What's another year?

A year ago I moved to Reunion Island on the 10/10 of 2013. I had visited the island end of June for 4 days (sleeping 2 nights in the airplane) and 3 weeks end of August. For several reasons I still mark October as my arrival date. To name a few: our shipping still had to be prepared back home and our youngest son installed in his new home in Glasgow.

I remember how I used to sing “Wake me up when this is all over”, a popular song at the time. Nowadays I search for French songs on the radio and one of my favourites is “On ira tous au Paradis” which means “We will all go to Paradise” and I have the feeling to be there already.

What’s another year? It’s a world of difference to me. I've made friends and my days are full of creative and learning activities. I started two on-line courses with Coursera and had yesterday my first meeting in cyber-space facilitated by Google Hangout with my "peers". Most of them have the age of my children, so I am not surprised to arrive first "in the class-room" and feel good about myself that everything is working at my end (despite the very slow internet in the evenings). We brainstorm on intelligence and how it is perceived in our different communities. We have a divers group with people from Mexico, Jamaica, over Italy and Russia to Japan and Sri-Lanka. When we are sharing our ideas for the future of education, I realize that we might have a long way to go to this new education where children, teenagers and adolescents get equal chances, but we do have a head start compared to many other parts in the world.
And we need "Education for All, it is the only path to Peace", dixit Malawa, the young Pakistani Nobel Price for Peace winner. In this quote my two courses meet each other.

I’ve build the reputation amongst my Reunion friends to be a talented craftsman and as such I receive invitations to try out other activities. My latest trial was a ceramic workshop with the small whale in the picture as result. Between June and mid-September they swim happily around the island and you can make a sightseeing tour on the ocean to watch them. My ceramic baby whale is certainly a happy one, with a big smile. The perfect souvenir to take home!