A year away.

Chanced upon THIS while trawling for videos to inspire our boy. I'd come back to that later.

One of the videos in my net was the girl from his first violin class. She was playing a piece from Suzuki Book 4! Our dear boy, if you've read my previous posts, is still struggling with pieces from Book 1! Got very emotional after that... is it me? Have I planted my laisser-faire attitude towards learning seed in him? Is my non-existent expectation the reason for him not being able to sprout and grow as well as that other kid? Was it fear? Was I frightened that if I push him too hard he might HATE me for it? While I fought those demons within me last night during our daily practice together, he surprised me by playing the entire piece of "The Happy Farmer by Robert Schumann" which sounds like this - the second last piece of music in Book 1 - the piece which he only started learning last Tuesday. Life's a marvel isn't it? It teases you so perfectly, you don't even know that it's just a game.

Back from the digression... from that video, I went on to THIS site about a family's "epic odyssey: open-ended, years long slow trip around the world as a family adventure, unschool, spiritual journey and lifestyle". It's darn inspiring. The Big One and I have talked about taking a year off to travel around the world. This family's already taking it... and they are doing it on 25 thousand dollars a year. Assuming that that's in USD, we are talking SGD37.5k/year. Haven't exactly looked at our finances but we should have enough CPF between us to pay the housing loan installment for the next couple of years...and if we can rent out the apartment for $3K/month ($36K/year) while we are out travelling the world, we can literally afford to scoot off and see the world starting right now!

How exciting!

All these, just from trying to inspire a child with a video.