Traveling Abroad!

Traveling Abroad!

January of my senior year of college, I had the opportunity to leave the country for the very first time. I took a class it was my graduation present to myself. I went with one professor and 11 other students. We went to Eastern Europe, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland, Germany. At the time, I was not into collecting magnets so much as I was into boys, drinking, having fun, and looking at churches and castles, so I missed out a little bit at the time.

I’ve done quite a bit of catching up since then. I have some wonderful friends, family, coworkers, and supervisors that I trained a little bit that when they went traveling, especially overseas, they would bring me back a magnet.

I have two from Holland. My supervisor went and came back, brought me a package, dropped it off on my desk at work. And when I came in, he was there watching and he said, “Okay, that one you can open here, but the other one is for Troy and you have to wait till you get home to open it because otherwise it's considered sexual harassment here at work.” Yes, it was from the red district of the Netherlands. No picture of it here, but I’m sure you can imagine a magnet with a topless woman. The other one he got me that trip was a wooden shoes magnet. And since then, I’ve also received a windmill magnet.

I have magnets from Russia, Sri Lanka, China, Shanghai, Iceland, and more.

And every once in a while I will come home and there's a little package on my front porch; I open it up and it's a magnet from wherever. And sometimes he'll even get it when he goes down to Key West, Alaska, or wherever he may be and I know that it's from him when I open it up. 

And since joining Toastmaster, I have friends around the world. When we get together in person at the International Convention, I get more magnet gifts. 

I relish the opportunity to get memories from other people when they take their travels and bring me back a magnetic memory.