Tuesday 17^th July

Listening to everyone’s travel stories on their return to Hobart… Lots of fun to be had, out in the wide wide world!  But not everyone likes Abroad!

I was talking to a woman in a meeting recently.  She was telling me, very sadly, about her 20 year old daughter who had left the weekend before, for a year’s exchange, in Paris.  She had a scholarship to the Sorbonne, and a great place to live, right in the centre of the city.  I was sympathetic to this poor sad mother, and said, cheerily, that the time would fly past and that her daughter would be home in no time.  “That’s just it!” she said, with a mournful sigh.  “She got off the plane, looked around, hated it, and came straight home!”

When my Claire flew off overseas, all alone at the age of 20, she might have had a very similar reaction when she got off the plane in Edinburgh and smelt the alien air of Abroad.  But…she had been so sick on the plane there was no way in the world she was going to get back on and fly back to Tasmania.  By the time she had recovered her equilibrium – she was having FUNFUNFUN!