Just a few weeks removed from our landing back on Canadian soil and there’s much to process. During our cross-globe venture, sitting down to tap the keys of my Chromebook seemed like a treat. Here, it becomes one of the many things that I must set an intention to do. Most days are consumed with an endless barrage of home maintenance to attend to, kids’ emotions to process, life’s work to contemplate......mind clutter. I have more than once found myself sitting with an empty head in front of a white screen. To write these entries means my heart needs to be plugged in and present. Perhaps this piece, in particular, is the most difficult to write because it requires a reflection of what it all meant. It was indeed more than just a 5-month adventure abroad, more than a blip in time, more than a season of life. It meant a deviation from the standard script and it felt empowering and mobilizing. A large part of our June return date was for my Gigi’s (Grandfathers) funeral. He had passed...
On our honeymoon in 2007, Dan and I made a pact that we would always consider ourselves "rich" in life if we stayed connected to the traveling spirit we established in our 20's. Back then, it seemed easy. We'd pour ourselves a glass of wine, relax into a daydream, and a few hours later our booking confirmations would be in hand. This time around, the decision seemed a little more daunting, the stakes a little higher, the costs a little greater. Yet almost twenty years later, we have re-committed to the pact we made so many moons ago with one significant alteration. In our wildest dreams, we could not have imagined that the desire to mobilize would become even greater as we would get to see wonder through the eyes of our children. So in a nutshell here's our mission statement. The WHY: Because we can't think of anything that ignites or provokes us more Because we view this as an invitation for our family to come together as a team and to foster resilience, adap...
Oscar doesn’t have it. Over the past 48 hours this kid has been a champ at acclimatizing to his new environment. He has flipped his sleeping and eating habits effortlessly, and snoozes soundly and peacefully while the rest of us find ourselves oddly awake at, let’s say, 1:48am. Our first day in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) began with us waking him up at 6:30am (the rest of our crew was up around 4am) to step out into the streets of Saigon. The learning curve with travel is steep and unavoidable, and in less than 15 minutes, we were already admonishing ourselves on how, “we should have been astute enough to read the look in our hotel receptionists eyes” when we suggested we were going to “walk” to our said location. Pungent scents, blaring horns, crumbly curbs and an overwhelming amount of motorbikes descending and weaving uncomfortably close. Within moments I saw a certain look descend over our Indie, a combination of jet lag and culture shock colliding all at once within her sle...
Hahaha that is the BEST! Nice dance moves Lynne ! Love seeing the happy smiling faces💕
ReplyDeleteHugs to all, Nana Kathy