This is one of the last photos I took on the trip. The blurry view of Hong Kong at night on my mobile phone. So many memories of fantastic experiences on the trip, and let’s not forget, so many opportunities for fantastic follow-up work in the future.
Yesterday when we came back to Bristol I got home just in time to see the children before they left for school. I took my youngest to school as hers is in walking distance and I didn’t feel awake enough to drive. Very strange stood at the school gates thinking, just this morning I was on a plane flying over Siberia. I then came home and slept for 14 hours solid!
It’s obvious that our sharper realities are the things we are experiencing at the present, or most recent, and anything that happened yesterday or near and distant histories will soon become as blurred as this photo, but the lived experience is something that no one can take away, and is actually much more valuable than even a sharp photo image. An image is just an image, but lived experience is something actually experienced. We use images to help us remember, but our memories are linked to actual actions.
Maybe the only way to stop our experiences of the trip turning into blurry memories and mere images is to build upon them, and turn those lived experiences into opportunities for the future.
In any way that we were inspired by this trip, the opportunities are there for us to grasp. I look forward to it.
Wow, if you and Luke could bottle your ability to sleep you’d be rich!
This blog is a fabulous way to archive our shared memories and even though the Chinese students cannot access it I like the idea of still writing as if they can (well you never know who else outside of the UK is reading too). If they do visit the UK one day it will be lovely for them to catch up and relive the experiences they helped us to create.
I’m still looking at it! I will do my best to update on the Beijing experience, though it will be a slow process…..
A x