Maddie Rae Gotcha Day

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

How are the boys with the move?

This is a question that keeps coming up, so I thought I would answer here how the boys feel about moving back to America. We moved to Hong Kong 4 days after Jonah's 2nd birthday and 2 months before Jack's 4th birthday. They were babies when we moved here, and now they are both school aged kids. Jonah especially has no real memory of living in America, and Jack's memories are very limited. They have both spent their summer holidays in America, so their repertoire of American life involves swimming in Mammy's pool, fishing in Nana's lake, and having nothing but fun. They both will tell you that they are very excited to move back to America and live in "the attic house." I suspect that when summer is over and "real life" starts we may have some issues. They will have to adjust to a new school, new kinds of kids, and a new atmosphere. They don't know American money and will probably often ask for 100 dollars. They only know the metric system, and have quite the little British accents (Jack especially). They call erasers "rubbers" (which could spark some interesting phone calls from school), ask their friends if they want to "have a go playing catch" (meaning, "do you want to play tag?"), and they live in the same small community here with all of their friends. It is really safe here, so they can run around with a lot of freedom riding their bikes, going to buy slurpies on their own, and playing on the beach. So while we are all more than excited to move back to America, I am somewhat sad at what they will lose: freedom, safety, friends from all over the world, thinking it's normal to go to Thailand for a long weekend, and being immersed in Chinese culture. I hope that we can somehow keep the things that we've gained from living abroad alive for them.

1 comments:

day by day said...

Oh, Retta...you are right...the move will be, in some ways, bittersweet.