whimsy – ˈwɪmzi/ – noun
playfully quaint or fanciful behavior or humor.
When we were traveling on this past 8-1/2 week trip, we started noticing that, on certain days, we were less tolerant of the differences that we saw. We started saying that, on these days, we had “lost our whimsy”!!!
Let me give an example….. on a whimsical day, we would see a small child standing in front of her Father while riding on a scooter and say “isn’t that cute”. But, if we saw the same scenario on a “non-whimsical” day, we would break into a diatribe about how dangerous it was and how the Father shouldn’t allow it to happen.
As the trip wore on, we realized how fortunate we are to live in a place where there is a lot of standardization in how things are done. That was probably the thing that most often caused our whimsy to wander away.
The classic example was the day that I wanted to buy a Coke in the hotel restaurant. First I went to the restaurant and asked for the drink. The waitress didn’t know how I was supposed to pay for it so she called a supervisor. The supervisor wrote up a paper ticket and walked it into the lobby to the front desk. From there, the desk clerk put it into the computer and printed out an invoice that I finally was able to pay. I walked away with a slightly bemused expression and a now warm Diet Coke!!!
With that being said, let me review the trip. Being an Accountant, I am enamored with numbers, so let’s look at the numbers of the trip……
19 airplane flights
15 hotels (and new beds)
31 Taxi rides in China alone!!
An unknown number of car rides (with driver) in India
4 boat/canoe rides
84+ teaching contact hours between Michael and his students
3,746 photographs!!
Umpteen banquet or buffet meals!!! The problem with these is that you just get a small amount of a bunch of different tastes and smells and you come away feeling like you haven’t had a full meal. We took the opportunity to order ala carte any chance that we could!!!
All in all, it was a good trip but we were both happy to arrive back in our Georgia home!!
Except for a quick trip for Michael in December, we don’t have any trips planned for the near future. However there is a possibility that next year we will spend 4 months in India!!! We will wait to see if the grant is successful……
And for now, life goes on with work, house cleaning, gardening, catching up with friends and family and, hopefully, a little bit of creative time too!!!!!
Thanks for traveling with us!!!