Vikki & Terry’s trip to OZ

It was Terry! She had decided that this was an opportunity that she could not miss. The decision was made. We were going to Australia!

The rush was on to prepare for the trip. We planned to be gone ten days. Arrangements were made for me to make up the days missed from teaching. Our tickets weren’t finalized until September 7! Do you have any idea how difficult it is for two women to get suitcases packed and be ready for an international trip in less than one week?

The day before our departure we realized we needed an Australian Visa! We quickly applied for one online and thought we were ready to go. However, because our travel agent had not entered our names on the tickets precisely as they were on our passports, we encountered problems during boarding. At the last minute our Visa problems were resolved and we were on our way. As we sat in our seats on the airplane we took a deep breath. Finally we were going to Australia!

Fifteen hours later we disembarked in Sydney and began our search for George Poulos. It was quite comical, as we had only seen one small photo of George on KFN. We ultimately found George wearing his red USA T-shirt and immediately felt right at home.

We had

“Discovered Our Roots”

in Kythera,

and it was now time to

“Discover Our Australian Roots!”

Australia? I always dreamed of going to Australia and knew the dream would come true one day but I never guessed it would be so soon!

A few months back, George Poulos, administrator of www.kythera-family.net, emailed me to encourage my attendance at the upcoming International Kytheraismos Symposium taking place in Australia in September 2006. . I wrote George that as much as I’d love to come it would be extremely difficult, as I would have just returned from a trip to Greece, and I would have just begun a new school year. How would I get the time off from teaching?

George asked permission to showcase some of the oral history videos from my Kythera Connections website. I agreed to send him DVDs to show, however, he still continued to persuade me to come.

I saw the “call for participation” on the KFN website but feeling quite selfish to be leaving my family again, incurring more expenses on the family budget, I swept the thought out of my head.

It wasn’t more than a few days later that I received an official invitation from Spiro Coolentianos on behalf of the Institute of Kytheraismos. It read, “ The organizing committee of the 2nd International Symposium of Kytheraismos is pleased to invite Vikki Fraioli to participate in the Symposium giving a lecture on LOOKING FOR OUR ROOTS. The Symposium will be held from 15 – 17 September 2006 at the Hellenic Club, Canberra.” I was amazed! As I showed the invitation to friends, and family they overwhelmingly encouraged me to attend.

I wrote to George, expressing my apprehension at flying across the world by myself. The thought frightened me immensely. I implored Terry to come with me, but having just returned from Greece she too felt she could not incur the financial burden.

George graciously invited both of us to stay at his and Lorraine’s lovely home in Dover Heights.

Most importantly, Terry and I are a team; I couldn’t go without her. In less than a minute after I hung up from a final phone conversation with Terry where she regretfully informed me she could not go, my phone rang again!