A Claremorris family of nine are packing up their home life and taking it on the road to central America for a family gap year. Kevin Griffiths and his Danish wife Franckiska Blitger are leaving their life in Claremorris in 60 days along with their seven children, aged from 15 years old down to one year old, to take on the adventure of a life time.
Speaking to the Mayo Advertiser this week, Kevin Griffiths, who is the station manager of Claremorris Community Radio, outlined the plans for their adventure. “We’re heading off in 60 days first to New York then straight down to Cancun in Mexico and from there I’ve lined up a 15 seater bus and the real adventure begins,” he revealed. “The first stop is in Hopkins in Belize where we will be getting involved with a children’s home and multi media project in the town. We’ll spend a while there and from there we’ll be heading to the likes of Honduras, Mexico, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Guatemala. It’s all an adventure but we are looking forward to it and getting involved with local communities and projects along the way.”
While some may think it crazy to take your children out of school for a full year, it’s not going to be all fun and games for the children, Kevin explains. “We’ve got the curriculum for the kids for next year and all the books, we’ll be home schooling them over there so they can be ready for when they come back to school the following year. That’s the one bit that the children aren’t looking forward to, there’ll be no excuses of ‘I forgot my homework’. But they will learn so much about life in different countries and cultures over the year that they would never learn here at home. It will be something that they will never forget.”
As for the preparation for the trip, that has been going on for a while now and will continue right up until they touch down in Central America. “We’ve done a lot of research and went to Belize last year to have a look around and see is it a place that we would like to spend some time to start off. We’ve been keeping up to date on the goings on in the different central American countries because things can be dodgy in certain areas and we’ve paid a lot of attention to that. From next week on it’s vaccination time and we’ll be getting all our shots to get us ready for the trip.”
In 60 days’ time one family is going to head off on one very big adventure and you can keep in touch with their travels and adventures on their website which they will be updating on their progress at www.jaffamedia.com/TeamGB/Home html
