Expat Ruminations & The Northwest {Part III}

As I mentioned earlier ... our trip to Vancouver allowed us to catch up with four other families we knew in China. There is really no way to explain how neat it is to reconnect with people you knew on the other side of the planet!

When we bid our farewells in Qingdao twenty-two months ago, it was with the knowledge that we may never see some of our friends again. So, in many ways any such reunion is sweeter with the knowledge that it's likelihood was so slim.

Expat life is a series of circles and cycles. I often equate it to a Venn Diagram. Our family's circle, overlapping with another family's circle because of living arrangements, school choice, something as simple as shopping in the same international import aisle at the grocery store and/or, most importantly, because my husband's employer and the employers of other families all deemed a seaside city in peninsular China a worthy spot to deposit an expat family for a couple of years, allowing our circles to overlap.
{Of course ties where often greater than a shared interested in hazelnut spread, but that was often the fun and sometimes funny way friendships began. I recall one friendship in my earliest days in China, that began with a rather disgruntled expat wife showing up at playgroup after having voyaged back from a month of blissful seaside living in her motherland, returning in the smokiest days of Qingdao March. She complained about her husband's American employer, the hours of he was required to phone into conference calls... which translated into almost the middle of the night in China ... and about the the abysmal air quality in the Middle Kingdom. But, I noticed, her daughter had left the house in a dress-up cape, and I gave the mum the benefit of the doubt. Sure enough, it was jet-lag and exhaustion talking, and she became of my staunchest confidants in those first fledgling months in a foreign country. She was as fun and witty as her daughter's cape had suggested! Our Venn overlap began @ the expat playgroup.}


We had, in 2010, on our return voyage to QD, laid over in Vancouver, and considered it fortunate that we were able to see both The S & W families at the same time {in fact, at that moment, both families were sharing the same roof as they waited for slow boats from China to arrive with their expat goods.} They gamely let the girls and I hang out with them for a weekend.

The S, W, and Johnson Girls {Summer 2012 :: Crescent Beach}

When we promised a return trip this summer, and then learned that our Australian pengyoumen {The T's} had also managed to arrange a summer in North America {with greater Vancouver serving as a home base of sorts} we were thrilled!!

{All set to bike Stanley Park :: seventeen bikers and two riders}

{The Johnson fam, The T Fam, The W Fam, and the H Fam}

{silly faces}

As noted earlier, we had a week with The S Family before they took off for a 40th birthday get-away in bear inhabited interior BC. We headed south across the boarder to Seattle for a long weekend and a little 15th wedding anniversary celebration, some penny smashing on the tracks, swimming with skinny dippers, and drinking coffee.

Sufficiently caffeinated, we then returned to Vancouver, where The S's generously allowed us to live in their well appointed home, in their absence, and we spent three more lovely days biking, hiking, canoeing, swimming ... sharing lattes, BBQing and simply catching up with good friends.

As an added bonus, another family that we knew from our QD fellowship had recently repatriated to Seattle and joined us for part of that time as well. It was bittersweet as The H's lost their 11 year old son in a tragic accident in China last year, and now face a new life in America with three, instead of four, children.

There is much to be said about the importance of maintaining and nurturing these relationships, though oceans and timezone separates us. Our children benefited from the re-connection with other expat friends as much, if not more, than we did. The emphasis of the whole 3CK Movement (Third Culture Kids), is that expat kids share a unique camaraderie with other children who live abroad in a culture that is not their home culture, and not fully their host culture. For me personally, I see my kids reconnecting with other expat kids in shared lingo (referring to some words in Chinese rather than English) or using terms they shared in the British school system. I also seem them come alive as they rehash memories or connect on common ground (a shared dislike for Weekend Chinese school and a love for their respective Chinatowns).

our TCKs

{The don't call it Beautiful BC for Nothing!}

{sweet girlies}

{ice cream boy in his ice cream shorts}

Our Little Town ...

Our little Midwestern town boasts two four-way stop intersections, a small church, a small school, a meat locker and a volunteer fire department. Our Little Town doesn't even have its own zip code.

But, once a year they out do themselves. On Labor Day the population of Our Little Town triples. Kids line up to ride their bikes in the parade, old fashioned tractors and prancing ponies join the mix. Veterans, local politicians, and fireman joining the ranks. After the parade there are games for the kids, BBQ and concessions, and a general milling about catching up with others.

It's a homecoming of sorts, and this year it truly was for The Johnson's, once of China. We sat on the front porch of The Bungalow with our coffees and hot chocolates, watching the pre-parade events.

Bei Bei got caught up in the excitement, and in the last minute decide to ride in the parade. She proudly pedaled her folding Chinese bike along the short parade route, reinforcing every Chinese stereotype with her bicycle bedecked with small Chinese lanterns, a pair of chopsticks in the handle bars, a cheesy computer generated sign and a stuffed panda wire tied to the back. She wore her traditional Chinese yi fu, and the kind of bamboo hat that is popular and practical in Southern China. (Although the one she wore, we actually picked up in Vietnam! I won't tell if you won't!)

Our little 3CK made the local paper, and we think she might have been the cutest thing on two wheels this Labor Day in Our Little Town.

In my little town

I grew up believing

God keeps his eye on us all

And he used to lean upon me

As I pledged allegiance to the wall

Lord I recall

My little town

Coming home after school

Flying my bike past the gates

Of the factories

My mom doing the laundry

Hanging our shirts

In the dirty breeze*

- Simon & Garfunkel "My Little Town"

* disclaimer, we have neither factories nor a dirty breeze

World at our doorstep

Maybe it was the 12 kiddos standing on the makeshift platform Sunday morning at the Early Childhood Education (E.C.E.) Sports Day. Twelve kiddos representing 10 countries (US, PRC, Germany, Denmark, Italy, So Korea, UK, Australia, Canada and Singapore). Maybe it was sitting under the flags of nearly every nation Sunday night, as we saw the weekend out at the Olympic Marina, ice cream in hand, as has become our weekend tradition. The world, it seems, is at our doorstep. The world in the swirl of languages we hear around us. The world just overhead in the unfurled flags.

"Which is that flag?" one blonde Johnson would query, to be answered by another. Sticky fingers pointed toward their favorite pattern, or the most unique. Our five-year-old can readily identify the Korean flag and the American one. The flags of China and Canada too. When we came to one that stumped all five of us, we committed to google it. The world is a click away.

Are we going to watch soccerfootball? Bei Bei asked later that night.

Soccerfootball.

The combined nomenclature she is familiar with. Americans (and Canadians?) call it soccer, South Americans and Europeans dub it football. (In Chinese the literal translation is "foot ball" as well). So in her mind soccerfootball makes perfect sense.

We watched as the tall and ruggedly athletic soccerfootballers from all corners of the globe stood at attention on the turf. We listened to the tunes of anthems we don’t know the words to. We watched as they sang along. The world neatly defined in matching uniforms and 90 minute matches. The world on a screen in your living room.

The world on your computer, your TV, your smart phone and mobile device.

The world on your doorstep.

Half a globe away, the world on mine.