I mentioned in an earlier post that my son is participating in a student exchange. This involved hosting a child from another country and then sending my child to live with that family.
We took Lucas to the airport on Saturday. It was really hard to see him go bravely forward into the unknown, at only 13 years of age but I was so proud of him. You see, Lucas has never been away from home for an extended period and he has never been on a plane before. This exchange is 2 months long, 58 days to be exact...
The airport was busy with families sending off students for 2 months (some students are gone for 3 months) so there were lots of tears. Boarding passes were handed out and then they were off... Lucas walked off without looking back. So we went home with one child where there used to be two.
I knew he would be fine and would love the flight but a mother worries when her child is away from her. I don’t think I will breathe properly until he is home again. I cried most of that night; just when I thought I’d gotten control of my emotions I would start up again.
There are a lot of flight trackers online so I watched as the plane took my son across the Atlantic Ocean and I wondered what he doing, what he was thinking even though I knew he was partly nervous, mostly excited and just watching movies. Finally I sent an email to the family letting them know he was indeed on his way to them and went to bed knowing that he would be at their place when I woke up.
The next morning we talked to Lucas on Skype! It was afternoon for him and he had been up all night so he sounded tired. He had a great flight to Paris, and enjoyed the shorter connecting flight to Geneva where he could see the Alps out the window of the plane. Magnificent!!
I felt immediately better knowing he had made it safely to the family that would take care of him and started thinking ahead to all the adventures waiting for him in Switzerland and in Europe!
