and who was how old when, so this makes for a nice clean and memorable reference point.

The site of Machu Picchu itself is certainly impressive but my attention was continually focused on the surrounding views and the overall environment of the mountain canyons surrounding it. It’s ringed by beautiful steep mountains covered in lush greenery. It’s the kind of setting that someone might invent for a movie or video game, it’s almost too perfectly placed. I make no apologies for being a broken record about how beautiful the the mountains were seeing are (moooore mountains!) because they really are that great.

One aspect of the Inca empire we learned about from our guide was that in Machu Picchu and also Cusco, the Inca themselves were a ruling minority, like a governing aristocracy. The regular subjects, who were ethnically distinct from the Inca bloodline, were called “Runa” and were the common people that paid tribute to the Inca nobility. I was struck by this factoid because it helped me think a little bit more deeply about what I was seeing and hearing along the tour. My normal lazy thought process would generally say something like, “And here’s another Incan ruin, where all the Incas lived at the the time. Yep, the Inca empire, populated by the Incans.” Hearing about the diversity of the Runa and the distinction in social classes helped elevate the experience to where I could absorb what I was hearing with a greater level of nuance and complexity, and hopefully gives me a more realistic mental image of what the Incan civilization was like.

The cities and settlements around Machu Picchu were also arranged in so that there was about 20 miles between them and the hub of Machu Picchu, allowing for a signaling system to exist that could raise the alarm quickly across long distances. From what we could see from our vantage point among the mountaintops, this made a lot of sense.

All in all it was a fitting place to visit for our final Big Sight of the trip. The bus service up the mountain was efficient, the walk around the site was very manageable but not overly brief, and the we had a brisk hike all the way down the mountain and back to the village, where we went out for a great birthday dinner.

As we walked through the village I heard the sounds of Simon and Garfunkel, which leads me to this important musical anecdote. Now, ever since we entered Bolivia (three countries ago) we have been hearing a suspiciously large amount of Simon and Garfunkel music being played in stores, restaurants, hotel lobbies and the like. It’s rarely the original recordings, it’s usually an easy-listening Muzak version of either “The Sound of Silence” or “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” often orchestrated with Andean flutes and indigenous rhythms. Sara can attest that we’ve heard this very frequently for the past two months, way more than any other American music. So why this proclivity for S&G here in the region? Well, here’s my informed theory:

The most common tune anyone will hear when walking around these cities is ”El Condor Pasa”, a widely popular Peruvian folk song with a very catchy melody. It’s known as the “second national anthem” of Peru. Now as anyone who has spent a little bit of time with the heyday of 60’s folk rock knows, the second song off of Simon and Garfunkel’s 1969 album Bridge Over Troubled Water is their own rendition of “El Condor Pasa.”

My theory is that somehow through this homage, Simon and Garfunkel managed to ingratiate themselves to, if not the people of South America, at least to its various music programmers and playlist generators whose music gets pumped into these various locales. Perhaps I’m wrong about this but the pieces seem to fit!

Well on to Xcarat, the thoroughly ridiculous “hotel” we’ve made our last stop before returning home tomorrow. But calling it a hotel is like calling an aircraft carrier a boat. It is a lot, but it’s pretty enjoyable. I do appreciate that they have a semi-existent arcade with a functional pinball machine. 

I will say that the layout and design of this place and its surrounding parks has been an experience in itself. Everything is so big and spaced out and a lot of walking goes into getting from A to B. In some of the parks the pathways are long and windy to the point that you wonder if you’ve taken a wrong turn and ended up on a utility road behind the parking lot. 

I find it amusing how much more independence park goers are expected to have than would be expected at an American park. There are a lot of long water excursions like the underground cave you float through, or the very long “river” you float down (with a life vest) where the expectation is you just kinda do your best. And the fact that there are more bars than restrooms all over the parks make me wonder how often they have to deal with people getting a little too Tarzan on the rope swings. Altogether the parks feel a little like the legendarily dangerous and defunct Action Park, though not quite at that level of willfully endangerment.

At the Xenses illusion park, my brain couldn’t process the street-long illusion of the sideways townhouses that made walking uphill appear to be downhill, and vice versa. Having to push harder against an upward slope when all the visual cues tell you should be coasting downhill was effectively surreal.

Lastly, I need to put in a word about the visual design choices at the main Xcarat hotel. If I had to describe it in a phrase, I’d say it was “Flinstonian Retro-Futurism.” I know a lot of it is probably trying to echo Mayan culture to a certain extent, but the amount of boulder-and-cave design choices really makes me think more of Bedrock than Machu Picchu. See for yourself!

Jonah’s Musings

I’m in Mexico right now, and this wasn’t too much of a surprise because it was obvious that our surprise place was going to be somewhere between Peru and where we live, so I guessed Mexico. We are now this wonderful resort called Xcaret. It’s got a lot of things to do. There’s also other parks we’ve been to, where we’ve mostly done a lot of water activities, such as water slides, grabbing a rope and jumping into water, and doing lazy rivers.

I am very excited and a little nervous coming back home, but I think it’ll be really fun and interesting to see our house again and my room. And I’m mostly very excited to see my friends again. I think going back to school will be a challenge, but that’s not for two more months. I hope this trip will help me become more aware of my surroundings, and influence me even more about what the world around me really is like. It already has, Thank you so much for joining us on this amazing journey across the globe!

Simon’s Reflection

So, I went to Mexico. We’re at a beautiful resort. Everything is “free” here. (My parents paid for it. It’s free for me!) The first time I saw this place I ran over to get a popsicle right away and maybe three more after that. We’ve been having so much fun that we’ve almost conked out. We’ve been to really fun places with huge waterslides and huge foods. There’s an arcade here that I want to go back to every day. The place is so nice and I’m excited to go home!

When we go home, I will feel like a different boy. I will be excited to see my friends. I will be sad but also happy for the traveling to end. I’ve been homesick, but I’ve really enjoyed traveling, too. I think it will be good. Our home will feel so different when we get back. It will take weeks, months, or years to unpack! I have learned more about responsibility, like how to be a better kid and why you should be. Meeting kids from other cultures has also given me some hopes, like maybe seeing them again, which I probably will never but anyways… the trip has been so fun.

Calla’s Corner

Mommy: Calla, I want you to tell everyone about our surprise trip to Mexico.

Calla: Yes, I will. So, I’ve been traveling a year on this world trip. I’m here at Mexico now. I’m almost going back to my house. Just three more days! It’s practically a blast. I can’t wait that I’m going home in three days. It’s gonna be a blast. I like the world trip, but now it’s time for me to go back home and say hello to my toys and my pretend imaginary ghost husband. Whatever. I know that it’s going to be great when I go back home because having a blast is amazing and I love my family. My Mom and Dad also helped us plan this thing for our world trip. I love how they did that and I appreciate it. Today Mom’s sick, I’m sorry about her. Ok, I hope she’ll feel better someday. I hope she gets some medicine, drinks water. She’ll feel better soon I hope. [Ed note: Allergies, most likely.] So, I like to be at my house because it was being a blast, I hope when we get back I can say hi to all my yummy snacks, Bamba and Goldfish. So it’s amazing what I know that’s good. I would love to do that and it makes a great place for me to just make a good thing about that. Yeah.

Mommy: Thank you. Tell me about our hotel and all the fun parks we’re visiting.

Calla: Sure. So, um, I like this hotel. It’s amazing. It was my surprise at the end of the world trip. It’s fun. This hotel… has some fun water slides.

Mommy: Calla, you don’t like water slides.

Calla: But I’m still saying it! So this hotel is pretty much fun. I really like how I get to be here and tell Mom all her hard work to make this world trip complete.

Mommy; I’m curious, Calla, how do you think you’ve grown or changed on this world trip?

Calla: Well, first I’m gonna talk about how I’ve growed. I’m happy because it was my birthday on the world trip. I never had a birthday on a trip before. It’s really exciting to me. The boys and Daddy and Mommy did, too. My whole Schmidt family got birthdays on this world trip before. Also how I’ve grown. I used to be four and now I’m five. It feels so exciting to be here.

Mommy: And do you think anything will be different when you go home?

Calla: So, because that I changed, I’m telling you more about how I like this place because when I go home everything will like change like a tornado sweeps up the sand and it turns into a snowy mountain. Change, see? It like changes the weather. How I changed I don’t really know.

Mommy: So Calla were going to send out one final newsletter with some of our favorite things, but in the meantime, any last words for our readers?

Calla: Oh yes. Thank you everybody. I hope you had a nice time and also please read some of my other blogs. I hope you enjoy them. Please read every single one of mine and my whole Schmidt family. Bye bye now.

See you back in Washington!

xo,
Sara, Justin, Jonah, Simon, and Calla