It's a small world after all

Sunday March 20th – Today I learned what a small world we live in. Here’s the adventure; we got a late start to the day as we stayed up pretty late last night. Once we got ourselves together we asked the apartment manager where we might find a mall to do some shopping. He suggested an area “just down the road” so we decided to walk. Unfortunately we didn’t quite understand his directions and ended up walking about 2 miles to the next town’s strip mall (not what we expected). We asked someone for a restaurant recommendation and ended up at a tasty little café. Here’s where the world gets smaller. Just as we finished eating a man with a guide dog walks into the restaurant. As I looked a bit closer I said to Susan, “that’s our harness and leash”. She glanced at him as he passed her and read our logo on the harness! So of course we get up and follow him to his table and introduce ourselves. It was Michael Osborn and his guide “Hastings”! Michael is the chairperson of GDBs Alumni Association is affiliated with many other service dog user organizations and, as a regular international traveler, is a major advocate in the movement to allow service dogs onboard international aircraft. He was blown away to have run into us and immediately said, “Are you the two instructors who are taking the course at Guide Dogs Victoria?” It surprised us that he knew about this but it turns out that he had been in contact with John Gosling at GDV last week who had told him about our arrival and about the course. He was very impressed with John’s description of the course and felt like it would be a wonderful experience for us. We joined him for his meal and we all chatted about various guide dog topics, and had a great time.

After we parted ways Susan and I decided we wanted to get a cab back to the apartment but couldn’t seem to get one to stop for us. We continued walking towards the apartment trying to flag every taxi that passed with no luck. As we walked past a gas station a nice lady about our age approached us and said she saw us waving and could she help. It turns out that she and her husband are Canadians who recently moved to Melbourne and stayed at our apartment complex when they first arrived. They are now friends with the manager, and offered to give us a lift which we gratefully accepted. *** Note to Susan and Jenna’s moms, We decided they looked very safe before accepting the ride*** Laura and Keith gave us some great tips on traveling in Melbourne and gave us their phone number suggesting we all meet for drinks sometime after we settled in.

Later we took the train into Melbourne again, poked around and had dinner before calling it a day.