Going Home—Very Reluctantly

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30768, 4 June 1965, Page 2

Going Home—Very Reluctantly

Packing up to return home after a long absence is usually an occasion for excitement and rejoicing. For Dr. and Mrs R. E. Dils and their family, who have lived in Christchurch for the last 10 months, it has brought on a large-scale “fit of the blues.” Not because they do not like their own home in Fort Collins, Colorado, but because they have grown to love New Zealand, its people and way of life so much they would gladly welcome an excuse to enable them to stay. “I do love Colorado. I wasn’t anxious to leave it. Now I think I should be like a Gemini space shot—twins,” Mrs Dils stid yesterday. “We leave tomorrow . . . unless I can arrange to break my leg a Jitt'e. or the ship we have to go on sinks a bit,” she said hopefully. I

“You can sum up our feelings in five words—“We don’t want to go,” she ticked off on her fingers. But Dr. Dils, who is professor of watershed management at Colorado State University, has been here on sabbatical leave, and must return to his post. In the future, if there is a chance to come back to New Zealand “. . . we’ll be back,” said Mrs Dils. With two teen-age daughters, Lynn and Jan, who attended Cashmere High School, and an eight-year-old, Kristi, who attended St. Albans Primary School, Mrs Dils has had an opportunity to meet New Zealanders of many agelevels. “We expected a lot when we came here, but it has all measured up.” She recounted a slight accident the family had on a New Zealand road

when their car skidded. “Out of about the next 19 cars that passed, 15 or 16 stopped to see if they could help us. I don't think they would have in the United States,” she said.

Her interest in the staff wives' group at the Colorado State University, and keeping an “open house” for her husband’s students, are two of Mrs Ms activities back in Fort Collins—and also learning Spanish. “There are many Spanish - speaking people there,” she said. Her Spanish studies continued while she was in Christchurch, where she attended a W.E.A. Spanish conversation group. There, an added diversion for all was the difference between “Colorado Spanish and the Kiwi version.”