A friend I hadn't seen in about six years since SAIS graduation asked me that at a party last night. What do I like best about being back in the US?
Hard to answer - there are so many things to like: being near family, familiar foods, good and safe quality meat and produce, knowing what to expect (mostly) when I walk into a store or restaurant, Target, access to top quality health care (and not having to wonder at the start of a fever if its just a flu or something I've never heard of before), trash cleaned and dumped in dumps I've never seen ... the list goes on of things I didn't really appreciate about how America "works" behind the scenes that, in effect, make life here really very comfortable.
All of that stuff, though (except for proximity to family) we figured out how to deal with or make a work around. E.g., in India we cooked or pealed all our food ... or used bleach if we really wanted something raw. In the Philippines, we never went out on Friday night, knowing traffic was 100% guaranteed to be miserable.
What I really appreciate here, though, that we never found overseas - or figured out how to create a work-around - is our neighborhood church. We did find some churches overseas, but generally they were either a little old and fuddy-duddy or more on the "contemporary" service side. A run of the mill, middle road, Episcopal/Presbyterian/Methodist with young families and old grandparents a like remained a pipe dream. Our church here, though, has age-appropriate themes at Sunday School -- and we know Sunday School will be on every week. Sure, the church nursery attendant put Ian's diaper on backwards today, but he's always happy and safe when we pick him up. Nice coffee service afterwards. Usually at least one social event each month that we're interested in.
And - best of all - a great music program for the kids. Every Tuesday Wm comes home from music class in the absolute best mood of the entire week. Today, he played his chimes and followed the music pretty much by himself. Patch is the youngest in his class, but he's catching on.
A small email storm erupted last week when the choir director opened a debate for which Christmas Eve service the kids should perform at. Apparently, our church has always just had two services (family at 5 and candlelight at 11). This year, the rector was thinking about changing it to 3, 5:30 and 11 ... so the suggestion was that the two little kid choirs (ages 4 - grade 2) could be at 3, the other kids at 5:30, and adult choir at 11. Now, for anyone whose been part of a church with entrenched interests - and traditions - you can imagine what a furor this started!
After a bit, I just couldn't help myself and chimed in in the minority (a 3pm service with three kids 6 and under sounds great - plenty of time to come home, have dinner, change into pjs and put out cookies for Santa). I couldn't resist ending my note, though, that after four Christmases with either no service or something that wasn't quite our "usual," we really were just happy to have *any* service geared towards kids with familiar hymns.
Bringing me to the conclusion that while daily life routines can be dropped, adjusted or modified (as long as you keep the right attitude), creating a replacement community is near impossible. The best we can hope for is that we land next in a place with one - and that we can in some small way contribute to strengthening it while we're there.
Hard to answer - there are so many things to like: being near family, familiar foods, good and safe quality meat and produce, knowing what to expect (mostly) when I walk into a store or restaurant, Target, access to top quality health care (and not having to wonder at the start of a fever if its just a flu or something I've never heard of before), trash cleaned and dumped in dumps I've never seen ... the list goes on of things I didn't really appreciate about how America "works" behind the scenes that, in effect, make life here really very comfortable.
All of that stuff, though (except for proximity to family) we figured out how to deal with or make a work around. E.g., in India we cooked or pealed all our food ... or used bleach if we really wanted something raw. In the Philippines, we never went out on Friday night, knowing traffic was 100% guaranteed to be miserable.
What I really appreciate here, though, that we never found overseas - or figured out how to create a work-around - is our neighborhood church. We did find some churches overseas, but generally they were either a little old and fuddy-duddy or more on the "contemporary" service side. A run of the mill, middle road, Episcopal/Presbyterian/Methodist with young families and old grandparents a like remained a pipe dream. Our church here, though, has age-appropriate themes at Sunday School -- and we know Sunday School will be on every week. Sure, the church nursery attendant put Ian's diaper on backwards today, but he's always happy and safe when we pick him up. Nice coffee service afterwards. Usually at least one social event each month that we're interested in.
And - best of all - a great music program for the kids. Every Tuesday Wm comes home from music class in the absolute best mood of the entire week. Today, he played his chimes and followed the music pretty much by himself. Patch is the youngest in his class, but he's catching on.
A small email storm erupted last week when the choir director opened a debate for which Christmas Eve service the kids should perform at. Apparently, our church has always just had two services (family at 5 and candlelight at 11). This year, the rector was thinking about changing it to 3, 5:30 and 11 ... so the suggestion was that the two little kid choirs (ages 4 - grade 2) could be at 3, the other kids at 5:30, and adult choir at 11. Now, for anyone whose been part of a church with entrenched interests - and traditions - you can imagine what a furor this started!
After a bit, I just couldn't help myself and chimed in in the minority (a 3pm service with three kids 6 and under sounds great - plenty of time to come home, have dinner, change into pjs and put out cookies for Santa). I couldn't resist ending my note, though, that after four Christmases with either no service or something that wasn't quite our "usual," we really were just happy to have *any* service geared towards kids with familiar hymns.
Bringing me to the conclusion that while daily life routines can be dropped, adjusted or modified (as long as you keep the right attitude), creating a replacement community is near impossible. The best we can hope for is that we land next in a place with one - and that we can in some small way contribute to strengthening it while we're there.
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