{November}

Rediscovering the Holidays :: Thanksgiving

It was a three day school week for our kiddos. They had an early out on Wednesday and then an extra long weekend to celebrate Thanksgiving.

Bei Bei's class celebrated a feast to commemorate the Pilgrim's meal of Thanksgiving they shared with the Native Americans who had assessed them through their arduous first winter in the New World. Bei Bei's class are the Native Americans. The second grade class are the pilgrims. Her required at home preparation was to make a vest out of a paper bag and adorn it with Native American symbols. She also had to bring in a gallon of apple juice. The classes donned their representational clothing, put on a short play and feasted on crackers and cheese and sausage cubes, and made real butter.

Bei Bei's take away comes in snippets that she shares at random times. This morning she told us as her sister buttered her English muffin, that if a pilgrim wanted butter they would have to make it, they couldn't just go somewhere and buy it.

We find that many customs and traditions of holidays are making a big impact on the girls. We certainly made an effort when we were in Asia to celebrate holidays, but many of the ways we celebrate in the United States are intrinsically American.

In China our Thanksgiving meals were either celebrated in Shanghai with Mr Johnson's good friend KR, who was in China every other year for a bi-annual trade show curiously held over Turkey day. When we were home in QD we got together with other friends and families from Mr J's company, and enjoyed a traditional meal that was sometimes augmented by Chinese treats.

We made a point to remind the girls about all we had to be tfor, and those feelings of thankfulness sometimes overwhelmed us. We were thankful for distant family, for friendships within China, and for the uniqueness of our experience.

We didn't, perhaps, put a lot of emphasis on the Pilgrims and Squanto.

Which might be why it has captured Bei Bei's interest so.

Last weekend she disappeared to her desk in her bedroom and reappeared sometime later with a picture she had created for Thanksgiving. When I asked her to explain it she said simply that the people had captured the turkey and were going to 'torture' it and eat it for their feast.




Related Posts::

http://thejohnsonsinchina.blogspot.com/2009/11/chopstickfried-chicken-kind-of.html

http://thejohnsonsinchina.blogspot.com/2008/11/thanksgiving.html

http://thejohnsonsinchina.blogspot.com/2008/12/line-crosser.html

Repatration:: What I didn't say

A little over three years ago I began this blog as a way to chronicle our last days in China. What was supposed to be a nine month documentation became a journey much longer*. When we eventually came to the end of that international journey eleven months ago I debated whether or not to keep the blog alive.

People loved to see posts of places we traveled. They loved to hear of adventures in China and our 'lost in translation' moments. {My readership was largely friends and family from home, with a smattering of other expat bloggers.}

When we found out rather abruptly last fall about our looming repatriation, I was overwhelmed by the lack of good information available on repatriation. I pledged to document our transition for those who would be going through their own transitions upon repatriation. I would stand in that information gap, and let them know what to expect and what obstacles and challenges we faced.

I truly intended to explain our experience every step of the way.

But the reality of it all was too close to home. We were nonplused. It was an extremely emotional time for us. I couldn't write that life back in our passport country seemed mediocre or mundane compared to our China experience. I couldn't write that getting up and out the door five days a week exhausted us and literally left us feeling wiped out for almost a first semester of weekends.

And of course, there was the fact that Mr Johnson's company wasn't exactly sure where they would place him. Even before our belongings arrived on a slow boat he was already beginning his second team Stateside, which was scheduled to be short term. "Oh great," we were thinking in the back of our minds, "Our stuff will arrive and be unpacked, only to be packed back up again." We held in that holding pattern, and I didn't feel the blog was the place to vent or cry.

The kids, we knew, would face both gaps and overlaps in their education. We hoped that the pricey international school that incorporated both violin and a daily foreign language would have them up-to-speed with their Amercian counterparts. But there were certainly things we couldn't prepare them for.

EHJ had a crash course in the Palmer Method of handwriting. She had been working in the British style connected writing, and was unable to discern her teacher's script when she arrived in her new classroom. MGJ was plunked into an Language Arts curriculum that built upon itself beginning in the first grade, which was wonderful for kiddos who attended our small public school without interruption, but for our middle schooler and any other transfer student, there was an overwhelming amount to catch up on. Bei Bei, for the first time in her life was in an entirely homogeneous environment. Everyone in her class spoke English, fluently. They flushed toilet paper down the toilet (instead of placing it in the customary Chinese bin) and knew the difference between Teddy Grahams and Pepperidge Farm Gold Fish. (Bei Bei brought Korean seaweed for healthy morning snack!)

When we arrived the wide-eyed foreigners in China we were not expected to fit in to Chinese culture. Our differences were visible. Our cultural gaps apparent. When we returned to our home culture it was expected that there would be a smooth assimilation back into 'normal life.' And it is this assumption, I think, that causes all the hang-ups for repats.

After international exposure and travel, we found that our interests and tastes changed. There were things here that once held our interest that no longer seemed as stimulating. After living abroad we were some ways more open minded. And we found that that open mindedness isnt' always seen as an attractive quality in one's home culture where everyone is more comfortable when cultural mores are concrete. (This is most likely true in any culture, but our experience only involves North American culture.)

Expatriation gives you a unique look at your own culture. You see yourself outside the box, and where, in the grand scheme of things you really fit. A friend recently posted on Facebook that if the world was distilled down to global village of 100, 82 people would be of colour. Interacting in an international community and living abroad that 82% seems more realistic.

Repatriation gives you a unique look at your own culture too. Upon re-entry you see it face to face as an outsider. Assimilation back into your home culture comes when you either no longer see the differences, or you don't find them so glaring.

We are nearing the one year anniversary mark of repatriation, which puts us a little beyond the half-way point of assimilation. Eighteen months to fit back into your home culture is the general average. We have ups and downs and still miss our China days like crazy.

Repatriation is a process. It involves looking back and looking forward. Reconciling that it is both okay to miss the experiences and relationships we had abroad, while taking tentative steps to embracing the future here.

We are looking forward ...

to cutting down our first Christmas tree in years, to decorating the inside and outside for the season, and playing Christmas stations on Pandora. We are excited to hear Bei Bei's first ever Christmas piece in her Sunday School Program, and watch them rock out to Rudolph at their school concert. We are excited that a Christmas get-together with family won't include jet-lag, and we are so looking forward to using our passports and boarding a plane to the Cayman's over the Christmas break!

*Mr Johnson's gig was twice extended. Original exit dates from China included (but where not limited to) Summer 2008, Summer 2009, Summer 2010, Summer 2012. Actual repatriation date? December 2010.

Which Kingdom Really Is in the Middle?

When we arrived in China we were surprised to see a world map that looked like this:

With China smack dab in the middle.

(China has ethnocentrically always called themselves the Middle Kingdom ... the Chinese name for China is Zhongguo, or quite literally middle country.)

But peek at what American's would argue is a normal looking world map:

... and it's not too difficult to figure out which "kingdom" we see in the literal middle of it all.

Not to pick only at Americans (collectively North and South Americans), consider what a European version looks like:

The world, after all is a sphere. And as any middle schooler can tell you, there is a great challenge presented when you try to take that 3D globe into 2D. Representations are off. The Chinese processed map is skewed. The US and European ones are as well. None are expressly right or wrong... they simply differ from each other.

(This is the kind of information that swirls around in our heads as we process how we fit back into a country we haven't been intrinsically a part of for while. For our children, those great students of the 'global classroom,' with friends from many continents and an interest in the world, whether flat or spherical, we think it's important to keep these topics alive as well.)

A trip down memory lane

Fourteen years ago Mr Johnson and I were newly married and college students. I had a semester of school left and he had two when we tied the knot in July of 1997. Shortly after, we moved into an austere two bedroom apartment with all our worldly goods. We lived in married student housing on the campus of the University of Illinois, a community mainly inhabited by older international students with families, and married grad and doctoral students.

The bank of mailboxes on the landing of our building listed names we then could not (but now can) pronounce : Xu, Zhang, something African, Wang, Lu. And smack in the middle, JOHNSON. We seemed to stand out. There was some major foreshadowing going on, but we of course had no idea.

We lived humbly on peanut butter (but splurged on good bread), and would spend our time at class, at work, and occasionally, when the moon and stars aligned, at home together on our cute little plaid love seat (reappolstered by Mr Johnson's grandma) in our IKEA meets garage sale living room where we would watch a laser discs (it was the 90s people!) in surround sound complicated by the cinder block walls and eat Chinese take out.

(Little did we know that our life -- a little less than a decade later -- would include three wonderful little people, and an even bigger adventure that involved again: Asian neighbors, Chinese take out, and more concrete living room walls!)

This last weekend we drove down to Champaign and our old university/early marriage stomping grounds with our girlies ... taking our obligatory October photograph on the campus quad. The girls posed under the Alma Mater statue outside Altguild Hall. Later we snapped some more of the girlies on a cobblestone street in the historic area of Urbana.

We parked on John Street, just around the corner from That's Rentertainment (which is stil on 6th) where we rented laser discs in the pre-ipod era. We bought the girlies U of I t-shirts @ TIS book store. (Go Illini!) And ate at a great Korean joint reminiscent of a lotteria in Seoul.

We drove to the barracks style housing that makes up the married student quarters, which still looks very much like it did in the 90s. We posed on the front steps of our old building, watched as Chinese students headed back from the impressive garden plot that they work all summer, and now are harvesting di guo (sweet potatoes) and squash.

It was raining and a little bleak ... The girls were running the camera ... and somehow we didn't get a shot of the whole building, but I think you get the idea ... laundry flapping on the balcanies. Storage boxes piled up on them too. We peeked into an empty first floor and saw no updates. Still austere. Exactly the same as it was when we spent two semesters living on love in 202.

{October}