QUARANTINE CALL FROM Sussex, England
Tess Longfield Travel PR expert
Tess Longfield is a British Travel PR expert in the travel industry based in Beirut, but quarantining in Sussex, England. In her career, Tess has worked through major events and catastrophes such as the 7/7 bombings in London, the Royal Wedding in 2011, and the Summer 2012 Olympics, before setting off on a life abroad with her diplomat husband, building a family as they were placed in Kenya, Jordan and now Lebanon.
She has transitioned from local London PR star to super human mom of two, serial expat and endurance athlete, CrossFitter and marathon runner. In this episode, you’ll hear about Tess’ brave adventures, from moving abroad to Africa with a five week old baby, her 240-mile relay run from the Dead Sea to the Red Sea, and living 200 meters from major political protests in Beirut within weeks of relocating there, plus hear her predictions for the future of travel post-corona virus. It was such a pleasure to reconnect with Tess after almost a decade and I hope you enjoy episode 6 of Adventure Calls.
episode highlights
4:00 On being accidentally separated with her girls away from her husband during the quarantine, Tess is at her parents house in Sussex, England, while her husband, a British diplomat, is at his post at their house in Lebanon.
5:58 What is the path to becoming a travel PR expert and heading up International PR at VisitBritain.
10:34 On moving to Kenya, as a first time expat, with a five-week old baby in tow.
13:00 On building community and a life abroad as the trailing spouse.
14:25 On the lasting impression from three years in Kenya.
16:05 On relocating from Kenya to Amman, Jordan with a three year old and a one and a half year old.
16:40 On the difficulties of creating community in Jordan.
18:00 On running to Rome Marathon in support of a friend’s beating breast cancer, and her Dead2Red 240-kilometer relay race across the desert in support of Reclaim Childhood organization.
22:20 On moving to Lebanon just before 100 days of revolution, just before Covid-19 hit. 24:40 On what her kids know that she didn’t know at their age, due to growing up as expat kids.
27:20 On what consumers will remember post-Covid-19: how they were treated by brands during this time will be a long-term memory for most (cancellations, flexible rebookings, etc).
28:20 On travel behavior change in the short term and medium terms.
31:40 On working remotely and how that might change expat opportunities finding work abroad, abroad.
32:50 On expats’ willingness to live and move abroad post-pandemic, and large corporations’ ability to hire for overseas posts - will they be as desirable?
Links mentioned in this episodE
Dead2Red relay race: Tess and a group of women completed the 240k run from the Dead Sea to the Red Sea.
Reclaim Childhood: The organization that Tess and her Dead2Red group raised money for, which empowers refugee and at-risk women and girls in Jordan through sport and play.
Visitbritain.com The British National Tourist Board where Tess led the International PR team for seven years.
About Adventure Calls
From her quarantine to theirs, world-traveler and author of How To Move Abroad And Why It’s The Best Thing You’ll Do, Jessica Drucker, calls up travel experts to find out what they envision for the future of travel in a post-pandemic world.
Full episode transcript
Jessica Drucker: Hi, Tess. Thank you so much for taking my call.
Tess Longfield: Thanks, Jess. It's been it's really really nice to be speaking to you again. After all this time.
Jessica Drucker: It’s been a decade. That's too long.
Tess Longfield: Where does the time go? It’s crazy.
Jessica Drucker: Well, and what is time right now? It's absolutely nothing. Every day is the same day.
Tess Longfield: God This is getting existential pretty quickly.
Jessica Drucker: Yeah, right. We just got right into it. No, but so really the most important question, how are you feeling and how is your whole family feeling?
Tess Longfield: Oh, that's nice. I said, I don't I don't want to choke up when you get when you get asked how you're feeling, now. I'm feeling feeling fine, I'm weirdly back in my childhood home, which comes with all its own trappings of strangeness. But I'm safe, my family safe. And yes, so far, you know, we're healthy and we have a bit of space and we're able to go out and exercise and, you know, so that is I'm really, really thankful for that.
Jessica Drucker: Where are you based? Normally right now.
Tess Longfield: So at the moment, I'm in Sussex, in England, but normally, well, I was living in Beirut, in Lebanon, and my husband's still there. We're just talking on you know, what's up call every day, because he's, he's at the British Embassy there and so he's still working and doing doing what he can.
Jessica Drucker: So did you, like consciously decide to separate and go home back to your parents house, or did it just kind of happen?
Tess Longfield: We thought it would be better for the girls. I've got two daughters who are six and eight that they could be somewhere with a garden. We're in an apartment in the middle of the city, which was already on lockdown. So sort of two weeks before the UK at least two weeks before the UK was, we just thought it would be kind of better for them at the age there to be here. So,
Jessica Drucker: in the wide open space is really good. I mean, the fact that you're able to get outside at all when we were sort of trapped inside, I'll have lasting feelings about that for a really long time. It's good for the girls. Yeah. And he's well Nathan is doing well?
Tess Longfield: Yeah, he's fine. He's taking he's uh, he's taken up baking sourdough, which...
Jessica Drucker: what is that! Everyone's doing that.
Tess Longfield: I know. I know. Well, it's a type of bread but you know, he's it he is like never really cooked at all. So for him, it's quite a big leap.
Jessica Drucker: So you're in Beirut really is where you live now. And so I'm gonna bring this all the way back though because you and I know each other for a really long time because we met at visit Britain when we work there together in London. And I'm not saying that I didn't think at the time that you'd become this like mega world traveler Super ex-pats all these faraway places crossfitter marathon runner, but in the time since I know you you become a superhuman and
Tess Longfield: Oh, that's very kind. Not at all true.
Jessica Drucker: Don't be deferential or whatever or whatever. Okay, but let's go all the way back to VB because you really are also a travel expert and you've been at this for a very long time. Not so long. I don't mean it that way. But really you've been in the industry for a really long time. How did you end up at visit Britain? Did you have a travel history, industry history before that?
Tess Longfield: I did Yeah. Well, I was working for a travel PR agency called bgb, which was a travel communication specialist. So that's where I started out. I started there as an intern and and worked there for three years. And that was what I did before visit Britain. So and I'd done, you know, all of my kind of temping jobs throughout school in university had been travel related because where I grew up is next to Gatwick Airport. And so just I guess lots of airlines I remember being really intrigued. My first, one of my first temping Jobs was working on doing the personnel files for for, for an airline, a charter airline and I was supposed to be filing and I was, yeah, I shouldn't admit this, really, but I was reading through all of these. It was an eye opener from why, wow. Like what did they do when they got to the pool. And then yeah, I was at visit Britain seven years in the PR team first at visit England, and then I left as head of destination PR, working with international journalists bringing them over from all different countries, which is where we work together.
Jessica Drucker: So and you were my boss, we should just put it out there, but that's fine.
Tess Longfield: Best hire I ever made. Thank you.
Jessica Drucker: I'll take it. That's not true. But I'll definitely take it. Um, you're just being nice to me. Um, and while you were there, so like being being head of destination PR and bringing journalists from all over the world. What's that? What was that like for you like on a daily basis? What's it? What's it like to work in that industry in that way? Do you remember all the way back then?
Tess Longfield: Yeah, I totally do. And I and I really loved my job. I couldn't believe how lucky I was to be doing that. Really. I mean, the job was kind of managing The International PR effort so I was speaking to colleagues in 36 different countries on a daily basis and seeing what Britain meant to them in terms of their journalists and what they were asking us for stories. So you know, coming up with different angles and stories about the, the oil that you grew up and I mean, I thought it was a fascinating job. And yeah, it was really varied speaking to the industry as well and you know, understanding what it meant to them to like a small b&b in Cornwall to have German travel writer come and kind of make them famous visit Britain was well respected. So we used to, we used to, you know, the trade like to tell us about everything that was new with them. We got to go to some nice fun events and openings and parties. So it was all good. They're golden days.
Jessica Drucker: Yeah, they really were I you know, I actually took a group of German journalists to Cornwall. I did that trip.
Tess Longfield: Oh, that's funny.
Jessica Drucker: it's funny, but I did that. Yeah. So So after I left, and you obviously continued on in your career there, you did some really exciting things
Tess Longfield: I was there just before the Olympics, and I mean, I guess I would say I put in a lot of the groundwork for the Olympics because we were put, you know, that would that those days were in planning since what 2005. That was my first foray into crisis PR as well, really, because the day after the Olympics are announced was the seven seven bombings. So we had just done, you know, a day of back to back interviews announcing how, how amazing it was that London was going to host the Olympics and the very next day, we thought we were going to be looking at all this amazing coverage and then we were just like, oh crap. And that was one of my favorite layouts, like three weeks into the job. But yeah, so the Royal Wedding that was foreign I was again, German. I was on German TV on the day of the royal wedding with the backdrop of Hyde Park. And then yeah, I left just before the Olympics, because we, my family, and I moved to Kenya. And that was the start of our kind of traveling really, expert life.
Jessica Drucker: Yeah, that's where I want to get to because what happened? So I just knew all of a sudden, I'm traveling around the world at the time and you are moving to Kenya of all places. So you moved to Kenya because your husband works for the British government. He's Is he a diplomat?
Tess Longfield: Yeah, he is. He works for the Foreign Service. Yeah. So he got an opportunity in in Nairobi, and we decided to move out there as a family. Because we were going to be a family at that stage. I left. I went on maternity leave and our daughter Sasha was five When we moved to Nairobi, so that was our first big. It was our first first first move. But
Jessica Drucker: yeah, so this is where we get into the superhuman part. I mean, that's amazing. Like so you How did you handle that? and What went through your mind at the time? Did you just think like, Well, here we go or
Tess Longfield: So first of all, we managed to delay our his start date, or he was going back and forth. So I could give birth in London and then but we just figured that, you know, at that age, they're fairly portable. It'd be easier to move. When, when she was that tiny and we were Yeah, we were ready. We're excited to go out there and it was terrifying. Yeah, I mean, I I It's hard being away from your support network. And I had never been to Kenya. I'd never been on that continent, really. But it was it was amazing. It was fantastic. We were there three years. I had lots of adventures.
Jessica Drucker: Wow. Oh, you were Yes. So wait, so Okay, and it must be nice. Also to have your kind of taken care of because you're there and in in the way where you're in a diplomatic sort of position, and
Tess Longfield: you know, absolutely,
Jessica Drucker: yeah, you're not hoping to find a job when you land teaching English or something like that.
Tess Longfield: No, totally. And that and that is something that I am very grateful for and wouldn't take for granted because especially in somewhere like Nairobi, where crime and security as an issue, in fact, whilst we were there, the West Gate bombings happened in 2013. So, you know, the, it was a hotspot, I guess, but we were very well taken care of by the embassy and the, you know, the infrastructure around us was something that, you know, lots of friends working for NGOs, etc, out there didn't necessarily have the same support.
Jessica Drucker: I want to kind of ask about two things with that. So for one, you were what's kind of called the trailing spouse, which is a really terrible term. If you have a better one, let me know but you're kind of the one who followed the person who had the job and got the families so that's why they called it trailing spouse but it is hard because you're not the one who automatically has a community and goes to work and has people every day. How did you end this was your first time living abroad right? How did you build community and how did you build a life?
Tess Longfield: Well, I mean to start with a lot of it was around the embassy or the high commission as it's called there. And I made some really good friends there. I think I felt like it was a bit like when you go to uni or college for the first time and you make these friendships and you're all in it so deep because you don't have anyone else and you're kind of thrown in. So I've made really long lasting friendships from from that time, but also I stopped I did I started working fairly soon afterwards, I started up my own kind of travel PR consultancy and I was working with some Safari launches very kind of low key but I actually got my first speaking opportunity two months into being there and breastfeeding over was around the pumping, pumping in the conference, like the ante room of the conference. It was a really interesting work and helped me to feel like I wasn't just a trailing spouse. And then I met con. You know, I made friends and contacts through through that as well.
Jessica Drucker: What were the biggest impressions that living in Kenya left on you? Because you left after three years to move on to your next exciting adventure? But, I mean, I can't imagine what going to Kenya is your first place you've ever lived abroad, having a family there for the first time, all that stuff? Like what's it it sort of leave with a
Tess Longfield: Good question? I mean, I think I mean, kind of relating it back to the situation. Now I realized I really realized, you know, you're really faced with poverty, up close and personal, like where we were living was a miles walk from, from a slum area where people were living kind of like 13 people in one room. And, you know, I've never in my life been so exposed to that kind of level of poverty where if if someone in your family gets ill like it, there's there's no support network. There's no NHS like we have in the UK before, which I'm super thankful for at the moment and you know, they're finally being hailed as our heroes, but it's Yeah, I mean, it's something that you can take for granted. I hope since that time, I have never taken it for granted. But yeah, that was one of the huge lasting impressions, but then it was such a fabulous country and we had so we were, I mean, so lucky to have opportunities to travel around and go on safari and visit coastal tourism places that I've the likes of which I've never seen again, you know, absolutely love, like Lamu is such a favorite
Jessica Drucker: so then ever Your husband then gets relocated. Right? You went? Yeah. So Is that normal? It's like three years in one country. And then you move on to another at the post.
Tess Longfield: Yeah, that's pretty much how it would how it works. You have a posting that? Yeah. Three to four years. Yeah. So we were then posted to Amman, in Jordan, and we actually moved straight there. We did we, we did not pass go. We just went straight on from there. And by that time, we had another little one in tow. So yes, my eldest was three at the time and then I had a one and a half year old as well. We moved to Jordan, Lana, I think I'm here moving on. I'd had a little bit of a Yeah, I can do this. I move around different countries. And I was like, yeah, of course they'll just slot in make friends because I'd had a really positive experience in Kenya and I found Jordan really hard at first I we arrived in the winter, just before Christmas, and I didn't really meet anyone for a month at least I was quite lonely at home with the babies. And yeah, it was, it was a tough time actually the first nine months, I would say, I think that was probably when I started. I was training for a marathon. So I started running and again and and that opened up a few things.
Jessica Drucker: Yeah, that was, but let's dig into that for a second. I mean, it sounds like you were just like sitting at home, you know, not really doing much. But you decide in Jordan that you're gonna run a train for a marathon, which is a huge thing. And I know you were always active, but like, that's a different story. what what what's the where does that come from to like, get it because a lot of people do find moving abroad really hard and you feel really isolated. And some people stay in that ruts. But like, how did you just make the decision? I'm going to train for a marathon in Jordan.
Tess Longfield: But so that actually yeah, so thank you, but I don't know. I was I was running a bit but not that much and I had a really good friend who had just been through a horrendous experience of having breast cancer. And she had thankfully recovered and gone through chemotherapy and she was living in Rome. And we said after her to her surgery that, oh, maybe we maybe we should do something together. And it was her idea to do the road marathon which by the way, you know, if you think you call me super a superhero, I have to mention this amazing woman alley, because she ran the road marathon. I'd also have to say an hour and a half quicker than me four months after her double mastectomy. Wow,
Jessica Drucker: that's amazing. Oh,
Tess Longfield: yeah. pales in comparison. So I had an incentive of like, you know, if she can do it, I can do it.
Jessica Drucker: And where did you meet her?
Tess Longfield: I met her in Nairobi training and I'm on was rough. I must admit it was. It was hard, very hilly. Very hot and dry. stray dogs getting you every Kona.
Jessica Drucker: And you ran like I don't think you ran the whole 244 kilometers but you ran from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea or the Dead Sea to the Red Sea.
Tess Longfield: We did yeah, it was it's the dead to read it's called so yeah, it's from the Dead Sea, the lowest point on Earth to the Red Sea and it was a we were an all female team of 10 and it was a relay So no, I certainly didn't run the entire distance I did a 10th a 10th of that and which is about equivalent of a half marathon
Jessica Drucker: but it was just one and a half marathon overnight and it was through
Tess Longfield: the night we started I did the first leg which was amazing starting at the Dead Sea from four o'clock in the afternoon. And and we ran yeah through the night until midday the next day when we arrived in acaba exhausted because we are It was a relay and we didn't sleep we just did like 500 meters. And then went around the team, each one doing 500 meter sprint. So it was like short, short distances, all the way getting down to like 200 meters. And then towards the end, it was like 50 5050. So it was intense and it was definitely the hardest thing I've ever done. And there were points that I was I really thought I wouldn't be able to finish it.
Jessica Drucker: Wow, that's amazing. I mean, what a thing to say that you've done in your life.
Tess Longfield: Oh, it was very cool wake running through running in the sunrise in the desert pasta camel skeleton was a definitely a memorable experience. That's awesome.
Jessica Drucker: Did you can't stop and take a picture of that.
Jessica Drucker: Oh, yeah, we don't we look. Okay, we definitely did. Okay, got it. Um, and you were supporting a cause I think which I read which is amazing.
Tess Longfield: Yes, we were supporting. reclaim childhood, which is a Small NGO actually us charity that helps give give opportunity for girls in sport in in our man and girls who maybe wouldn't have the opportunity to participate in in much sport but they they run these weekly practices a couple of times a week and they take a mini bus to pick up the girls from their homes, maybe their parents wouldn't have allowed them to go if it wasn't this kind of all female environment or women environment and very supportive. So they're doing some really fantastic things.
Jessica Drucker: Did you find yourself getting involved in more like philanthropic or volunteering or that sort of work when you were in Jordan?
Tess Longfield: Yeah, I guess so. And I had done a little bit in Kenya, I think, as an expert, you unless you are totally in a bubble. I mean, for me, especially not working all the time, and I really wanted to find some community things and it was, you know, really, to see what some of the grassroots causes and NGOs were doing. was just really inspiring. So we were women doing something sporting, so I wanted to, we wanted to find a cause that that we could help that probably wouldn't be getting huge amounts from from other things. So
Jessica Drucker: take the power of what you can do, you know, and what you can bring attention to. And it's weird being an expert because you are in this sort of position where it depends what country you're in, right? I mean, like when I was in London, it's like, yeah, so but but when you stand out and you are different, you also have the opportunity to kind of use that in different ways and be inspiring I just think that's a great a great thing that you did now you're just you know, in Lebanon, whatever. How did that happen? Yeah, we thought
Tess Longfield: we thought for a long time about, you know, what, what we wanted to do next and, and this this one, this posting came up and we were really excited about moving to Beirut, and you know, it's always been somewhere that I'd wanted to visit. so fascinating city and gorgeous city. We moved there just before that had a revelation, which was not so wasn't quite the Lebanon experience that we had thought that we were going to have. But it was it's been exciting. It's been really interesting. We live about 200 meters from the main protest site, which was pretty much busy for well, more than 100 days of daily protests that we could hear from our apartment. I'm not someone to speak on behalf of Lebanese people, but it was very inspiring and a lot of ways to see and to see people kind of standing up against corruption and all the things that had just ground people down for a long time. It was it was you know, the atmosphere at some of the protests site was very, for a lot of the period was very happy and you know, families were going down. It was my children's school friends and their family. I was very much you know, huge numbers were going down and I'm protesting so felt like quite a jubilant mood for a while and then you know things started to turn a little bit though. different factions, different people getting involved and and that sort of just yeah just faded a little bit as Coronavirus COVID-19
Jessica Drucker: was at the timing. Yeah,
Tess Longfield: yeah, it was right up until then really.
Jessica Drucker: So before I get I move this back to the Coronavirus which everything comes back to it. Um, I want to ask you about your kids because Do you sometimes look at your kids and be like, wow, you're having such a different life than I had? How How? How do you look at your kids and just like what what do they know that you didn't know when you were there a
Tess Longfield: god? Yeah, well, they speak Arabic and the bilingual they're bilingual French English. I don't know. I guess I guess you hope that they you know, maybe it doesn't take them as long as it took me to kind of wake up to different things going on in the world. I feel like you know, I read very widely when I was younger but they living in Jordan so close to Syria and knowing you know, they knew from a very young age about you know, civil war in Syria and and refugee situation and they collected a lot of toys, they sorted out a lot of toys and would donate some toys to the refugees. They had quite a an understanding of that. They went to an amazing, amazing preschool and kindergarten that I think was one of the hopefully one of their founding experiences where they had, you know, a careers beach where they had the first female pilot from Royal Jordanian come and talk to them, as well as the street cleaner and a disabled filmmaker and all sorts have just this was an unusual preschool. Yeah.
Jessica Drucker: Wow, that's a great opportunity for them to just from every angle of their life to be so in the world.
Tess Longfield: Yeah. And well, they their memories of the kind of stock in Kenya are mostly formed from photos and stories, I think. I don't know I let's see they may they may go up and think I would have rather had roots somewhere.
Jessica Drucker: Okay. But throughout this whole conversation you've brought up all these different like crises basically that you've kind of been somehow involved in. And that's kind of what I wanted to talk about. When we look at like the future of travel and what it will be like in this like post Coronavirus world. Although I've noticed in the narrative, we're shifting everyone's calling it COVID-19 now it's like we're done. Coronavirus, right so okay in the post COVID-19 world But I just think especially for you, so I've talked to a lot of people in different areas of travel or in the tourism industry, but from a travel like PR perspective, what do you feel like this virus? How do you feel it's going to change the way that companies are talking to their customers? And what's going to be sort of the most important messaging. And I guess that goes back to consumer behavior, but like how, what will we want to hear as consumers? What do you think about that after after this is all said and done,
Tess Longfield: things will change so hugely, it's hard to even imagine, for, you know, things going back to how they were within the next five years, but in terms of how brands communicate and how, what people want to hear from brands, I think it's a lot more, you know, a lot more honesty, a lot more sensitivity in the way that that brands are speaking to people particularly around I suppose, like a few weeks ago, when it was more about people having been worried about canceling and things like that. And I think the brands that are listening and I guess becoming more flexible with their cancellation policies, in spite of like, what I can only imagine must be an incredibly scary time to be a travel company. What consumers will remember is the way they were treated by by brands, how are we going to be traveling? It's It's so unknown, isn't it? I guess you've got to look at like this from short term, medium term to long term but short term, short term was so well, it's completely dictated by travel advice from governments. So we're not able to travel at the moment, obviously. And let's say that that's, I don't know, conservatively, the next six months, maybe longer.
Yeah, then then you've got your insurance companies because that's going to be Huge you know, if you if you can't get insurance to go somewhere then
much as you might want to, it's going to affect your, your, your ability to do that. And then medium term I think we just we are surely going to have a more cautious traveler, aren't we? And so,
Jessica Drucker: but that's but like do you think for example like, like a really safety conscious traveler from the US or Europe? Do you? Do you think that they'll make such safe decisions that they stay within the confines of their own country for long periods of time? Or do you do you think it's like just the kind of like the backpacker adventure type that's going to be going really far on long trips or long distance trips?
Tess Longfield: I really don't know, I think that affect people so so much, isn't it because I would call my own parents kind of, I guess, cautious, you know, their late 60s, early 70s. And they've been on a cruise would they go on a cruise again. They're still planning to do trips that they've planned out as long as they can.
Jessica Drucker: I want to know that track that people aren't so scared that they don't still want to go explore and spend a lot of time traveling.
Tess Longfield: Yeah, and I think but of course backpackers, we're always going to be the least cautious, although I don't know how that's going to be affected. Because, you know, a lot of people got stuck in places and that's gonna be a concern. You know, when will you go somewhere that you, you think that you might have more chance of getting repatriated from it's going to be a consideration that probably may not have been before and, you know, I was reading an article about a US citizen who had given up her job and, you know, pursued this lifelong dream of traveling the world in November and sold her house, sold all her belongings and then had to come back in February to an Airbnb with absolutely nothing. And she was sort of saying, Well, you know, you think we've always just thought That's things can always go wrong. That the completely out of your control, which I guess
Jessica Drucker: it's true, though, but what's interesting about that though, is that that movement, right like the whole like celebrity thing, digital nomad, you know, travel the world thing, which obviously I'm guilty of as well, that really came out of the last crisis. That was something that before 2008 people didn't talk about that like, that wasn't a thing really interested, like professional women who have houses would just sell and go travel the world. Right. So what's interesting to me is like, Okay, so this is the next crisis. What's the next behavior change? Like we couldn't have predict that from the 2008 recession?
Tess Longfield: point? Yeah.
Jessica Drucker: I mean, it could be something totally different. Like it might not even be travel related. But look at that massive shift in behavior of like location, independent lifestyle, that whole thing.
Tess Longfield: That wasn't even a thing. No, true. And also, you know, obviously, I'm sure other people you've spoken to have said talks about, you know, zoom and the different ways that we're able to add still get on with a lot of work. That will hopefully mean that that people will will be more open to working from other places working from home. But as an expert, my clients have mostly been in the place where I've lived. But that's not necessarily how it has to be. So maybe there'll be a bit more flexibility with with that.
Jessica Drucker: But my last question for you because you just have so many different angles that you come into all of this. So I just want to ask what the XPath thing are you sensing from your sort of expat community? I'm sure a lot of people went back home home to their sort of like first home country, but I know that many people stayed Do you get a sense that this crisis, is making people feel more hesitant maybe to move to another country or to move abroad as an expert for the first time?
Tess Longfield: Well, yeah, I mean, I think in terms of like Foreign Service and working for governments, will you know will always be moving around and living in different countries. But I do wonder whether big corporations that have people work there people working overseas, how that will affect their ability to hire for posts that are on, you know, overseas or in different perceived countries that have not dealt with this particularly well, or, you know, there's going to be a range out there. And so I wonder what the desire for those posts and the ability to fill those posts will will look like for some of those companies. I don't think it put me off going somewhere else, as long as you know, as, as the government are able to put us somewhere or you know, or even even working, my own capacity is in it or in an NGO or something like that. I don't think that we'll stop doing that. A lot of our friends in Beirut, obviously our Lebanese friends are there and they're home and but a lot of our colleagues at the embassy and people working for other organizations there are bedded down in Beirut and happy to be there. You know, obviously Everyone's hoping that things will improve soon and we'll get out of lockdown and things like that we're not back for good. I hope
Jessica Drucker: everyone that I'm talking to is saying those things that you know, travel is not dead and, you know, expat life is not dead and no, this isn't dying. And so it's really, you know, when I was first just sort of holed up in my little apartment and just like thinking the world was gonna end and like hoarding rice. I was really scared that people were gonna stop traveling. And I just realized inside of me like, I never want, I don't want to know that I can never travel again. So it's just really nice to hear. sentiments aren't changing as extremely as you might think, based on what the news is kind of blaring at you.
Tess Longfield: So I'm totally with you on that. I think the world without travel feels bleak, even bleak as what we're facing
Jessica Drucker: right now. But what is next for you, are you so you're going back to a room whenever and definitely when this?
Tess Longfield: Well, we've got flights booked for the 31st of may so kind of just waiting to see whether the routes reopen. So if We can get those flights or I guess if if not then later in the summer. Yeah, it's it's a bit living with that unknown as is one of the most bizarre parts, I guess. But yeah, that's the plan. Unless Yeah. No, no, no, no,
Jessica Drucker: it's great. Well, listen, thank you. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me. This has been really fun. Thank you. And thanks so much to you, dear listener for spending time with us here on episode six of adventure calls. If you like what you're hearing, please head over to Apple, Google Spotify, wherever you're listening to this podcast, and rate and review this podcast and subscribe if you want to hear more. Episode Seven will be out next I'll be talking to Laura Bartlett, who is the founder and editor in chief of House of cocoa. We'll be talking about the future of travel publishing in a post COVID-19 world. Until the next episode, thanks so much again for listening.
*Transcribed by https://otter.ai AI transcription service. Please excuse any errors