Lost

Travelling in a foreign country often means getting a little bit lost, or in our case quite a lot lost. Last time we were here it took us an hour to find our way out of Malaga airport and find the right road to the villa. Part of the problem is not being able to speak any Spanish then there is driving a different car on the other side of the road and not understanding how the road system works.

This time we flew out on the Friday night, we booked to stay into the Holiday inn overnight as we couldn't move into our villa until Saturday afternoon. Flying out a night earlier saved us nearly £1000 on our flights (there's a discussion for another day). As a party we flew together but of course had all hired cars from different car hire places, dependant on the type of car required. This meant that we would travel separately to the hotel. The Holiday Inn was chosen because of its proximity to the airport and when you looked on the map it looked very easy to find - 7 minutes from the airport. Yeah right!! After thirty minutes of driving I found the sat nav that was built into the car yippee, although we couldn't find the audio part we had to rely on my navigation of a sat nav system, we don't have one at home. Eventually, we pulled up on what looked like a piece of wasteland where the sat nav said that we had arrived at our destination - we had the Inn signage was not very good. We were not the only group in our party to have such difficulty.

I hate being lost, I find it stressful and scary, it's even worse when you are in foreign lands and you have little idea of the direction you need to travel. My husband doesn't handle it well either, which means that our journeys can be uncomfortable, sometimes filled with raised voices and vibes of anxiety. Not good for the children. One of the friends we are with told me that they never get lost they just take a wrong turn, turnaround and head back to where they came from to find the right road. I tried this when we accidentally took a turn to early on our way back from the Mercadona supermarket shop at the beginning of our holiday and ended up high in the olive trees. The children were concerned that we were lost and child 2 and 3 in particular became nervous and agitated ( we,their parents have to take responsibility for teaching them that.)  so instead of saying that we were lost we stopped and looked out behind us to see the view. It was amazing!  After looking our fill we turned around headed back to the junction and found our way back to the old mill that was to be our home for the next two weeks.

I have taken this to my heart, how we as parents react to difficult situations is what our children learn from. I want my children to strike out on their own, to explore their world and that means that occasionally they will lose their way. I want them to sometimes stop look back and enjoy the view, the moment, to make a memory and I want them to know that they can come back to where they have started from and try again.