It’s enough to drive you into the Panama canal

TO send your children halfway around the world to learn a new language in a geographically and culturally distant place requires quite some doing – especially financially, if you have chosen an upscale language school and decided to send your kids off for six whole months.

It also requires much effort on behalf of the students themselves, especially if they have never left their country before – Panama, in this case – nor have ever flown before. Ever. To go from gentle car journeys around Panama City to a long haul flight that ends in chilly Northern Europe is quite a thing, arriving by taxi in the cold and dark to an unknown household. Ours.

You would think, then, that once the jet lag had worn off, these intrepid students, having travelled so far for the first time in their lives, would be keen to explore their new environs. You’d be wrong. The two 20-year-old best friends, all dark hair, golden limbs and flashing eyes, never leave their room. It becomes like having pet rabbits – peeping shyly, they emerge nocturnally to feed, then return to their room again, where they remain for 16 hour stretches, on their iPads.