Ruby slippers

When you travel abroad, your passport is like the ruby slippers in The Wizard of Oz. It lets you go home.

I had a harrowing experience yesterday when my purse temporarily went missing. We's eaten in a restaurant, and I went to pay the bill. My purse wasn't in my backpack where I usually keep it. I kept retraced my steps calmly. As Joe Gann says, it is never too late to panic. When the purse wasn't in my hotel room, I began to get scared. Everything important was in my purse-- money, credit cards, drivers license, ETSU ID, and My Passport. In China, you have to carry your passport as the police may ask for it. It was eight o'clock at night. I went back to the office, hoping it was still open. It wasn't. I didn't have the phone number for Sir Barry's assistant, so I phoned himself. He insisted on meeting me at the office, there and then, even though he had just gotten home from the office. I was mortified.

The purse wasn't in the faculty room, where I thought I might have left it. Nor was it in the classroom where I teach. I wondered how you replace a passport. I knew it must be complicated. Finally, my bag turned up in the board room where we'd had a meeting earlier in the day. I had apparently placed it on a chair, and the chair had been pushed under the table out of sight.

I'm enjoying my stay here, but I do want to go back to the states. To echo Dorothy's famous words, "There's no place like home."