DadTalk

When it started to feel like more than a hoilday!

We are now in week three of the nine month trip and it is starting to feel more like the “real deal”. Suddenly the pace seems to have changed. It is beginning to feel less like a fortnight’s trip to something quite different.

Yesterday we took a flight between two Hawaiian Islands. We went to the local airport, turned up at the main terminal. We were quickly redirected to the Commuter Terminal. This was a large brown shed behind the car rentals. We had our luggage and then ourselves weighed in by the one lady who seemed to be running the whole show. The plane arrives; we go out the back door of the shed and walk to it. Eight seats in total and if I wanted I could have tapped the pilot on the shoulder and asked if everything was going ok. The next 45 minutes where an amazing flight across extinct volcanoes, white sand beaches and the open sea. We land. We carry our luggage across the tarmac to an even smaller shed, which is the main and only terminal.

We are now staying at a lovely little place, which is basically the down stairs of a family’s house. We decided to have a slow day. This involves spending the morning “helping” at the pre-school nursery the mother runs. Victoria, inevitably, gets into a conversation about child-birth, comparing notes on home-births, and finding out where we are sleeping is where their youngest was born. Our children are of a comparable age and play increasingly imaginative games together. This includes the classic cross-cultural sport of younger brothers tormenting older sisters.

Our biggest adventure is a trip to Wal-Mart to buy new pants for the boys. I love that the women’s underwear section is called ‘intimates’. A slightly homesick Ned requested and got sausages, mash and peas for dinner.

Of course there will be tonnes more touristy day trips. But I hope we are lucky enough to have more days like today, just hanging out getting to know people and how they live. Travelling with children makes links that you would not normally have and I’m sure this will not be Victoria’s last child-birth comparison chat of the trip.