You learn something new every day, just think what you can achieve in a year!

This week, the BootsnAll 2012 Indie Travel Challenge posed the question; What would you like to learn through travel in 2012.

There are the obvious ones - I'm doing my Photography Institute diploma at the moment and plan to finish that this year, and Mr Traveller is hanging out to do another cookery course or two. Of course we want to learn about the places that we're visiting, and the people that live their, and I'm sure we'll also learn quite a bit about how to, and how not to, travel with a toddler. After our dash half way across the globe a couple of days ago I think it's safe to say that we still need to learn how to pack a bit lighter; I really hope we can get that down pat by the end of this year. Seriously, do we really need to take our electric toothbrush around the world with us?!

Focussing on photography

But I think the most important thing for us to learn as a family this year is a bit about ourselves. We need to establish what we want to do next. When we set out on this journey, we knew we wanted to see a bit of the world, take more time to appreciate the things we never had time to stop and take in properly in the past, and spend more time together. But what we didn't know, and couldn't agree on, is what we wanted next. We've got to decide which country we will live in; Australia, the UK or somewhere else entirely. We know we're not perpetual full time travellers. While I fully appreciate the sentiment of it, home schooling isn't our thing, and having experienced a relatively large amount of moving around as a child, I'm not sure that that's what I want for the littlest hobo either. So we want to settle back down somewhere, but where? In that typical expat way, our family and friends are precariously positioned at intermittent points around the globe; how inconsiderate that they're not all just sitting in some sleepy little village waiting for us to come back and life to resume!. And surely it's somewhat inevitable that what we are doing now will have some influence on the lifestyle we choose then - chances are we're not going to want to live the 5 days a week office working big disposable income little time to spend it lifestyle that we previously enjoyed. I want chooks that lay eggs, I want a veggie patch and a herb garden that I manage to cultivate sometime beyond 2 weeks. I want time for my family, and time to take photographs and to relax. But I love the city too, I love the action, and the convenience and the people. So I need to spend some time thinking about that and work out what I really want, and which little corner of the great wide world can best offer that to us, and Mr T needs to do the same thing. Our learning for 2012 is all about delving deep inside our own minds and getting to know ourselves.

What are you hoping to learn in 2012?

This post was inspired by and forms part of the Boots n All 2012 Indie Travel Challenge - a prompt, question or challenge, every week for the year of 2012. I'm hoping that it will be a little more realistic for me to achieve than a photo a day proved to be in 2011!