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Our house didn't move Yes, it is more than a month now since we are back home. Difficult to believe it but time flies by.
I don’t know what we were expecting but when coming home we felt like we had been on a long week end trip. The house was still there, everything in place, it is a bit like when you change your clothes, you just put them on and you are ready to go again with the flow! Still the first week or so we were asking ourselves where next? Oh we just stay here...
Robson managed to visit most of his friends in a few weeks. I was so brave that I accepted with enthusiasm to accompany him for dinner with Maria and Denise his two Brazilian friends. Here I was having dinner with three Portuguese teachers (not a joke, all 3 are!) We spoke Portuguese the whole evening, they didn't give me my test results...
I have been to Belgium of course, visiting Sandrine and Erwin. So much changed, Nils is now speaking and Benjamin is running all over the place!
We were asked many questions about our trip, one of these was: “what did you
learn?”. So here are three lessons learned:
1. People are people.
We met many people either those living in the various place we visited or fellow travellers. When you manage to put aside any cultural differences, you just realise we have all so much in common. We stayed with a Russian family in Ulan-Ude in Siberia, we also stayed with a Mongolian family in the Gobi. Difficult to compare the two locations, they were so much different. Here we were in a house in a city, there in a yurt in the desert. Yet, we saw a mother and father preoccupied with their family, working hard and wanting the best for their children.
2. The clock is ticking.
Once back home we met people in our neighbourhood who asked us if we had been away a few months. Well yes, a full year. Thinking about it, we are all a year older, so let’s not waste our time…
3. Human contacts over landscapes.
Yes we saw very nice places and we have very good memories. But the best memories come from the contacts we had we other people, the families we visited, contacts with other travellers, interaction
Our Garden
It all kept growing! we some of our guides and the time spent with friends in Seattle or Atlanta.
Here is some information about our blog, we had:
60 entries
2 625 photos published
31 803 words used
6 432 views
The top 5 entries most viewed are:
Mongolia with 459
Lake Baikal and Irkutsk with 321
Kuala Lumpur and Sarawak with 257
Athens 233
Macau 230
A new entry will be added soon about Brazilian beaches, just give me some time...
Next steps
We decided to keep this blog open and will keep posting pictures and comments from our future trips. There won’t be that many but we already have planned for June a week in France in the Dordogne region and at the end of the year two weeks in Mauritius.
Many thanks to all who followed us and left messages or comments.
Benoit and Robson
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Michel and Nathalie
non-member comment
Welcome home
Hey guys, Good to hear you've arrived back home safely!! I must admitt I didn't follow the entire trip but I did manage to see some parts of it! The reasons we didn't have that much time left to go on the web are numberous : We just moved to our new house which sort of like looks like a construction site, a lot of work left to be done On 01/07/2009 Nathalie gave birth to our second son : Rob (inspired by Robson ;-)))) 3 months ago I started a new job, I am now an Account Manager with Electrolux You see, busy,busy, busy!! Hopefully we'll catch up again soon (maybe on the familie feest??) We wish you all the best and see you soon!! Greetings Mich, Nat, Daan & Rob