FAQ
Wednesday, January 6th, 2010Auckland, New Zealand
We keep being asked questions (which is nice).
We’ll start with Grandpa’s one at dinner tonight: How are you kids settling in?
Mostly it’s nice, but when it gets to bedtime it feels funny coz you know you’re not moving on in the morning. ~ Kboy12
It’s nice to be in one place. For now, anyway. ~ Kgirl10
Tessa didn’t say anything, but we answered for her. She’s unsettled. She woke screaming in the middle of the night a couple of nights back, and when we go out she holds tightly to an adult’s hand the whole time. This is the kind of behaviour that would not have surprised us when we set out – we did not expect it upon our return!
Are you having trouble driving?
Well, we DO keep turning the windscreen wipers on instead of the indicators, but apart from that, driving our van is a breeze after the clunky motorhomes! I still find myself looking the wrong way at roundabouts, but we overcompensate by looking both ways three times to be sure! Certainly being back on the left-hand side feels normal; we just need to get used to our particular vehicle again.
How did Jboy14 cope with living in a confined space? (he’s our lad who likes to take himself off to his room – which admittedly he shares with three others!! – or to climb a tree on his own for quiet reflective *space*)
My initial answer was “he just coped”. Then I realised, he withdrew inside himself when there was no physical space to retreat to. And we discovered it is easier to call a boy down from a tree than to draw him out of his shell.
Where would you go back to?
It depends what for: Malaysia for roti canai….Big Brother Mouse in Luang Prabang if we wanted to contribute to some excellent work….Ho Chi Minh City if we felt like a fast-paced wild ride….China or Turkey for appreciation of our family….Mongolia to stay on the ranch (and all that goes with that)….Tallinn coz we simply liked it….France for beautiful communities and atmosphere and amazing colours and faraway skies….actually, *anywhere* in a motorhome!….Bulgaria for a timewarp…..Greece for a trip even further back to ancient civilisations and amazing scenery and flaky pastries and great cheese and olives and beaches….Italy coz we missed the important stuff (like Florence and Naples and Venice!)….and we didn’t even get to Scotland or London as per our plan so perhaps we could try again….and the Lake District in England was stunning (we’d love to go hiking there – and there’s meant to be a great lake district in Turkey too).
It really does depend on your purpose. Recently I happened across a job in Uganda working for an aid project – Rob was well-qualified for it, it could be said our family had proven we could manage to live abroad for an extended period of time……so instead of tripping around the world for a year, we *could* have been living in Africa for two. But we’re not. However, as I say, where we would travel to depends on the purpose.
Did you weep when you went into the supermarket? Don’t you miss Sainsburys?
We’re fairly stable emotionally! But yes, NZ supermarkets do lack the range of Sainsburys and Carrefour. That said, we saw REAL mozarella in our local Pak-n-Save the other day. Not at a price we would be willing to pay, but it was there! The thing about the supermarket here is it’s just all so *the same*; there is no novelty.
How do you think ERgirl3 will cope with Rob going back to work?
This question has come when friends have seen how limpetly stuck to Rob she still is!
We’ve had one mini-trial. The day Rob had to take The Bear Cave to Leipzig he left the rest of us in Berlin. We made sure ER knew he was going for the whole day and would not be back before bedtime (just in case). She cried. We walked. Actually we had to walk for about five kilometres through residential streets in search of a bakery until we found somewhere to eat breakfast. At some point on the walk she stopped crying.
I guess she’ll get used to her Dadda not being here, and we’ll remind her what a privilege it was to have him for such a long time.
What stuff did you take that you didn’t need?
We had more cold weather gear than we needed – but if we had actually managed to find snow instead of leaving the day it arrived every time, we would have used all we had! (If we travelled again, we’d probably make an effort to avoid sub-zero temperatures and then we’d be able to take far fewer clothes). Early on we sent home some clothing with Grandpa – we pretty much ended up having two winter tops and pants and two summer tops and pants each. That was plenty to carry, although handwashing is hard on clothes and by the time we got home, we needed to have a ceremonial burning of some items!
We all picked up hiking boots. But my Keens sandals were soooooooo amazingly comfortable that even when it was below zero I wore them with two pairs of woollen socks. Next time I’d only take Keens (and flip-flops for using in grotty showers).
Do togs worn once every seven months count as wasted space in my back pack?
I took minimal makeup and didn’t use any of it even once. We also had a bagful of medication, which we did not need to touch. For this we are thankful. But just because we only needed band-aids and eyedrops, we do not regret carrying antibiotics, steristrips, bandages or allergy meds. I could do without the makeup though.
We took a laptop and loved having it. But we’d take a smaller lighter one next time. At first we didn’t like the cramped keyboard, but you get used to it. Smaller is better!
We took two cameras; our “real” one and a smaller point-n-shoot. The little one had the better zoom, and this was invaluable for portrait shots from a distance. It was also good for the children to be able to use a camera without fear of dropping it (*that* was left up to Rob – and of course it was the good camera that fell out of the bag, wasn’t it!)
What did you take that you were pleased you had?
Having our own metal drink bottles and a steripen meant we avoided buying hundreds and hundreds of plastic water bottles that just end up in landfill.
Merino shirts: cool in summer, warm in winter, fast-drying and non-stinky.
Walkie-talkies were invaluable for us travelling in two vehicles – smaller families may not appreciate them quite the same! (And Rob adds GPS!!!!!!)
Camera and laptop (see above) and pencil-n-paper journals.
Keens sandals (see above).
Circular needles and sock wool (Rach) – Ipods (Rob and the children).
What did you wish you had taken with you?
A tripod for the camera.
More than one Bible.
Have you had many visitors or are you feeling lonely?
Definitely not lonely! We’ve been invited out for meals, the phone’s been ringing (we especially liked the call from a neighbour-across-the-road, who had caught an enormous fish and needed help to eat it!) and people have been dropping in for anything from fifteen minutes to the whole day. (We’re so busy living in the real world that we are only slowly getting online – apologies to those who have comments awaiting moderation – maybe we’ll get that done tomorrow!)
rayres