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

September 14, 2017 Jordan Nonfiction 16

At Home in the World: Reflections on Belonging While Wandering the Globe
Tsh Oxenreider
Thomas Nelson, 2017

At one time or another all of us have briefly considered what it would be like to pack up our family and travel the globe. It’s a crazy, scary, exciting dream for most of us, but for Tsh Oxenreider and her family it was reality. In her newest book At Home in the World: Reflections on Belonging While Wandering the Globe, Tsh gives us a first hand look into her family’s 9 month trip around the world. She and her husband Kyle sold their house, packed up their three kids (all under the age of 10) and set off for one whole school year of travel, experiencing extraordinary adventures and ordinary life in different cultures on four continents.

This was not a book that I was interested in initially, but I kept hearing rave reviews about it from so many trusted sources that I decided to give it a try, and I’m so glad I did! Tsh writes with a style that is, strangely, both conversational and poetic at the same time. Each chapter chronicles their experience in a new country, whether that’s fighting jet lag, careening down crowded streets in a dilapidated taxi, or avidly absorbing mind-boggling beauty before them.

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And what I really love so much about this book is that Tsh does not even attempt to gloss over the really, really hard parts of traveling with young children. She is completely candid about the difficulties that arise when you spend 24 hours a day with the same people day in and day out, often in pretty cramped quarters. But she is also open about the blessings that come from being together in this way, getting to know each other in a special way through shared experiences.

At Home in the World is a book I will recommend to many people, and I think it would make a great gift. It’s very readable and I flew through it, enthralled by the story unfolding before me. Plus the cover is gorgeous, which matters. At least to me. The only downside to reading this book is that it’s making me crave a trip now! Europe was already high on my ‘one day I’ll go there’ list, but after hearing it described in this book I’m desperate to go as soon as possible.

I was already familiar with Tsh and a little bit of her story from listening to her top rated podcast The Simple Show. You should check it out, if you are a podcast listener who has not yet heard of her. Now that I’ve read her book I feel like I understand her point of view better and listening to the podcast in the future will be a more in depth experience. She also has three previous books, which I have not read, Organized Simplicity, Notes from a Blue Bike, and One Bite at a Time.

If you’ve read this book, what did you think about it? If you haven’t read it, do you think you might?

16 Comments

  5. Super cool name, “Tsh.” Random, I know. I just traveled from Central Texas to Washington, DC, to New York City and back again with my twins. Now that they are older, I find it easier and more enjoyable than when they were toddlers. Truth be told.

    • That’s what I thought when I saw her name too! Toddlers are what keeps me from venturing out more in this stage of life. I’m thinking once everyone is 110% potty trained we might be more adventurous 😉

  7. This sounds like a great book. My husband and I have talked about doing this for years, but never actually taken the plunge.

    • It was fascinating to read her account of their travels because it’s so outside what I ever would have thought was reasonable with a family. But she makes it sound totally doable! I think I want to wait till my kids are a little older but my husband and I would love to travel too.

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