Reading

Finished 360 Degrees this morning at breakfast.

I'm really impressed by what these folks did. Can't say that I'd have the courage to do it -- perhaps you have to be born with the sense that that kind of thing is normal, or acquire it backpacking for a month in Europe or South East Asia. Perhaps we have so much here that it's hard for us to see the level that you need to be comfortable anywhere else is much less. Or how easily you might be able to adapt to that level. I like to say that my idea of roughing it is slow room service, but that's not all that far from the truth.

They started out thinking that other people view Americans as obsessive about personal safety; one of the last notes is the boy saying that a US teacher told him he could not go on the playground with the open-toed sandals he'd worn around the world because 'he might stub his toe'. I simultaneously think how absurd and Of course, if that was my daughter, I'd be mad if they let her stub her toe.

We might find out what it's like to have someone with that but its perfectly normal attitude, since the idea of the first year fund is to pay for a year of college, or doing something in its place. Though I know, I know, that when she tells us she's going to go backpack in Europe for three months, I'll freak right out. My daughter? Alone in Europe? There could be....there could be bears!