Lessons from week one (and a bit)

Sunset over Xi’an

Sat here in the dark, listening to Will snore and Jo giggling over something she’s reading by headtorch, bags repacked ready to move on after our trip to the Great Wall tomorrow, I’m left thinking about what this first week in Beijing has revealed about us and the trip ahead. In fact a major lesson is about time – its now four days later and I’m sat in the hostel in Xi’an, bags packed ready to move on to Chengdu. Hopefully I’ll finish this post before we get there!

In no particular order;

1. Daddy school.
   

   Ellie hard at work

   Sitting down for school work is hard. Hats off to the teachers at Babanod and Pant-Y-Rheddyn. Each study session is a battle, particularly for Ellie May who believes that she should not only be the student but also the teacher and dictate what and how she learns. While I’m all for the coaching approach to learning, if I left it to Ellie, all she would do would be to read and write stories. So far, we’ve managed to also write a report on Beijing, do some work on the angles of triangles, we’ve measured the area and volume of our room and have written a biography of the last emperor. However each of these tasks have involved significant amounts of drama and, had I any, handfuls of hair being torn out. Meanwhile, Will, being easily distracted at the best of times, is sharpening his pencil, ‘thinking’, having a water break or in fact doing anything but writing. It’s a relief to get out each day and we may need to rethink our approach. However, I’m also hopeful that as we get more used to this lifestyle and routine, things will settle down a little.

2. Constant company – finding space for everyone.
   

   What are we going to do today?

   I’ve already begun to enjoy being with the family every day and not just in those rushed moments of getting to work/school in the morning and then dinner and bed in the evening. It’s been great to be able to chat and wander around as a unit. I’m not sure that we’ve completely switched modes yet – some aspects of travel such as working out where we’re going and how to get around, how are we going to get something to eat, organising the millions of photos, writing the blog have seemed to have replaced the ‘not now, I’m busy’ things from home. Again, as Jo and I relax into the journey, I hope we can reduce the number of times a day we say those words. Of course, Ellie and Will may also become more confident and proficient at entertaining themselves. The thing that we don’t seem to have managed yet is time for Jo and I together.

3. The digital revolution.
   

   Everyone’s heads are elsewhere.

   As in all aspects of life, this has truly come to travelling and I’m not convinced it’s completely a good thing (or maybe it’s the way we’re doing it). When we travelled in the past, the internet was pretty much contained to libraries and universities. Jo and I had to search hard to find a place from which to contact my ex-colleagues at Birmingham and even much of that was by fax. Communication with everyone else was by the very occasional phone call but usually by letter. There was a particular kind of excitement from the trip to the post resantes at a new town, sifting through envelopes with hope of familiar handwriting. I remember one very tearful trip back to a hostel knowing that letters would arrive only after we’d moved on. They may still be there; family news lovingly penned, forsaken and yellowing, dusty and waiting.
   Photography too has moved on. We both had film camera’s previously, Jo took prints and I did slides. For those too young to remember, both these required developing and although we got some of Jos printed as we went and sent some home, most had to wait until we got back. So we gathered an increasingly precious cargo of undeveloped film as we travelled and tried to make some notes about where and when each was taken. The task of sorting photos when we did return was mammoth.
   Now, most hostels have wi-fi on tap and we ourselves have at least four devices capable of communicating with the internet. While this does mean that we no longer have to search out the post office, the eagerness for news and familiar contact is undiminished and so checking emails and the blog is just as important and seems to take no less time. In fact, as de facto Beaumont family communications ‘expert’, I have spent most evenings, once the family is in bed, struggling with gadgets and settings. The change to digital photography has further tied me to the keyboard in the evenings. In ten days, we’ve taken over 2000 photographs and they demand to be organised. Digital cameras record all sorts of information (GPS) included and picassa recognises faces but still they can’t decide which of 3-6 very similar shots of the same subject should be kept or that the faces on the Terracotta Warriors aren’t people we know. We won’t have the problem of physically storing those film canisters but at this rate we’re going to rapidly run out of electronic storage, back-ups notwithstanding.Putting these issues to one side, the pure time demand is what worries me. Part of travelling, backpacking in particular, is the interaction with the people you meet, both local and other travellers. Sitting at a screen is not very sociable – and it’s not only me, around me are many others physically present but bathed in the screen glow of home.

4. Travelling with kids
   Very different, so much so I think its worth a new post so I’ll stop here and start that another time. Perhaps I wander over there and talk to someone instead.