Our Second Flat Traveler Adventure

  Our second traveler adventure was a little more disjointed than the first.  Lesson #1 learned: don't set up your next swap until your traveler is back in hand.  The swapping group we belong to hosts swaps every month, so I was getting our next destination ready based on expected time of arrival of our traveler per communication with our swapping partners.  Well, real life happens, and no matter how well you plan it can go awry (see here about our first experience).  Having made commitments for the future made it hard to get a good starting exchange date.
  We had a lot of fun with our new travelers: Desert Tortoise from Las Vegas & Maria from Kitty Hawk, NC.  Here is what we sent with them:

what we sent to Las Vegas

  Desert Tortoise got to come with us on our South Dakota trip, so we had tons of fun things to send.  We even sent a fossilized turtle shell piece that we found at the Homestead B & B.  He came with a journal to fill out, but we still included a scrapbook like we have in our previous packets. 

what we sent to Kitty Hawk

  We didn't go as many places with Flat Maria, so we made it more of a Kansas theme & included a Little House on the Prairie book & some other Kansas items along with trinkets from our trips.  She came with her own journal too and a passport.  We bought a stamp just for it  to represent Kansas for it & future passports.

Las Vegas

  Due to some scheduling it took a little while to get Bubby's Flat Hank back from Las Vegas, but that was ok since we weren't planning on hosting any travelers during the holidays.  His host family sent pictures of Hank & some Nevada work sheets:)

Kitty Hawk

  Buffy's host family sent some great pamphlets showing some of the wonderful shoreline adventures in their area as well as pictures & a nice note from our swapping partner, even a Halloween decoration since it was close to then when we got it back.  I was really impressed with this because you could tell the student did most of the work & that was neat:)  I've been writing most of the journal entries for the ones we send but getting input from the kids on what they think is important to include.  I hope that for the next ones that we do they will be in "the know" since we have a few under our belt and take more of it on themselves. 
   Something to keep in mind, each swap is different, you never know what you're going to get.  Just make sure that you "do unto others...." and not expect grandiose things each time.  Go into it to just enjoy catching a glimpse of the interesting things in another part of the world and being an ambassador for your part of the world and you'll have a great time! :)