And so it begins again...

Ah, sabbatical!  It has so many meanings, connotations, implications.   Apparently one thing it means for me is a reinvigoration of the blog.  

I've been asked quite a few times what do I mean by sabbatical?  I know of course there are academic meanings associated with the term.  An extended period away from teaching to undertake research and learning.

And really, that isn't such a bad description.  For us, sabbatical is an extended period away from the work-a-day world for the express purpose to learn from and engage with people and places outside of our every day reality.  The genesis of our family sabbatical plan was really to offer the kids (or kid as there was only one at the time) the opportunity to learn that there are 'more things in heaven and earth' than what they know and see everyday.  We wanted them to learn that there are people who eat different things, cities that have different systems, children who have different play structures.  At its heart, we wanted them to learn that the world is an incredible place, where not everyone eats, thinks and dreams in the same way we do.  And most importantly, we wanted them to be comfortable with those differences.  More than comfortable, we want them to embrace them.  In point of fact, we want them to be better at that embracing those differences than we are.

But something really odd happened on our first sabbatical.  We realized that the kids didn't need these lessons.  They in fact internalize this just by their inherent kid nature.  When we travelled to New Zealand in 2011, we met families from all over the globe, and while Kohji and I smiled politely and nodded reservedly to strangers, most of whom were sharing similar travel experience, the kids took every kid they met at face value and saw immediately past the differences to the things they had in common.  Within seconds, they were screaming with laughter with a kid that they had just met, and within minutes they were buddies tearing around playing an agreed upon game, despite not being able to speak the same language.

In other words, we weren't teaching the kids a darn thing; they were teaching us everything we needed to know about accepting our differences and engaging with the unfamiliar world around us.  They were showing us how to embrace differences and be comfortable with different food, language, culture, perspective.

Sabbatical, then, is indeed an appropriate term as we prepare for our next adventure.  We will be taking a step away from our daily routine to explore the world around us, to acquaint ourselves with the unfamiliar and to learn a thing or two from the people we meet, and our children.

We start our next adventure in Budapest chasing down curiosity about my family heritage and the mystery of Eastern Europe.   Hungary- despite having familial roots in the place and having once watched in awe at a family reunion when my grandmother effortless slipped into Hungarian (admittedly, I was 12 and it was the first time I'd ever heard her speak the language), the country is a complete enigma to me.  After hopefully learning a thing or two there, we'll slip over to Italy to walk in the more familiar rises of the Dolomites and chase silver lighted dreams in Tuscany and Umbria.

And hopefully, just maybe, we'll come out the other side of this adventure being just a little more like our kids, and slightly more familiar with all the amazing differences the world has to offer.   If you are indeed still tuning into this blog, feel free to tag along.