How I Took My Kids Out of School and Moved to a Greek Island for *Three Months*

Seems that many millennial (heck, all) parents right now are questioning the status quo, because it hasn't worked for us.

School for twelve years. Five years at university. A good corporate job. Repeat every day for 40 years and retire.

They're starting to explore non-traditional schooling options. Homeschooling. Worldschooling. Even 'unschooling' is apparently becoming a thing right now (not even sure exactly what that means). I'm one of the questioners. Here's why.

My little boy is gorgeous. A great learner. Follows the rules. A teacher's dream. And yet, at the ripe old age of six, I could always see the system wearing him down. He'd come home irritated. He'd lash out, overtired and exhausted from trying to hold his little (big) emotions in for six hours a day. Social situations were wonky. And his little light started to dim.

And so, I pulled him out, just for three months, to see whether it would make a difference. Right now, he's attending a worldschool in Greece.

Since sharing that story, I've had hundreds of comments (thanks to a couple of viral posts) from women just like me who are curious about how to make it work for their family. So, here's the ultimate guide to how I made it happen, including:

• The exact worldschooling program I chose
• The logistics of uprooting your life, pulling your kids out of school and travelling to another country
• Real talk, including my expectations v reality
• The costs involved, and the financial Jenga involved in covering the investment
• What I do for work, and the different ways other families are making it work for them
• Things I wish I knew before I booked (and what I would do differently)
• And more

I will add to this guide over time, so if you have any questions please leave them in the comments and I will answer them as best I can.

Please also remember that this is simply my own experience; I paid full price to attend the Boundless Life worldschooling program in Syros, Greece and my thoughts are my own. Please share with others if you find it useful! I could have paywalled this guide, but wanted to make it free to help as many people as possible because truly, this has been the adventure of a lifetime.

Worldschooling (and the one I chose)

What worldschooling actually means (in plain English)

I had to ask Chatty-G the answer to this one because I still can't quite articulate it myself:

Worldschooling is an educational movement and lifestyle that treats the entire planet as a classroom. Families replace traditional textbooks with experiential travel and cultural immersion, allowing children to learn history, geography and social skills firsthand by engaging directly with different global communities.

And right now, it's having a moment as millennial parents especially start to question the status quo and work becomes more remote.

Boundless Life is probably the best known (and most professionally run) worldschooling option out there right now, and I say that loosely, as someone who is absolutely not ingrained in the worldschooling community and who isn't familiar with every other option out there (so don't come at me!). This is the option I went with, and this guide is based on my own experience as a full-fee-paying participant.

What Boundless Life actually is (and why I chose it over every other option)

I won't lie: the first time I found out about Boundless Life I needed to Google it just to make sure it wasn't a cult. I mean, a group of families all removed from their home country, living together in a different place and having their kids educated remotely (and that logo?). You could forgive me for thinking so.

Turns out it's not a cult. Instead it's quite literally everything I've ever wanted as a mum of two with diehard wanderlust, the ability to work from anywhere, two young kids to wrangle and a penchant for holidays focused on 'pretend living' in new locations instead of ticking off tourist traps.

Pre-kids, I visited fistfuls of countries: young, wild and free. Postpartum and mid-COVID, I started to get the itchiest of feet but couldn't for the life of me figure out how to travel with two little freeloaders in tow.

I gave it a whirl anyway; in 2022 we put our two- and four-year-old on a plane and hauled them across Europe for three months. The result? A lot of special memories, but even more exhaustion, meltdowns, tantrums and hours spent inside in the midday sun while the babies napped. It was less adventure of a lifetime, and more parenting in a different country on hard mode.

Grateful? Yes. Ready to pick up and do it again? Hell no.

Enter Boundless Life. In April, we joined 44 other families on a Greek island called Syros for three months as part of the structured Boundless worldschooling program. Had I been to Syros before? No. Had I even heard of it before stumbling across it? Also no.

The children attend a dedicated world school each day, following the Finnish curriculum. In case you didn't know either (I sure didn't), the Finnish curriculum is widely regarded as one of the best in the world, and is delivered in a way that would be unrecognisable to anyone who went through the Australian or US system.

The students' days are built around quests: learning about the island, doing pottery, theatre games, and working on projects that align with their natural interests. School finishes mid-afternoon and the kids spill out into the village square to play, without screens and without the logistical machinery we'd built up at home just to get our kids socialising.

For the parents, the whole Boundless set-up is equally disorienting in the best possible way. There are events just about every day, and parents connect over coffee and lunches, activities and common values. Nobody needs three months' notice to catch up. And parenting here feels like what people mean when they talk about a village. I hadn't realised how much I was missing that until I found it.

It's pretend living, the ability to get immersed in a culture, children who settle and make friends, and everything I wanted my first three-month European adventure to be.

Boundless Life: Syros, Greece and other locations

Boundless Life operates in a heap of different locations across Europe, Asia and South America, and from what I hear, there are more on the table too. In addition to Syros, there's (in order of the ones I want to do):

• La Barra (Uruguay)
• Sintra (Portugal), although I hear this location may be moving to Cascais, which is the one I most want to do!
• Estepona (Spain)
• Kamakura (Japan)
• Kotor (Montenegro)
• Pistoia/Tuscany (Italy)
• …and I hear Annecy, France is on the horizon, too

From what I can see, most families pick their first location based on personal preference. Once they're in the program though, community becomes another huge factor, with families often choosing subsequent locations based on where their friends (and their kids' friends) are travelling to next.

Things I wish I'd known before booking

True to form (anyone who knows me knows I generally make wild, last-minute decisions), I booked our Boundless Life experience just six weeks out from the start date.

I found out about Boundless Life in March, and it was an immediate yes in my bones. I knew I would make it work, and due to some difficult life circumstances I wanted it to be sooner rather than later. I signed up for an information session and the next day was on a call with a family rep. By the end of the call, I knew I wanted to go to Syros. The only hitch? It was sold out for the next three cohorts.

So, I did what any non-rational person would do: my very non-woo-woo self sent a little signal to the universe that if it was meant to be, a spot would come up. A few days later, the family rep called. A new house had been added to the Syros inventory, and I was in if I wanted it, for April, about six weeks out. I was an immediate yes.

"Was it the right decision for us? Ab-so-freaking-lutely."

At the same time, there are a few things I wish I'd known ahead of time:

Logistics

My personal roadmap: how I made it happen in 90 days

First things first: I don't recommend doing Boundless last minute like I did. Spots sell out way in advance these days, and booking last minute makes the logistics harder. But of course, I did book last minute, so here's what the steps looked like for me, in case stepping it out like this helps you see how it might be possible for you, too.

My son attends a private school on the Gold Coast, and there's a waitlist to get in. I called the enrolment officer to ask. What was at first a cautious 'no, we would not hold his place' turned into an enthusiastic yes after I was asked to put the request in writing for the principal. Here's what I wrote, in case it helps your case also:

In the end, we were required to pay his tuition for the term and submit an application for exemption from school to the principal. This is a requirement in the Australian state I live in. My understanding is that the principal can approve this if it's under a certain number of days, and he did!

My daughter attends the daycare attached to the school, which also has a long waitlist. I spoke to the head of the centre, who said approval would be required. Here's the formal request I sent:

In the end, the daycare was okay with holding her place as long as we paid fees, but there was one big hitch: government funding is cut in my state if you're overseas for more than six weeks, so holding her place would mean paying full fees for a time, unless I dropped days or another family took her place for those dates. Fortunately, another family took three of her five days while we were away, I dropped Fridays altogether, and some families took the remaining days on an ad hoc basis.

Midway through steps one and two, I was told I needed to make a final decision. I took the place and paid up front, hoping the rest would work itself out. It did, but it was a risk: a case of jumping and hoping the parachute would appear. I have a tendency to do that, and it has a tendency of working out.

Flights were booked (using points), we packed a couple of suitcases and we were ready to go. Accommodation, transfers, schooling and everything else were managed by Boundless, so logistically it really was a turnkey solution.

As an Australian family, we attended our three-month cohort on the short-stay Schengen visa, which allows visa-free travel in the Schengen Zone for three months in any 180-day period. Because I run a remote business and would be working (lightly, in the end), I called the Greek Embassy in Australia to check this was permissible. They confirmed it would be okay, so long as my time in the country was under 90 days. Other participants staying longer applied for a Digital Nomad visa.

To help fund the trip, I rented out our home for three months. New tenants signed a lease just a few days out, so it required a lot of last-minute packing!

My proudest life achievement to date was fitting both cold- and warm-weather wardrobes for myself and two children for three months into one big suitcase and two carry-ons. This turned out to be very, very important, because it's impossible to carry any more than that as a solo mum with two young kids.

If I had my time again, I'd pack even lighter: one mid-size suitcase, and I'd ditch the kids' backpacks (or make them much smaller). The only time I really felt stressed was packing and unpacking our haul during ten days in London at the start of the trip. You can always pack more lightly than you think. So much can be bought when you arrive, and you likely don't need as much as you think (toys especially).

Money, costs and financial Jenga

How I made it work financially

The truth is, worldschooling (and Boundless Life in particular) isn't cheap, and it's a privilege to be in a season of life where it's both financially and logistically possible. For us, it worked for two reasons:

• I run an online business and can work remotely, though it was really in 'maintenance mode' while we were away, because it's hard to focus when surrounded by fun on a Greek island.
• I own a home, and was able to rent it out while we were away, which provided some income.

For other families we met along the way, it looked a little different:

In our Syros group it really was a mix of all of the above. Some families didn't work at all. Most had one parent working at least some of the time. And then there were solo parents like me: I worked part time; another solo mum worked full time. Luckily, every Boundless location comes with a co-working hub, and the view from ours was pretty spectacular.

What it actually cost us (full breakdown)

Keep a couple of things in mind. One: we booked the spring Syros cohort, probably the most 'expensive' one, as demand is high for a warm-season Greek island. There are many less pricey locations and seasons, and Boundless has a calculator on its website. Two: Boundless prices in euro, which pushes the price up for Australians (and Americans).

I get that this might cause sticker shock. It did for me when I first saw the price. But context is important: how much would a three-month trip to Europe with your family cost you? How much is rent? Schooling? Activities? When I calculated our family's annual spend with education, housing and bills included, it came to about $40,000 AUD a quarter, so the cost is actually comparable to living at home.

On top of these core costs were day-to-day living expenses (mostly food and drinks), a weekend in Santorini, a weekend in Paros, a mums' night in Mykonos and a mid-cohort break to London. Otherwise, our days were spent at beaches or the square, both of which were free.

Juggling work and Boundless (aka Boundless is a full-time job in itself)

Whilst you can work during Boundless Life, there's usually so much going on with activities and social gatherings that it can feel like a full-time job! If you suffer from intense bouts of FOMO like I do, it can be challenging to juggle both. Sustaining my business? Fine. But mustering the time, energy and space to grow it was something I decided to forgo about two or three weeks in. A few reasons:

Are these champagne problems? Sure. But they're worth being mindful of if you intend to (or need to) work full time while 'doing Boundless.'

What I do for work

I'm an ex-lawyer who started an online business called Lifestyle Business School around ten years ago. I create content on the internet and sell digital products. Remote work like this is perfectly suited to worldschooling, because it can be done from anywhere. Do I recommend it? Sure, it's changed my life. Is it easy and quick? No.

The reality (the bit Instagram doesn't show you)

Pulling your kids out to do something different is often held up as the 'happily ever after,' when actually it's really just the start of a whole new adventure: imperfect, full of bumps, and maybe a little different to the reality sold online. Here's our experience, expectation v reality style.

Worldschooling, for us, wasn't so much a picture-perfect fairytale solution as an opportunity to step out of the rigidity of our schooling schedule at home and try something new. Actually, it taught us all resilience, up-levelled our social (and my parenting) skills and required us to adapt, skills that will serve us when we return home, too.

My son (6) didn't always want to go into the classroom; he's quiet, and our class had 16+ students, most with big personalities. He eventually found his person, and that was a big turning point. My daughter (4) found the big days tiring, so I kept her home some days for a break. She mostly had a great time.

What our days actually looked like

On weekends we'd wake later, then head to the beach, hang out with other families, or catch a ferry to another island for an adventure.

The highs (in no particular order)

The lows (also real)

I want to be clear: 80% of this experience has been pinch-me incredible. Truly. And also? It wasn't perfect. Nothing ever is.

Does the reality match the expectation?

Here's the truth: this experience transformed all of us, but not necessarily in the way I'd expected. The (perhaps rose-tinted) hope was that a world school would 'solve' the issues we'd had at home. The reality? Worldschooling has been the start of a new chapter, not a picture-perfect fairytale.

Changing your environment doesn't mean everything magically settles. The same challenges follow you; they just show up somewhere new. And then there was me. I expected to arrive and instantly relax into the slower Greek way of living. That's been the unexpected part: learning how to actually be in a life that isn't rushed. To sit down and drink my coffee. To prioritise time with new friends instead of measuring my days by how much I produced. To focus on being, instead of always doing.

Would we do it again?

A heart-stopping, resounding yes.

The biggest gifts so far? More resilience. More confidence. More softening into a version of life that doesn't require or reward rushing, to-do lists or how much you can get done in a day.

"Once you've experienced a different way of living, it's hard to unsee… and even harder to go back."

Personally, I think a year back to back would be tiring. I love the idea of doing one Boundless cohort a year, in the spring: three months of life elsewhere, without giving up life at home. For now, we're letting this experience shape how we live back home (but don't be surprised if you see us on another plane very soon).

FAQs and resources