If the shoe fits - you still need socks

"Yes, I'd love to go hiking!"

C was very happy with the enthusiasm of our new au pair to go hiking with us on her first weekend in Switzerland.

Don't make it too hard, I warned him, Otherwise she'll never come with us again.

I won't, he promised.

Because your optimistic estimates of hike distance and difficulty have already put the kids off this year. And what you think is normal is actually pretty hard for most people. She's from Mexico, remember, not Switzerland. I'm not sure how much hiking she's done. 

It'll be fine. Stop worrying. 

You've got the foreboding, right?

Our new au pair only had Converse-like sneakers, but no problem! She could use my walking shoes. So off we set, for what C assured us all was an easy hike.

Not even a 1,000 m height gain! And there's a chairlift for the first part. Easy peesy!

It's true that it wasn't such a hard walk. Longer than our au pair had ever done before, and possibly quite a bit steeper too, but nothing too tricky. No sheer cliffs to traverse, and a path the whole way. 

Except... although we had made sure she had good shoes, we forgot to check her socks. Ankle socks don't really work with walking shoes, they slip down. The results are not pretty.

An hour into the hike, our au pair politely inquired as to whether we had any Band Aids. For once, I did! We patched up her heels and kept going. It wasn't long though before she couldn't walk anymore in her borrowed shoes. However! Not really liking the aesthetics of my walking shoes, she'd packed her prettier sneakers. After another stop to change shoes we continued on.

We reached the lunch spot, at a mountain hut perched above the beautiful Orny glacier. Our au pair wisely decided to stay there while went on the to next hut at the top of the glacier.

We'll be back in 2 hours, said C. Enjoy the sun!

Only... Lukan was slow walking up, so we were not back in 2 hours. Meaning we didn't have time to make it to the chair lift before it closed. Meaning we had to walk quite a bit further down to the car than we had walked up.

And... the track down was not so good. Steep, rocky, and slippery. Not ideal for pretty treadless sneakers.

Though she stayed in good spirits, all was not fine by this point. Our poor au pair slid and slipped, falling hard on her backside more than once. Even with hiking boots, I slipped too. Lukan had a rough time of it as well, becoming more and more miserable each time he fell. Once down the valley, we still had to trudge quite a way through the forest to the town. We were very happy to reach the car.

And the next day, when I saw her bruised, limping body, I was even happier to that our au pair's father was far, far away in Mexico. Needless to say, she has not come hiking with us again.

It was very pretty though!

Life lessons from hiking

A line of mountains forms the eastern horizon from our village. For years now, two in the middle have been calling to C.

This year, he decided, was the year to answer. He planned out a route to climb both in one day - and last Sunday we set out.

We made the mistake, though, of letting the kids stay up late the night before. Even with a sleep in, they did not want to go hiking. There was complaining, and dawdling, and parental snapping. All before we even left the house.

One of the disputes was over Lukan taking a travel sickness pill. He refused, so of course there was a vomit on the way. What with this, and the late start, the sun was already high in the sky by the time we started hiking.

Téo trailed behind from the start, deliberately slow. Lukan was chirpy as we walked up the valley through pastures of flowers... but began to protest when the path began to gently rise.

We thought we'd been pretty clear that we were climbing two mountains today - but even so, he seemed surprised that the path was getting steeper and steeper. Lollies didn't help, and neither did an earlier-than-planned lunch.

I tried to be encouraging.

I managed to keep him going, but it was painful and progress was slow. Too painful and slow for C, who had so looked forward to climbing these two mountains, who had spent so much time planning the route, and could now see the day slipping away without us even getting to the first ridge. It all became too much.

I wasn't ready to give in though. Partly because it was C's dream to climb these mountains and having come this far I didn't really want to turn back - only to come again another day. But mostly because if we gave in... well, would we ever hike again as a family? Or would the kids use this as a precedent to be as annoying as possible on every future walk, until we couldn't stand it anymore?

As unpleasant as this prospect was, our motto - we are not a family of whingers - was not the only thing at risk. What about those essential traits we're supposed to be instilling, like resilience, grit and determination? Even some of the old-fashioned ones would be very welcome - suffering in silence being but one example. Surely by turning back we were risking the kid's characters? Their very chance of future success? No, we had to achieve something today, dammit.

I brokered a deal. We'd give up on the second peak, Dent de Folliéran, but still climb the first, Dent de Brenleire. Continued promises of rock scrambling got Lukan up onto the ridge... but when the rocks failed to appear immediately, he lost it completely. In the wonderful sibling relay of good child-bad child, Téo suddenly bounded ahead, pleasant and chatty, while Lukan sat down and refused to budge. 

Now it was my turn to snap. I'd have happily left him there at this point, only the ridge was very steep, with a cliff on one side and a strong wind blowing. We were NOT turning back, he could NOT stay by himself, so he HAD to go on.

Luckily there's a good parent-bad parent relay too. C, now calm and patient, kept Lukan going, leaving me to stomp out my tantrum. We reached the promised rocks and Lukan's mood - and speed - improved. So much so that he left me behind and raced up to the top. I scrambled up the last part to a happy chorus of "Come on mummy, you're nearly there!"

The kids were so proud to have made it. I was frankly amazed we were all there - and smiling no less! The triumph was even sweeter when Lukan, then Téo, and then I apologized to one another.

It wasn't a long walk, or the most spectacular, but overcoming the whining and unpleasantness to share the joy of reaching the summit together as a united family was one of our greatest feats - and a lesson in perseverance and accomplishment that I hope the kids will remember for ever. Even more than the truly tough walks we've done.

The portraits

So the portraits went better than I expected. I wanted to really capture each person, and not just take five head and shoulder shots for the sake of it. I didn't manage so well for C, though, there's only one of him that I think is good:

Lukan is a natural poser so he was mostly a willing subject - and quite easy to direct. In this first one, I wanted to show the transition between big kid and small kid. It's not brilliant, but it does capture him right now.

This next one really captures this transition. I think it's the best one of him, even if he is doing something that drives me NUTS.

The teacher liked the next one a lot, but I am less convinced.

This one I really like, though, even if the Lego in front of him is not ideal:

Téo is less of a natural poser, though he was also generally willing. This first one was one of my first. It's OK, but I don't think I did well with using light.

This one is better for using light:

This next one is what Téo does in every supermarket, but the light is crap so the teacher didn't like it.

He did like this one, but I don't like the flat light:

But this one is good - my favourite of him:

The next assignment is landscapes. I'm not hugely inspired, let's see what I manage!

The eye of the beholder

So my Christmas present this year was 5 private photography lessons, with a photographer I have worked with on various projects over the years.

The first lesson covered the basics of shooting in manual mode - aperture, exposure, camera shake and the like. For the homework, I needed to show examples of different shutter speeds and depths of field. So around the house I went, looking for ways to take the required photos.

I understood these photos to be exercises - a way of showing I'd understood the concepts. So I was a little unsettled to have them judged on their merit as a photo. And very surprised at how the photographer saw some of them.

This one for instance:

I was actually quite pleased with this. I got the required depth of field (without any zoom - not so easy with my lens) and I thought it wasn't too bad as a photo.

Yeah, well, technically it's fine... but meh. 

OKaaaayy.

Now this is a powerful photo.

Huh? For me this was a bit of a desperation shot - I needed 5 photos with a large depth of field and was really struggling to find even passably interesting things to photograph inside (it was cold out). I see this as technically OK but otherwise very meh.

I love this one! All those lines and then that one bit of mess coming out of the basket. It's great!

I did not compose this at all. I did like Quincy cut by the glass, but it was even more of a desperation shot than the one above.

This is really great! It's timeless! It says, I want to be a kid and jump!

I thought I'd completely failed this one. I was meant to pan on a moving object so that it would be sharp and the background blurred. But it was nearly dark, so I couldn't get a fast enough shutter speed to prevent Lukan blurring too.

But the biggest surprise was this one:

I had to show examples of camera shake - so I used the ones where I'd gotten the shutter speed too slow.

Wow, this is incredible powerful!

Um, it is? Surely it's just blurry flowers?

This week's homework is portraits. I'm interested to see what he says of them!

Japan Day 13-14

Rather day-by-day, I'm going to put the remainder of our time in Tokyo - and Japan - in one last post.

Lukan was desperate - DESPERATE - to go to the Pokemon Center, but we heard from Yumi that it was just a big shop. So we figured the shop at Tokyo Station would suffice.

He wanted to buy a Pokemon. We could only see the balls that they came in, not the Pokemon itself, so he picked one out. The photo above was taken just after the purchase, before opening the ball... which, it turned out, contained a magnet. There was much sorrow and wailing.

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Téo was very happy to go to the shinkansen (bullet train) station. I think he could have stayed there all day, watching the trains come and go.

We meanly dragged him away - although he still got to see a lot of trains.

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There were quite a few places we wanted to show to the kids. One was Akihabara Electric City, where one goes to buy electronics.

Electric head massagers. 

French maids - not electronic, but they do offer massages. More here if you are interested.

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Meiji Shrine:

 Caskets of sake given as offerings.

These girls wanted a photo with the kids, We said that they needed to pay, but they didn't get the joke.

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Harajuku:

We had wanted to see the dressed-up kids on the bridge between Harajuku and the Meiji Shrine, but there were none! There were still costumed people elsewhere however.

Harajuku is the home of the most-looked-forward-to place of the entire trip, by the kids at least: a giant toy store! Much birthday and pocket money was spent.

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Odaiba:

We went to Odaiba with Yumi and Daiki. For the kids, the Legoland Disocvery Center was the best part.

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We were taken out to dinner by Akie, C's homestay mother from when he first moved to Japan. She took us to a restaurant famous for fugu - a pufferfish that can be lethally poisonous if not prepared properly.

It was delicious. And happily, not lethal.

The restaurant is owned by an ex-sumo player - who was there! He asked the kids if they knew any Japanese... despite having been coached by Shabolz to say cute bum in response, the kids claimed not to know a word.

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On the last night we went out with Yumi, Satoshi and Daiki.

And then the next morning we had to get up early, to go to the airport. The kids had their last edamame and chips meal (yes, for breakfast!)...

... and then it was time to go.

A wonderful, wonderful holiday!