Counting the Days as a Hobby...

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Is the third time a charm?

Kel and I desert our children (not that they're children), for six weeks to walk northwards through Portugal from Lisbon to Santiago.

It's been more than a tough few working months. I calculated that by the middle of the year I'll have spent more than half of the year out of Australia (that's counting this trip, but still). Saudi Arabia, where the work has primarily been, is at once the most exotic and the most boring place to visit. Exotic in the sense of being foreign and boring in the sense that we commonly understand it. The four weeks in Riyadh last month was too long to spend in a city were Fridays resemble Melbourne Sundays in the 1960s. When one is living in a compound with 20 foot high walls and razor wire and unsure whether it's to keep others out or you in more than difficult. When you get a chance to have an overnight away and Beirut is the best option (and it was great). Nine months or working on a project that should take 18, with no room to change deadlines and being one to face the music if things went wrong, is a good (or bad) way to build up 'psychic garbage'.

And it was probably worse for Kel back in Melbourne not knowing what it's like and stuff.

So, a new adventure, new challenges await.

Ironically, given how long I've been counting the days (somewhere in the high 100's at least), once as is the case here, we get to 11 days to go, we don't seem to have enough time to get all our preparations done. Cooking and freezing enough meals for the kids so that we don't look like the worst parents in the world. Note I say 'don't look like' and not 'are not'... We've done a bit of hiking but you always feel like you won't have done enough.

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