Owen Hargreaves, the Canadian-born England international who plays his soccer in Germany, describes what life was like at 16 alone in Munich. Unable to afford the phone calls, and in days before email, Owen just got on with it. Would someone do the same thing now?
It was difficult because I was miles from home and out of my comfort zone but I was so stubborn I did not want to give up. I do not like to ask for help from anyone so just told myself I could do it.
I was presented with a great opportunity and had my foot in the door and I just had to take it.
Back then there was no internet and I could not afford to phone Canada much so I was forced to deal with things on my own.
Now with email and cheap calls if I had done the same I would have been on the phone saying it is too hard all the time.
I am glad I did it as it really made me a lot stronger. Things like that give you confidence.
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clipped from news.bbc.co.uk
My husband and I spent the first four years of our marriage on different continents because of work and school constraints. Back then (1994), internet access wasn’t quite so common in Hong Kong (where he was) so we used to set the fax machines to transmit at a specific time when we were both away from home. We also made do with 30 minute phone calls on the weekends which seemed like a huge luxury to my parents who also spent a few years apart during their marriage. They relied on regular mail and no phone calls for months at a time. Ahhh. How things have changed. Now he can be gone for a week and I don’t miss him all that much because we still text message, email, IM, and call every day.