Twenty-six days of family

You can and do forget what it is to have family around you.  Having them back for twenty six days was good experience,  Isolating the relationships of people from their surroundings makes them all that much clearer.  Its good to know that people of all ages can be permanently affected by their surroundings and experiences.  I hope that the changes to my parents are positive and aren't dithered by being back in the grind of 'normal' life.  It is interesting to me how my parents absorbed the environment.  The startling difference between Brisbane and Colombia seemed to make a different impact on each of them, different nets catch different fish I suspect. 

To my father, the thing that seemed to strike him was the apparent lawlessness with which the people carry out their lives.  Traffic that will do whatever it sees as necessary to get there faster, people  ignoring queues, selling things illegally in the streets, all of the things that people do when getting ahead of someone else could be important. 

To my mother, the level of variety that can be provided to a matured and large populous and the different manners of getting things done, seemed interesting. 

This is of course just a guess, what is certain is that they both took very different things away from the experience.  I can only hope that the positives have outweighed the negatives by an overwhelming degree.