Exchange Life ad: Little flag charms for the countries you’ve already been to

Most of Europe stopped stamping passport stamps in April. A retired teacher in the Athens airport showed me what she does instead. I landed in Athens on a Tuesday in June. Greece. The country I've wanted to see since I was twenty. I'd pictured this exact moment for years. Walking up to the desk, sliding my passport across, and hearing that thunk on a clean white page. Athens, in ink. Instead there was a kiosk. It took my photo. It scanned my fingers, one hand and then the other. A screen told me to go through. An officer handed my passport back without opening it. At baggage claim I flipped through the book, just to check. Nothing new. The last stamp in it was Portugal, 2022, slightly crooked because the officer was in a hurry. I'd loved that crooked stamp. Seventeen countries before this one, and I was standing in Greece holding a passport that said I'd never been. "They stopped in April," a voice beside me said. She was in her sixties. Rain jacket, white sneakers, reading glasses hanging from a cord around her neck. "Stopped what?" I said. "Stamping. Most of Europe. If you're visiting, you get a camera and a green light." "I thought it was just me." "It isn't just you. I watched a man in Lisbon argue with a kiosk." We both laughed. The carousel hadn't moved. Forty minutes, the board said. Then a little girl in a yellow raincoat ran up and grabbed her hand. "Grandma, mine didn't get a stamp either." It was her very first passport. The cover was still stiff. A short black keychain hung off her backpack zipper, with nothing on it. "I know, sweetheart," the woman said. She took a small paper envelope out of her pocket. "Hold out your hand." Inside was a tiny blue and white flag. "That's Greece. That's your first one. You earned it the second you landed." She clipped it to the keychain. The girl turned it over like a coin from a pirate ship. That's when I noticed the woman's own bag. Hanging off the strap was a black keychain covered in tiny, colorful flags. "I'm sorry, what are those?" "Countries I've been to. One flag for each." I started counting and lost track around twenty. "Twenty-seven," she said. She'd taught fourth grade for thirty years, she told me. "Every last Friday of the school year, my class asked to see my passport. They'd pass it around and flip through it page by page. That was geography. The stamps were the whole show." She shrugged, but not like it didn't matter. "Ink was the only record I had. And now there isn't any." The girl had hold of the keychain and was pointing at flags. "What's that one?" "Chile. I got a blister the size of a quarter." "And that one?" "Iceland. It rained sideways for four days." For the next half hour, at a broken baggage carousel, I listened to a retired teacher tell her granddaughter where she'd been. It was the best part of my whole trip. I asked where the flags came from. "Exchange Life. One charm per country. You start with everywhere you've already been, then you add one every time you get home from somewhere new." My suitcase finally came around. Hers did too. As she lifted it off the belt she said, "Start with the ones you've already been to. Not the ones you're planning." I ordered that night from my hotel bed, counting on my fingers. Seventeen countries. And Greece, the one I was lying in. Eighteen. The box showed up ten days after I got home. I spread the flags out on the kitchen table. My husband walked in, picked one up and said, "That's Japan." "That's all of them." He sat down. We went through the whole pile together, and he remembered things I'd forgotten. I clipped them on in the order I'd visited them, with Greece last, and hung the keychain on my everyday bag. The first person to notice was the woman at the dentist's front desk, about a week later. "Okay, I have to ask about the little flags." "That's everywhere I've been." Best feeling. Then it was my neighbor at the mailbox. Then my sister, who stared at it for a full minute and said, "You went to Morocco? With who?" Then last Sunday my nephew, who's eleven, took my bag off the chair, found Iceland, and asked me to tell him about it. I did. He asked about three more. I think about that little girl asking where her stamp went. I don't think she was really asking about ink. She wanted proof that it happened. Europe stopped giving us that this spring, so now mine lives on my bag. If you want to start yours, the country charm set is here: https://exchange-life.com/products/country-charm-set Start with the countries you've already been to, not the ones you're planning. That's why I ordered that night and not "someday." P.S. They back the charms with a lifetime money-back guarantee if they fade or tarnish, which felt fair to me. P.P.S. Exchange Life is a small brand that makes these in batches, so the popular countries sell out and the next stock can take months. If you know which flags you want, I wouldn't wait.