Hi, kia ora, hola!!

We are a blended family of six kiwis, five born in Aotearoa (New Zealand), one born in Spain during early 2022. We've been a worldschooling, digital nomad family since Februray 2020.

My name is Melissa, I'm the mama (and the author and speaker) of our family.

Rimaha is my wonderful husband. He lovingly took on my first two children as his own and raised them with me since they were quite small. He's our musician dad who resigned from his job as a truck driver so we could fulfil a great dream - to travel the world together.

We unschool/worldschool our kids, and do our best to show our kids they can have any life they choose.

Rotorua is the first place we called home, as both Rimaha (hubby/dad) and I grew up there and my eldest two children were born there and still call it home. We have since lived in Sydney and Central Coast, NSW, Australia, Hoi An, Phong Nha, and Phu Quoc, Vietnam, Kas, Turkey, Crete, Greece, La Herradura, Spain, Bansko, Bulgaria, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Dominican Republic, and Japan.

Rimaha moved to Sydney, Australia in 2005. In 2006 my then partner and I also moved to Sydney, but I chose to return to Rotorua for the birth of my first child.

My eldest two children were born in Rotorua, but after leaving a toxic relationship in 2009 we moved around a lot (I've written a book about my experiences, you can learn more at my website, melissaawiringi.com). This means I got to live in some pretty amazing places like Papamoa and Bay of Islands.

In 2011, my oldest two children and I moved to Bondi to live with Rimaha. We travelled to Europe in 2013 without the kids which reignited my dream to travel the world with the kids. In 2014 we got married in the beautiful Cook Islands and in the years that followed we travelled around Australia and New Zealand many, many times.

Our children are amazing. I feel so grateful to have them with us. Here is a little about the wonderful humans sharing our journey with us.

Noah is another musician, he's into music production (with Garageband) and he's regularly uploading his music to SoundCloud. He also enjoys flying his drone, he'd like to save and buy a Mavic drone and he's interested in drone photography.

Aaliyah is into her art. She is AMAZING at anime art and I'm encouraging her to share her work on Redbubble so she can learn how to earn an income from her skills.

Elijah is full of energy. He didn't sleep for the first 2.5 years of life (I barely recovered in time for Manaia's arrival). He learned to swim before he was one (he had to relearn every summer though). He walked at nine months old. He never rode a trike, he went straight to a balance bike. He didn't want to know about a three-wheel scooter, because he wanted to be like the big kids. He first rode his pedal bike (never had training wheels) at two years old. Now, he's into coding, basketball and soccer.

Manaia is our youngest. Born in Spain in January 2022, she has only ever known life around the world. She has celebrated her birthdays in Bulgaria, New Zealand and Colombia. Manaia is full of life and loves to play. She also loves going on a plane ride. I love that she's embraced our life of travel.

Together, we have a mission to see the world. In February 2020, we began our journey, flying into Queenstown, New Zealand and road-tripping up the country. In March flew to Asia with a goal to spend time in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Singapore... Perhaps a bit of Thailand and Malaysia then from Singapore we planned to fly business class to Istanbul (thanks air point hacks - yes that was five seats for $800 - you read that correctly). We'd hoped to spend just under a month in the beautiful country of Turkey before heading to Germany. After this, we thought we'd head over and walk the camino de santiago. With a hope and a prayer that WW3 doesn't break out before we get there!!

WW3 didn't happen, thankfully. But travel restrictions did. So none of that itinerary happened. Instead we did what we do best. Flex. We happily stayed where we could, and pivoted when we needed to.

This blog, is our journey, with all our stories. We started writing these throughout 2020 and beyond. Many I gave up on publishing as the travel blogging industry had died and we were quickly running out of savings. But here we are, back with a our fresh new blog, and purpose. I'm driven to share all my learnings with you, to help you create the worldschooling, digital nomad lifestyle you want. Plus navigate all the places, with guidance from us, and our personal experiences of living and worldschooling around the world.

If you're here to find out more, you can continue to follow our journey here or on Instagram, instagram.com/worldtravelambitions.

Awesome, chur, and thank you for following on our adventure into the unexpected and unknown ✨✈️