Adapting from the life of 'adventurer extrordinair,' scaling Everest and canoeing down the Zambezi has not been without its challenges. Slowing down and learning to live at Sujins pace and coping with days characterised by endless interruptions has: I must admit it has had me on my toes!
Over the last several days however, I've been reading the blogs of two Palestinian women. Young mothers trying to cope with not only raising their children alone, but with living amid the confusion and chaos going on around them as Gaza's streets burn and are over run with armed checkpoints, indiscriminate gunfire and constant rocket bombardment. Writiing about the effect of all this on her young son,Yousef, Leila said,
"Yousef of course became more and more concerned as the day day passed, until I finally told him they were not firing, but rather making an enormous pot of popcorn outside that would fill the streets once it was done. At first he wasn't convinced, then he later remarked "mama, I don't really like this kind of popcorn!". When the firing died down, he ran into my room excitedly shouting: "mama, mama! I think the popcorn is done!!"" 
By comparison, that makes my job here in the peace and quiet of western suburbia seem relatively easy and my stress-ors rather insignificant, but the amazing thing about it all is our ability, as human beings, to adapt, just like Yousef did, and the way 'normal' becomes whatever is going on in your life at the time.
It also makes me aware of the frustrations Sujin must have, with so many thoughts and questions bouncing round in her little head, like gun fire, and no effective way of expressing them. Let's hope that the world she and Yousef inherit is better than the one in which their parents now struggle.
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