EU419: On the Journey Part 2 with Nora McDonald

We’re back with another On the Journey episode! Pam, Anna, and Erika talked to Living Joyfully Network member Nora McDonald, who was also on the podcast a few years ago. Nora shared an update about her family and spoke about how her unschooling journey has progressed. She also dove deep into a topic that she’s spoken a lot about on the Network, which is cultural differences. Nora is British and she currently lives in Costa Rica. Many of the expectations we take for granted in our home countries do not exist in other cultures. It’s a fascinating angle to consider as we question paradigms and realize that people are different. It was a really interesting conversation and we hope it resonates with you! Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube. THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE EU340: On the Journey with Nora McDonald We invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network, a warm and welcoming online community of like-hearted parents. It’s a non-judgmental space where you can steep in these unconventional ideas around parenting, relationships, and learning, and explore what they might look like day-to-day in your uniquely wonderful family. We offer a free month trial so you can see if it’s a good fit for you. Click here to join us. Sign up to our mailing list on Substack to receive our email newsletters as well as new articles about learning, parenting, and so much more! Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about exploring unschooling and navigating relationships. EPISODE TRANSCRIPT ANNA: Hello everyone, I’m Anna Brown from Living Joyfully, and I’m joined by my co-host Erika Ellis and Pam Laricchia, as well as our guest today, Nora McDonald. Hello to you all. I’m so excited to welcome Nora to the podcast again. She first joined us in episode 340 in January of 2023. Nora is a longtime member of the Living Joyfully network and she brings the most interesting discussions. She loves nuance and to toss around ideas and process all the pieces. And that is definitely my happy place. So I’m thrilled that we can bring a bit of that to the podcast audience. So, Nora, to get us started, can you tell us a little bit about you and your family and what everybody’s into right now? NORA: Yeah, sure. My name is Nora. I’m British, but I have now been in Costa Rica for four and a half years. And I’ve sort of been back and forth for nearly 20 years because my husband is Costa Rican. So we have two kids. Ruben is 12. Liam is about to turn 9 next month.  I’m super into food, cooking, and baking. I have joined a cookbook club here where every month people sort of choose a theme and bring all different food to share on that theme. I also sort of accidentally started something similar, kind of on a smaller scale. So I’m doing a lot of cooking at the moment, which I’m really enjoying. I also like making British food as well, a little link with back home. I also really love history. I’ve been sort of rediscovering history, having really liked it as a child. I spend a lot of my time listening to history podcasts and reading history books. Everything history at the moment, which has been super fun. I also really like board games, which has slightly fallen by the wayside because of all the cooking. But I have discovered tha