6.4.2011

It has been quite a while since our departure from Poland. Long period compared to an average vacation period, yet just a fraction looking at our whole year on sabbatical.

I would like to share a few reflections after these 1,5 months.

The family sabbatical is turning out to be wonderful idea. Each of us feels great spending our time and travelling in such a way. Central America, where we began our trip, is a very stimulating and interesting part of the world. All the warnings about the security and tropical diseases seem to be far-fetched. Though we take regularly chinine as anti-malaria prevention and are bitten frequently by all kinds of insects, it is managable.

The nicest aspect of our adventures is meeting new people, especially the locals. Personally, I have endless opportunities to speak Spanish, especially now working with Honduras children in an English school. We manage naturally to realize our sabbatical desires, without paying any particular attention to them. Here is a few examples.

Contrary to our typical day in Poland we are not rushing and doing many things at the same time. In Poland, even our weekends were hecticly full of activities, so that we could make the most of each day. Here we try to focus on a single thing at a time. What is interesting is that we do not experience a sense of time loss or its bad usage. The days seem more fruitful here.

A great practice of “Here and Now” for me was learning how to dive on Utila. The key thing in diving, as in life, is breathing. It is not just about any kind of breathing, yet a conscious breathing, with a purpose. Under water evert inhale makes you go up, while exhaling causes you to go deeper. All this happens with a certain delay. Shallow breathing make it hard for a diver to maintain a steady position under water, which can be helpful while hovering above a resting sting ray or admiring a beautiful coral which should not be touched. It also leads to quicker depletion of airtank. During my first diving, due to my poor breathing, I used up literally all air in the container in 40 minutes! The last 6 meters on the way up I was breathless. Not a pleasant thing to experience. During my last diving, at much greater depths of around 18 meters (the deeper you go, the more air you use) I spent 50 minutes underwater and was left with 25% of air in the tank at the end.

		Breathing lesson WYŚWIETL POKAZ SLAJDÓW POBIERZ WSZYSTKIE

Ania, in one of her earlier posts, mentioned the “school on wheels”. We are under the impression that the whole sabbatical time, not only home schooling hours are a big, long lesson for the kids. They learn about local customs, nature, Spanis words etc. For example yesterday Wojtus came with his new friend, Fabrizio, who showed him an edible fruit, tasting like almonds and looking on the outside like a nut, i.e. cacahuate.  Video  Today he learned to fish shrimp in the sea with a special net.

Little Ania, realizing one of her passions, i.e. fashion designing, finds different inspirations. She can literally do something out of nothing.

		Extracurricular activities WYŚWIETL POKAZ SLAJDÓW POBIERZ WSZYSTKIE

Net throwing less – video

Girls gone fishing – video

Focusing on fewer things works wonders for us. We give each other more attention and our breathing is fuller.

I highly recommend good breathing lessons and regular breathing excercises.