We have been PWs in SE Asia for four years, but returned a couple of months ago. One of the things that I found most helpful in terms of re-entry is that we were able to take a holiday break in a different setting between leaving the country we were working in and arriving here. That allowed us time to renew our energy after all of the packing, emotional farewells etc. It also allowed us to think through the term we had just experienced and then more gradually start thinking about our home country. It meant that by the time we arrived here, our 'heads' were also ready to be here and not just our bodies. Otherwise we would have found it very hard to have come straight from the major issues we were facing on the field to what could seem like minor issues here - but still vitally important to those telling us about them. The advantage of picking a third country (en route home) was that if we had stayed in another part of our field, we would still have been reading the paper daily about the problems we were trying to mentally leave behind. Jennie