<p>D1 traveled from Sydney to Fiji yesterday with a girlfriend. I think Fiji’s time is 15 hours ahead of us, because of the time difference I have only received a text message from her when she arrived yesterday. </p>
<p>I just tried calling her at the hotel. The operator said they had no such guest. They also checked with two other sister hotels, nothing. They then transferred me to their reservation desk. They asked for the confirmation number. I didn’t make the reservation, so why would I have that. After calling them back the fourth time, they finally found her room number - they had put her first name as the last name. I didn’t get to speak with her, but at least I know she checked in.</p>
<p>I can’t do this…I just felt the air suck out of me when I heard they said they had no such guest.</p>
<p>My biggest issue (doesn’t rise to the level of fear) is … not even knowing my son is traveling. S1 is a junior…very independent…very capable. But the only reason I even know that he is not at school this weekend, and is in St. Louis (1500 miles away), is because I follow him on Twitter. So, I wouldn’t even be able to call a hotel. In my case…ignorance truly is bliss.</p>
<p>Tomorrow I may call and ask whether he made it back “home”.</p>
<p>oh my gosh, oldfort! terrible! This made MY stomach hurt just to think about it :(</p>
<p>I come from a very long line of worriers. Growing up we used to go camping for vacations. My mom had to call her dad every night when we were on vacation to let him know we were alright. What a worrier he was!</p>
<p>She put an end to it one night when she came to the realization that she had left her five children alone at our campsite so she could find a phone to reassure her father.</p>
<p>What didn’t help was the operator was just so pleasant on the phone, “So sorry, but I don’t see her name.” I wanted to reach over the phone to shake her - this is not just any guest, it’s my daughter.</p>
<p>I just wanted to tell her to have a nice dinner on us.</p>
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<p>This is too funny. I hope I won’t be like that (your grandfather).</p>
<p>The good news is that the older they get, the more they travel, the less you worry. Don’t get me wrong, I worry about all of my kids (boys and the girl) but knowing that they have had travel bumps before and figured out what to do, helps a little.</p>
<p>Our kids & family are pretty casual about travel. They are only now starting to reply to my phone calls when I calculate they should have arrived at their destination. Our extended family has always been very casual about who is where and whether or not they make it to their destinations.</p>
<p>I really often have no idea where my S is and didn’t find out until he had already made plans to go to China. I also didn’t find out until pretty late that he couldn’t get a visa & wasn’t going to China after all.</p>
<p>I’ve never called a hotel where my kids stayed, so never experienced what you describe–never have the phone number or name of most of the places they stay!</p>
<p>Oh well–ignorance can keep us less stressed. When D & S went to NY & the East Coast on separate trips in separate years with friends over Spring Break, I had no idea where either would be sleeping, when either would arrive or depart. Each had a good time & got back in one piece.</p>
<p>oldfort, my D is studying abroad,too. I have several fears, but #1 is that she will go on a junket and forget her insulins and #2 that she will need cash and the machine will eat her card and leave her w/nothing.</p>
<p>If you had a text message from her, why were you trying to call her? Did you try texting her a second time when you couldn’t reach her? </p>
<p>My 21-year-old daughter has lived and traveled in more than a dozen different countries, from the age of 16 – but I’ve always relied on text or email as the primary way to communicate. (The technology has improved over time – she now has a blackberry which even allows on-line chat or posting to facebook). Hotel clerks get it wrong all the time – I’ve had the “no such guest” problem many times when making connections with friends visiting from out of town or while traveling to various business conferences – so that’s not a very reliable source of information. With the text messages I have to be cognizant of time zone differences – but I’ve never really had to wait too long for my d. to reply. </p>
<p>Anyway – I know how it is to have a kid traveling — I’d probably go nuts if my kids didn’t have cell phones – but unless its an emergency I don’t worry about voice contact when my d is abroad & on the move.</p>
<p>This summer my son went abroad alone. We knew his mobile phone wouldn’t work, and we figured he’d be too busy to call anyway. What we weren’t prepared for was that there was no phone in his hotel room so we couldn’t call him. So the only way we knew he was actually there was by checking his regular withdrawals with his ATM card. He finally called from a pay phone several days into the trip.</p>
<p>I believe that our children owe us some minimal peace of mind, some empathy for what it means to be a parent. When you travel, a ten second phone call, “I’m here, talk soon,” goes a long way. Courtesy and respect are a two-way street.</p>
<p>When then 20 yr. old S left for his NROTC summer tour two years ago, he traveled alone fr. NC to NY then on to Turkey to board a U.S. Navy vessel. We didn’t hear from him for 12 days! We are not big travelers so didn’t even think to ask his flight number to at least know he had arrived. We were completely in the dark for twelve long days. I kept (prob. naively) telling myself that the Navy was expecting him to show up and would make a call if he did not.</p>
<p>Finally on the 13th day, I got an email saying “I’m alive and on the ship, not much opportunity for emailing”. It was the only correspondence we got. Two weeks later, he called to say he had traveled back through Italy, Germany,NY and was sitting on the runway in DC waiting to make the final leg home. Whew. </p>
<p>Yeah, I was pretty worried but kept hoping that no news was good news and that he woudl have managed to communicate with us somehow if there were a problem.</p>
<p>Absolutely. D has traveled a fair amount, both in and out of the country. She always calls or e-mails, depending on the time difference and access to a computer, to let us know that she’s arrived safely. H and I do the same thing with each other - it’s common courtesy.</p>
<p>Our son, who is in Bazil for six months, would be horrified if we called his cell phone except in a dire emergency (as in somebody better have died); I don’t even know how to send a text message, but I guess I could ask his brother to try that in a pinch. We communicate via email but he can go two weeks or more without writing. I have sometimes wondered how many weeks could go by without communication before I might start getting worried. At those times, I will usually send him an email asking him if he is still alive. He usually answers within 24 hours, but just because he doesn’t answer doesn’t mean there is a problem. When he travels incountry (and he does that a lot), he doesn’t take his laptop or check email. </p>
<p>When I was his age and living in Africa, we had neither phones nor email. All my mother got was the occasional letter and that was pretty rare. H spent three months backpacking through Europe on his own the summer after high school and never contacted home once, so we don’t have an expectation for frequent contact. </p>
<p>Both kids have traveled overseas a fair amount and we never expected any contact until they showed up at the airport (unless they weren’t going to make it). Labor strikes kept our older one from getting out of Peru a couple of years ago so it took him a few days longer than expected to get home and he did call collect to let us know he was stuck. The state department had sent an email as well so we already knew there was a problem but weren’t exactly sure how he was going to work through it.</p>
<p>My biggest fear I guess is that he will get mugged, beat up, or otherwise badly hurt. He got home too late and was locked out of a hostel so stuck on the street all night in a dicey neighborhood in Lima. That scared him.</p>
<p>“H and I do the same thing with each other - it’s common courtesy.”</p>
<p>I think it is a matter of expectation and what is the normal routine in the family. H and I don’t email or phone each other when traveling or make a big deal about schedules even when home. The same goes for the kids. We did not track where they were going and what time they expected to be home after about age 17. For the kids, we did expect them to answer their cell phones if we called. H, however, rarely keeps his cell phone turned on, doesn’t have it with him, or the battery has died, so when he is out of touch he is just out of touch. </p>
<p>Our default assumption is that everything is OK unless we hear otherwise. I took a trip to Mexico a few years ago and told him I would call to let him know I made it. I found my phone card didn’t work and long-story short after a frustrating hour or so with operators, I just gave up. I came home ten days later having not called (still wouldn’t know how to use an Internet cafe because I’m pretty sure it would require a password and I don’t have a clue what that would be). H figured something like that had happened. We had a similar experience when I went to France but I was traveling with someone who was more telephone savvy than I was so she got ahold of her husband and he let my husband know. Neither H nor I have a lot of tolerance for technology so just aren’t going to make learning that a priority and we are fine with not knowing details on everybody’s schedule.</p>
<p>Calmom - I was asleep when she texted. She told me that she probably wouldn’t have internet service, hence no email. I tried calling her back to let her know that I would like to treat her and her girlfriend to a nice dinner, but her phone was off (I am sure because she didn’t want to incur roaming charges), that’s why I called the hotel. Now, if I didn’t try to do something nice and just minded my own business, then everything would have been fine. To have a major hotel front desk tell you that your kid never showed up, just put all kinds of worst case scenario into my head. </p>
<p>After I went to bed, I did get a long email from her, so I guess she some how got her email to work. We have traveled a lot as a family, but this is her first time traveling (making her own reservations too) by herself. She said she asked the cab driver to stop at a grocery store to buy water and food before they checked in. Fiji is beautiful.</p>
<p>I would be happy with the above. You know she arrived. </p>
<p>DS is employed in a job where he travels to a new place at least three times a WEEK. I am thrilled to know where he is once in a blue moon. If he had to check in with me every time he moved to a new place, he would be doing this way too often for him (or me). He’s a college grad…but KWIM??</p>
<p>DD is very good about checking in…but the reality is that she is on the opposite coast. For all I know, she went to Reno this weekend…or Seattle, or wherever. I do ask her to let me know if she is traveling and usually I <em>think</em> she does. But honestly, I don’t really know.</p>
<p>I can’t tell you how many times <em>I</em> traveled someplace as a college student and my family had no idea I was even off campus. </p>
<p>What is my biggest worry? Well…it would be that the kids would be involved in some criminal issue (kidnapped, robbed, etc). I figure if THAT happens, I’ll hear about it ASAP.</p>
<p>Ours have been flying alone long distances since the airlines let them. And we all fly a lot in our family, often separately. But everyone but me (so I think) is terrible about checking back in! “Oh, sorry, I forgot!” The world is always so much more exciting and distracting on the other side. </p>
<p>I suppose on the plus side, over time I’ve gotten used to it. Now those hours between when I should know and do find out are usually attributed to them, not something that has happened. Yet I still call back to anyone at home to say I made it okay (now that I think about it, I’m not exactly sure why…like what would have happened since I boarded the plane?). But anyway I know the stress…though I seem to be the only one in the family who has it.</p>
Cheers!</p>