Small steps.

 

After being ok with all the unanswered questions, life has become a bit more peaceful for me. Although it sometimes feels like walking around in a dream (a bit too peaceful?). The fact that we will leave Ecuador has a profound effect on how I 'stand' here apparently.

When we do our (almost) daily walk I notice this. It is almost like it could be any country in the world and I have to prepare myself for the fact that the people we come across along the way, talk Spanish and are Ecuadorians. So; I see people in the distance and I think to myself 'O yes, we are in Ecuador, so I have to say buenas tardes'. It feels like walking in between worlds. I am already 'sort of' gone from here. Eventhough they speak Spanish in Spain as well, it feels like going to another world.

That dreamy, unreal state is not always a pleasant feeling.

 

Remember we were going to do this Alpaca wool thing that we aren't going to do anymore? I had already made a website for that. It has all the properties you need for an online business. But it was not going to be used of course. So a few weeks ago I started fiddling on it.

Since I don't know what I'll be doing in Spain (or anywhere), everything is open. And I decided I was going to put down everything I like doing, as if I was going to make that my new 'living'. Lots of free time to do this in, so I spent every day a little time writing and thinking.

After a week of doing this, it started looking a bit like a counselling website. Probably because I like humans so much and I also am aware of my own abilities of seeing issues clearly. Which can help others, when they are stuck. I found it quite funny that this was the apparent direction it was taking. But in a way, as a midwife, my main work was counselling, if I look back.

Then, one night, I got to writing once more and I was on a roll. Couldn't stop. Eric said he was going to sleep and I just wanted to continue. So I did. I wrote a while longer. And when I stopped I noticed it was late (especially for me; my usual bedtime is 10 pm). I felt very awake. I was lying in bed and suddenly it struck me I had been writing about working with pregnant women and births again. 

This sounds very weird probably, but I wasn't aware of this until I was lying in bed, looking back at what I'd been doing. As if someone else had been doing this. My mind was totally confused 'huh? I thought I was done with this?' etc. So I was lying awake quite long, looking at this.

The next morning I was still very confused. I realized it was my mind that was confused, because some unnamed part of me was totally ok with it and was surprised at the confusion. It made me feel like I was split in two;  like I felt I should be confused, but instead I wasn't 'really'. Or something.

I decided to 'let this be' for a while and not erase it from the website immediatly.

After a while I wrote a few friends about it and all of them actually thought me working with births again sounded quite logical; like 'destiny' or 'a calling' and not something you could really make 'decisions' about. Of course you can decide to deny your calling or destiny, but it would obviously feel better or flow better if you didn't.

It was a better explanation then I had; 'some entity took over my body and wrote this'.

I am still not sure about all of it and what it means, but I haven't erased it yet. The fact that I am no longer registered feels very relaxing in this. So whatever I'll be doing, will be very 'unregistered'. 

 

People ask 'what do the kids think of all this?' Meaning the moving again. This time from Ecuador to Spain.

Well; there is no such thing as 'the kids'. They all have a very different viewpoint on life. 

 

Beer is looking forward to better food. He disliked the food in Ecuador. And we all agree that everything tastes different here. Even the vegetables that we know from Europe have a different taste here. Almost like they are more tasteless. I wonder how that is possible. We've seen great soil here and we eat mainly organic. Maybe the altitude influences the taste (I've never heard of that actually, but no idea what else it could be)? Eric finds that the chicken you can buy at the shops here is much better then the Dutch chicken. Not so much in flavor, but in the health of the meat. In the Netherlands you would easily end up with a lot of water coming out of the meat. That's not the case here. The chickens have had a relatively good life, I suppose. I don't eat meat, so for me this is just hearsay. And I suppose they don't use hormones here.

Beer likes paella and tapas, so Spain is -in his opinion- a great improvement.

He has a very definite view on Ecuador and Ecuadorians. And it is not possitive. He doesn't get them. He thinks they must have lost their identity when they were conquered by the Spanish and are still struggling to find out who they really are. 

Other then that, he has no idea what Spain will bring and is happy to tag along for a while longer.

He enjoys looking up anything he can about history and he is also on top of all the politics happening in the world. Since we've started science with homeschooling, he's become very involved. He likes to look at the building blocks of life. Which is what he tries to do with history as well. Why are things now the way they are?

He has been working on a project this last year, where he has been making preparations to write a book. He is metaculous in his preparations; a bit of a perfectionist. So his main goal was to keep it fun, instead of beating himself over the head for a mistake. For this project he has been drawing up an imaginary world with an imaginary history and make-up. 

He'll continue all of this in Spain, I suppose. 

 

Lem is Lem. Nothing has changed with him. He still thinks a cold climate is the way to go. He hates warmth. He has no feelings towards Ecuador. He doesn't have any feelings towards Spain either. But when we ask him if he would like to live in the Netherlands and what he would like to do there and that we can help him set up, he disappears. He doesn't feel like making any steps and taking any responsibility for anything.

That means he continues blaming us for everything. But we are used to that and continue telling him he can make his own life if he wants. When we do homeschooling he jawns from start to finish, eventhough when I say he doesn't have to do this, he says he thinks he should stay. But he doesn't want to put any effort in.

We think he is not happy, he hasn't been happy for a long time. And we also think he is still better off being unhappy around us, then on his own. We can only hope he will find his mojo at some point. He has an enormous amount of talents and intelligence that he doesn't take any interest in. He can sing very well, he can make up great texts (also as lyrics to songs), he has a naturally strong and healthy body and could be very sportive, he has a very philosophical look on the world and can defend any viewpoint eloquently and humorfully. He has a gift for learning languages. He can understand the most difficult math equasions (but forgets them instantly). He has a lot of potential, but doesn't take any interest in it.
He has been writing a book these last years. But his book is mainly a collection of a lot of thoughts that no one else is supposed to read. Other then that he reads all day long.

 

Mar has slowly, over this last year, become more calm in herself. It is as if the effects of puberty have worn of. She said it herself a few weeks back, but we've also noticed. Puberty goes in waves, so maybe it will hit again, but it doesn't look like it.

She is ok with going to Spain and she wants to visit the Netherlands at some point. She is tagging along with everything. She has taken up cooking as a hobby. Everyone week one of the kids prepares a meal. But Mar usually prepares meals in between as well.

She has no idea yet, what direction she wants to take in life. But at the moment she is ok with this.

 

All of the kids are happy to leave Ecuador. And so are we. If possible, Eric would fly out today even! His hands are itching to start something. They have been itching for a long time, but he feels like it is coming closer now and he can hardly wait.

Today we spoke to Nikki and JF and things seem to take more shape when we talk, which makes us feel very possitive. 

Tomorrow we are going to try to get our Dutch driver's licence back from the driver's licence office in Loja. If this mission will succeed is very doubtful. They might not store it there (sent it off to Quito or something), or maybe it takes a whole lot of paperwork and other nonsense before we can swap the licences back. We will give it a shot however.

All small steps toward returning to Europe.