Anastasia State Park, FL: Teamwork

**Please note that from now on, I will mostly write the blog posts in English and will only translate the very short ones in French. I spend many hours a week translating professionnally (most weeks!) and feeling like I also have to do translation for the blog has become a drag that keeps me from writing longer reflexions that I really want to share here. My English is not perfect, but I know that most of my readers understand English (whereas many do not read French) and this is why I chose this langage. I know some of you will be disappointed and I am sorry about that.

**Veuillez noter qu'à partir de maintenant, le blogue sera principalement en anglais et je ne traduirai que les billets très courts en français. Je passe déjà plusieurs heures par semaine à traduire dans un cadre professionnel (la plupart des semaines!) et le fait de sentir que je dois aussi traduire pour le blogue me pèse de plus en plus et m'empêche de partager ici les réflexions plus longues que j'ai envie d'écrire. Mon anglais n'est pas parfait, mais je sais que la plupart de mes lecteurs comprennent l'anglais (tandis que plusieurs ne lisent pas le français) et c'est pourquoi je choisis cette langue. Je sais que certains d'entre vous seront déçus et j'en suis désolée.

When we arrived at the beautiful beach of Anastasia State Park, we were quite surprised and disappointed to see the purple flag up (dangerous marine wildlife). It was the first time we saw a purple flag. We expected either jelly fish warnings or sharks. We spoke with local surfers and they told us they always keep the flag up and that it was not the season for neither jelly fish or sharks and that we could swim no problem. We called the rangers office and they confirmed that. We thought it was a weird decision, but were quite happy to find out we could throw ourselves in the water since it was so warm outside!

Teamwork for little ones and bigger ones, all day long!

Le travail d'équipe, chez les petits et les plus grands, toute la journée!

Those last two weeks of camping with friends made me realize how much traveling can be lonely and how much I miss having a community. It's a hard realization for a traveler at heart like me. I also saw how happy the girls were to be with their friends, how they learn from other children... I am not saying that we live in isolation while traveling but we sure do not belong to a community the same way we did when we lived in the Yukon, for instance. And a part of us misses that, of course. A part of me sees how much our girls are thriving on that too... I know that some traveling famillies choose to stay put in some specific location for a year or two, together, for that reason. For instance, there is a bunch of great families in Bali right now. If the time difference would not be such a big deal with our clients, that might have been an interesting option for us. But staying up all night to be in touch with our clients and do rush contracts is not the quality of life we are after...

However, I must confess that the lack of community has been the main drag for us in Costa Rica and living on the road (obviously, on the road, there is not much of a community... unless, you have a big network of people that you visit along the way. And since we left our friends Pascale and Anton, we haven't stopped at anyone's place... because we didn't know anyone!). So, there is a lot of thinking going on here... We'll keep you posted, of course!