a handful of memories

I've had an intense couple of weeks of traveling from Germany through Austria to Italy to Germany to the Hague (Netherlands) to Germany to Bruges (Belgium) and now I'm back. Kids are back at school. The house is quiet. Empty. I scratch through my camera bag and find a handful of memories: torn maps, used tickets, a pretty packet from Assisi and stripey shells that we picked up in Belgium. And there lies the heap of washing, staring at me again.

I must say I'm finding it very hard to reconcile everything I just experienced with the reality of what is here and now. I set the May challenge before I left (I apologise that the posts didn't appear on time as they were meant to - I obviously still have some techno learning to do). Anyway, so the idea was that I'd get back and jump into learning new stuff to keep myself on the go and inspired, but at the moment I just feel saturated with everything I learned while traveling. I need to pause and process it all somehow.

Don't you find that learning while traveling is so simple? At home you have to actively look for new things to learn, but while traveling it happens automatically as you absorb everything around you. You collect impressions of what you see and your mind stretches, admiring the beauty, attempting to understand different people and grasp concepts of history and time. I've come to terms with the fact that I will not remember every fact about everything I see and I don't even try and look them all up, but I do stay aware of what I am instinctively curious about and I just concentrate on those things, while allowing the rest just to wash over me.

Now I am going to have to order myself a book, or do an on-line course. Something to stop this mind from going into a stagnant rut - something, but first the washing...