Last weekend, we had house guests visiting us from the US. As we showed them around our neighborhood, and answered their questions about how we maneuver our day to day life, I realize how much we’ve learned, and how different our lives our from when we were in the states. On the surface, things aren’t THAT different: we have the same car, same furniture, cook the same recipes, and even watch American tv shows (thank you Slingbox). But the little things, from the taxes we pay on electronics, to the way we sort our household garbage, are other worldly when we hear ourselves describe them to friends.
Hubz and I have enjoyed traveling – both together and individually before we met. We have always managed a sense of humor when stumbling through foreign customs and practices – and have embraced the adventure of guessing what a menu might say or shrugging as we hop on a metro train, hoping that we got the right one. We both have had these experiences connected to our careers, long before we met. I’m sure that this makes the Ex-Pat experience that much more tolerable for us – we had a training program of sorts! (Not to mention the fact that the military is the ultimate king of hand-holding when it comes to walking through this stranger in a strange land experience).
I was reflecting on this last night, and I realized something that astounded me even more. When I was young, even into high school, I was utterly afraid to leave home for more than one night. This was probably a result of some turbulence at home – but was behavior that is very uncharacteristic of a child of that age. I have vivid memories of sobbing as my mother drove me to stay with my best friend’s family for a week at their lake house. I wanted to want to be there. I wanted to spend that time with her and at the lake….but somehow I was terrified to do so. In 10th grade, when the splitting of our household resulted in not enough cash to send me on the Spring Break Europe trip sponsored by my school, I took the news stoically, to the high praise of my parents. Little did they know that deep down, what washed over me was a sense of relief, not of disappointment.
Somehow, in the years between now and then I have managed to enjoy traveling, make a career that required extensive global travel, and pick myself up and move to Europe! I NEVER would have seen that coming 15 years ago!
