Going back

Wow time sure does fly when you are having the time of your life.

Here we are at the end of our life changing journey and Erika and I  feel a tightness in our throats as the grips of reality come slowly back to haunt us.

I would never attempt to summarize in words how this event has truly influenced our soul and made us better human beings.  You have to experience it yourself.  And I highly recommend it to anyone.

Life during this trip was of course very different then what we expected. Let us revisit some of the apprehensions we had at the beginning of the trip.

I definitely had some concerns regarding homeschooling, everyone kept telling me “That’s going to be so hard”, “Do you think you have the patience”, “I could never do that”.  I left with one old chinese proverb in my head:

“ Tell me, I forget. Show me, I remember. Let me do it myself, I understand.”

And I loved it, it was a truly emotional and rewarding experience to be a part of my kids education.  I really understand how teacher can love their jobs (if they have good work conditions), its a real thrill to see a child finally understand something out of his grasp.  I give more credit to Osk and Est for their thirst of knowledge than my skills as a teacher.

Well what can I say, you can’t win them all !  What’s nice is that we know how to say mashed potato and milk in 12 languages ;).  We will have Oskar checked out with by the doctors when we get to France and see how his growth hormones are tracking.  We are not looking forward to this full day blood test, which Oskar considered to be the worst day of his life so far.

Here again we were lucky.  You know me, I like to be prepared so I had 3.8 kg in my medical travel bag, from sutures, scalpels, needles, syringes, to malaron, antibiotics and immodium and many other drugs, ointments and bandages.  Oskar was sick once with food poisoning.  Estelle go a planetary wart which we have frozen off.  Erika never got sick and I had one of mild case of montezuma’s but that was all.  We never got a cold, fever or anything that kept us in bed.  My insurance with Bupa was not used (which is the way we like it).

This was Erika’s responsibility and she packed so that we could go 10 days without doing laundry.  We never had to go more than a week and it was never a hassle since we often stayed in serviced apartments that had great facilities.  We never had to use a laundromat and never paid for expensive hotel laundry ($4 a sock) and when we got to the low wage countries we did laundry for $1 a kilo !

!!!! We were in constant contact with friends and family (F&F) via skype which allowed F&F to travel with us while keeping us abreast of what was happening back at home.  We where having too much fun to miss you guys too much... I hope you understand...

This experience has really given me the time to think and realize how lucky we are.  It has given me a mental image of what we should strive to be as a family everyday going forward.  That the real gifts of life are free:  Love, friendship, family, air, sun, earth and to laugh.  The world is really a beautiful place when one takes the time to step back and look around see what is truly important.

I will leave you with this piece of wisdom which continues to guide my every decision:

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.  He said, ‘My son the battle is between two ‘wolves’ inside us all.

It is anger, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego.

It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather:  “Which wolf wins?”  The old man simply replied.

Thank you for following us around the world, thank you for your love and friendship and remember to feed the good wolf. ;-)