Australia.

Sydney.

When I woke up the sun was already out. The house was quiet and I thought I might as well just do the blog. That was before I checked my watch. 10:40. I don’t remember the last time I slept that long. Well, it must have been the lack of sleep from the previous night, or the loss of three hours when leaving the Indonesian time zone, or the comfortable bed or the cooler climate. Whatever it was, all four of us had the sleep illness.

After a cup of coffee and some breakfast I felt better and wanted to get on with my blog, but  – then we found about Brussels and couldn’t stop listening and watching video footage of the events. I am feeling angry with the people who did this, heartbroken for the people who lost a loved on, empathy for the wounded and grateful for all the helpers. When we told people that we would travel the world for a year, some of them asked if I wasn’t scared of the things that could happen overseas. Well, I guess I will be more scared in Europe when we return.

At some point our hosts came home and we started talking and in the end time flew and nothing was planned for the coming days, no blog was written. But I didn’t care. I love this. Talking, sharing stories… is much better than anything else. This is I think what Victor meant when he said that the best think about travelling is meeting people. Now when we travel we didn’t get to talk really to a lot of people. There was that one week in Cambodia when we did wwoof which was great, then the two weeks on Sulawesi where we met some Germans we could talk to – but in general I have the impression that travelling as a family AND not being between 20-30 any more, kept a distance between THE OTHERS and us. Here in Australia we were lucky again. Our airbnb hosts are our generation, have children and also seen a fair share of the world which makes it incredibly interesting talking to them.

Anyway, Pamela, our host is running a business organizing classes for adults, called Laneway Learning. And tonight there were two classes: Shibori and Polymer Necklaces. What I find amazing here in Australia is that these events are running in a library or another public space. The places come to her and ask her if she could organize an event in their rooms. This is mutually beneficial. I asked if she needed help tonight and in the end the girls and I went. Both of them sat in the library looking at cartoons and I listened to the Shibori class, which funny enough was given by a German lady, while Stéphane and Stephen, our host, went to a pub and met up with another friend and talked about what we could do in Australia. I am perfectly relaxed about not knowing how we will spend the coming weeks. Time after time we have seen that things will work themselves out. And I am sure this will be the same here.

We finished the evening with some ice cream at home, the girls showing how they are folding books and me sitting here and writing. I think I like Australia.