Memories and some payback from childhood travels

After spending almost 3 weeks in the car with my family on a roadtrip, it has occurred to me how annoying I must have been to my parents and brother and so I send them a very belated apology for all the irritating things I did as a kid on roadtrips. Since we have no radio in our van, there is no way to play community music to pass the time while we drive. Ani has decided to start composing her own songs in some foreign language unbeknownst to any of us. It has lots of clicks and sounds similar to zulu and xhosa, interspersed with other crazy sounding words. I actually have a memory of doing this very thing as a kid and remember how irritated my brother would get until he would thump me! I can't remember if this was on a road trip or one of the many trips down to my parent's studio, but in any case - David - please accept my sincere apologies!

We have spent a lot of hours doing lessons on the road and I read aloud our historical fiction books from our South African curriculum. A miracle must have occurred because in the past, I would get horribly nauseous at any reading in the car. It really is amazing since we are driving through curvy mountain roads. Maybe Cameron is right that car sickness is all about control, and now I'm desperate since there is nothing else to do for miles and miles (or kilometers and kilometers)!

The kids built their first forts in the van on this trip. I can remember as a kid lifting my parents headrest and putting a towel under it and creating a little tent area in the floorboard when we drove on trips. The kids did this with their blankets and had a great time hiding from each other in their little holes.

Today when we went to Table Mountain, after the cable ride was over and 20 minutes had passed the kids were "bored." Here we are standing on one of the 7 natural wonders of the world and they are bored! I had a flashback to feeling that way when my parents took me to some "amazing" places which now I think I would love to go to again! At least I was able to connect to remembering how it felt when I was kid, so I took it pretty easy on them, and made them suffer just as my parents did!

Do you remember how it felt when you arrived in someone's house for the first time? It was like a huge place to explore, weird and different than your home and full of interesting things. Since we've stopped off along so many new places on this trip, it's been fun to watch them feel the same way and see the excitement as they meet the new people and see the new places. I remember the smell of hotel rooms as a kid and as I turned on Wyatt's bath tonight, it took me back to the smell of baths (which is probably just full of extra chlorine!) at hotels. We've stayed in all kinds of places on this trip - cabins, cottages, self -catering chalets, apartments, homes of wonderful friends, and if we could have fit the tent, we would have camped,too.

It's been amazing to see the wonderful way our family has interacted - both in good and bad - and to be so thankful for this opportunity to explore this beautiful country together!