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I am part of all that I have met (Lord Tennyson) Has the time come to turn your back on Vienna? Are you already savouring your last coffee at the Café Central, squeezing in the last few bars of Mozart or Mahler at the Music Verein? Are you wondering how to bid farewell to friends you have shared special moments with? Or have you already mentally flown home, relishing the idea of being able to find everything you want on the supermarket shelves, or when you want to ask for something, you just open your mouth and the right words tumble out? Most of us know what makes a good start. Everything in the new apartment works. We find a friend soon after we arrive, and something useful to do, but few of us know what makes a good ending. Can there be anything good about the hassle of packing up and leaving, of dealing with the untidy emotions of sadness and loss? Even finding the right time and place to say goodbye seems too much to face. Sometimes we have a vague idea that someone should organise something for us - is there anyone who will miss us? Or maybe we could arrange some kind of get together, but then the packers are coming on the 28th and before that we have to&ldots;. Opportunities for goodbyes often slide by and in the end we make do with rushed phone calls. Anyway, we'll be fine when we get into things at home, won't we? But there's a rule somewhere in the balance of the universe that says that good new beginnings require good endings, so there's no way around those goodbyes. Yes, they are messy and painful and nobody has the right words, or some simply have no words and instead tears are shed. Sometimes there are even bridges to mend and apologies and forgiveness to extend. But Goodbyes are important. Leaving without farewells is a life task left unfinished. It sticks in the back of our mind and ties us to the past just when we need to move forward. So, take your head out of the packing box and call everybody together for coffee, lunch, a walk in the park. Exchange mementoes and photos, pen a note to special people telling them how much their friendship has meant. Haunt your favourite spots just one last time. Let your family put together a list of their favourite places and share them with each other. It's farewell time and tears are bound to be interspersed with the laughter, with reminiscences and plans to meet sometime -- and who knows, we do live in a global village, don't we?
The comfort of having a friend may be lost It's that time of year again in the expatriate community. When spring comes so many of our friends, like migratory birds, are fluffing their feathers ready to fly at the first hint of summer. Many have already left us, in their thoughts. They don't call so often anymore and conversations, when we do talk to them, revolve around moving companies and the worry work of how to manage when they get home -- far away from us. Losing friends is part of the price we pay for an interesting lifestyle, a bitter item on the bill. And it never gets easier. Each friend who leaves is another hole in our lives, a source of grief. Some expatriates solve the problem by surrounding themselves with acquaintances, avoiding the steps to real friendship, but for most of us friendship is too rare and valuable a gift to be without, though it may be fleeting. What do we lose when friends leave? We can no longer pick up the phone and call them to suggest a walk up Beethovengang or to talk about a child's problems but have we lost the friendship? Over the years, I have said goodbye to many friends. Despite moves, including some precipitous ones out of Africa, there are very few close friends that I have lost touch with. We are not always great communicators but I know that if I send out an 'I need an echo' e-mail I can be sure of a barrage of support whether by return mail, telephone or letter. Expatriate goodbyes start almost with the first 'Hello'. They begin with the awareness that time together is a precious commodity, that we must seize the day. There are many ways to give each other pieces of ourselves to take when we part; the photos of lunch in the Palm house, those plates we bought together in Italy, the piece of jewellery she brought you back from Greece, the music shared and copied. When it is time to leave, you don't need to let friends slip away. If they don't call, take the telephone and invite them back to 'the day'. Ask how they would like to say goodbye and help them take the steps they may be reluctant to make alone. Whether your farewell is a coffee together, a long walk in the shade of the Vienna Woods make it personal. Don't hesitate to mend bridges. It is never too late to re-build. Let your friends know that you are willing to walk on into the future with them. Make sure you have their addresses and they yours. We all have different ways of expressing grief and sadness. Some of us cry, others don't or can't, or cover sadness with laughter. There are those of us who side step the issue, "Well, we'll see each other before long, for sure&ldots;" Or the procrastinators who leave some of their grieving until later when the loneliness starts to bite. One way or the other it comes to us all. Then it is time to start writing, to send the odd card. Those of us left behind must usually take the burden of communicating while our friends re-establish their lives. We must be patient while they integrate the new into the old and find a balance. There are friendships that do not survive the test of time and space. Some find long distance friendships untenable and there is a time to let go - but never forget how you have warmed yourself on friendship while you had it. As the saying above expresses, there is comfort even in having had a friend.
Moving abroad it is an adventure that presents us with a wealth of new impressions and experiences. But these gifts do not come without losses. We had to leave behind people we care about. We can no longer drop in on our best friend for coffee. Favourite foods and drinks cannot be found. Our new apartment may have decorative ceilings, but none of the conveniences we are used to. Even familiar things like possessions and husbands seem different here. We have also left behind competence. At home we knew our way around, and what we didn't know we could ask or get someone to organise. Now we stumble over the smallest phrase and have no idea how to change our license, or get the washing machine fixed. Driving through a new city can leave us quivering wrecks. Reality sets in after the first excitement and most expatriates experience a period of what is commonly known as culture shock with all its physical and mental symptoms, from fatigue, to loneliness and disorientation. As we adapt to the new circumstances we slowly recover, until about six to eight months after arrival, most of us manage to function reasonably well and feel better about our host country and ourselves. Culture shock and recovery are generally thought of as a kind of initiation test but are really a valuable time of reorientation. Most of us come abroad to expand our horizons and that is exactly what daily life in another country forces us to do -- just not always in the directions we had intended. We have to let go of the idea that someone will pack our groceries for instance and letting go of old ideas and behaviours is a painful process. It eats up energy and causes frustration and anger. Most of us do not let old habits go without a fight. We are angry at the host culture for doing things in ways we don't approve of, for forcing us to make changes. At times it is hard to recognise ourselves in the crabby incompetent person that we seem to have become. This new side of ourselves is less flattering than we would like. Still, it is an adventure and this is just part of the ride. This part of the journey is best travelled with a few companions so look for people in the same boat as well as some old time expatriates to help you out, and put out feelers to the local population. Many people around the world speak English and not all are too busy with their own lives but learn at least the courtesy phrases in the new language and a few to cover the "Help, I'm lost" moments. Don't expect to get things right for a while. Reward yourself for small achievements: an errand successfully completed, a room organised, a new word learned. Be patient with yourself. Frustration and anger are normal. So is stress, so find outlets in walking or sport. Find a place to play tennis, or swim, take a walk in one of the many parks. Do things that you enjoy, preferably some old and some new. Treat the good, the bad and the downright annoying as part of the adventure. Living abroad is exciting but no country is perfect. Try to laugh about the stupid things that happen -- at least afterwards: the time you were given 10 donuts instead of the two buns you thought you asked for, the detour you inadvertently took when you took the wrong exit of the motorway. It is all part of the journey. Moving abroad is an opportunity for growth, to learn not just about the world but about ourselves, our partners, about others. Some of it is fun, some is painful and some is just plain hard work -- but it is rarely boring. Welcome abroad.
"Oh
no," Senta says, "In three days I'll have to speak just
English again. Children from bilingual or multilingual environments get used to switching from one language to the other. They speak to one person in English, or French, or Spanish and to the next in German, or Arabic or Flemish. Listeners are sometimes confused when an American girl switches to German, or a Spanish boy begins a new conversation in fluent Dutch. Children enjoy the ease with which they can move from one world to another. They use their linguistic facility to protect their privacy, to swear without retribution, to confuse casual listeners or to affirm their international identity. But bilingual and multilingual children don't just switch languages when they speak to different people. They may also switch in the middle of a conversation. With people who understand both languages they use words from another language in a sentence, switch languages in the middle of an idea, or even mid-sentence. This can be disconcerting for people who are not used to it. Lotte says, "I understand English and German and even Swiss German but I have trouble following the conversation when the kids switch all the time." When children switch languages parents often wonder if they cannot differentiate between them, but this is not usually the case. They rarely 'switch' with people who don't understand both languages, and switching is one way of maximising their linguistic capabilities. Young children have a bigger range of things they can say if they use more than one language and older children, sensitive to the nuances of language, can increase the expressive potential of what they say. Aware that comfortable does not express gemütlich they substitute to express this particular form of comfort, for instance. Children also substitute when they don't know words in another language. Vocabularies don't grow evenly. At school they learn a lot of new things but may struggle to explain what they have learned at home because they haven't yet learned the necessary expressions in their home language. Partly for this reason children choose language to fit the situation. They gossip with friends in English or German, but a conversation about extended family usually feels more natural in the home language. There is a price to be paid for the ease of slipping from one linguistic world to another. The borders between languages can become hazy. A child can regurgitate the contents of a TV program down to the last detail, but not remember what language it was in. Cutting corners can make for cognitive laziness. Children may get used to using the first word that comes to mind and not be motivated to learn the equivalent words and expressions in the other language. Bilingual and multilingual children have more language churning around in their brains, more options to sort through. In a classroom discussion, a teenager 'umms' and 'ahs' as he searches for the word to describe, 'people without work'. To reach the elusive 'unemployed' he must first banish the word Arbeitslos, that pops into his head. However, not all problems are relatively minor inconveniences. In extreme cases children fail to master either or any of their languages. They struggle at school and have difficulty expressing themselves in social situations. To be sure of mastering more than one language children need support at home and at school. Because they hear less of each language than those with just one language, they need more exposure to language as a whole. Parents of bilingual children should therefore provide a language-rich environment at home; engaging children in discussions on anything and everything, reading stories and teaching songs, rhymes, riddles, jokes. At home and school they need a supportive environment. Being relaxed and confident promotes language learning so teachers and parents should avoid criticism but model correct speech and encourage children to express their ideas even when they occasionally stumble over a word or two. Children who are struggling in their educational language need extra encouragement and tutoring. With the help they need most children thrive in a bilingual environment and many do well in a multilingual environment. Switching languages is then just a way of exploiting their rich linguistic heritage, a game to play, a way to integrate their different cultures. It becomes a reflection of their ease in an international world.
Recently a mother called me, saddened by a conversation with her six-year-old. The children in her class had been asked to talk about where they came from. This little girl who had grown up in Belgium and Austria hadn't known what to say. "The teacher said I was from Britain," she said, "but I'm not." "Do you feel you're from Austria?" the mother asked. "No, I'm from nowhere," the little girl answered. "Where are you from?" is a confusing question for many of our children who do not fit neatly into this rather narrow concept. For young children it may even seem like a trick question. Few are able to give the 'correct' answer. Because concepts of country and culture are developmentally beyond their grasp, children up until five or six years old will interpret, "Where are you from?" as "Where are you living?" Many years ago our five year-old blond, blue-eyed daughter told an American couple in Hong Kong that she was from Saudi Arabia. Their attempt to clarify the situation by asking her what language she had been speaking with her brother did not help. "Swiss-German" was probably not a particularly illuminating reply. And yet, in the expatriate community, we continue to ask everyone we meet where they are from. We mean well. In a world of so many different people finding a framework often helps us to understand each other. Teachers in international schools are (rightly) anxious to encourage their students' sense of national and cultural identity. However we often succeed only in creating a quandary for our children who cannot mentally just tick the appropriate box. But the quandary of giving some kind of lucid answer to whereareyoufrom is relatively easily solved in the long run. Our daughter, now twenty-one, simply decides whether people want a short or long answer (usually the former) and gives them a reply that seems to suit the situation. The real dilemma is whether not having access to a simple set of cultural associations, or experiencing an appropriate emotional wave of nationalistic feelings means that our children will grow up to feel that they belong 'nowhere'. We have all heard stories of the expatriate children who grow up feeling just like this. Unfortunately, we hear a lot less from the children who manage to embrace the world, feeling that they belong everywhere. What makes the difference? We do, to a large extent. As parents we can encourage our children to accept the associations and feelings they have for their various countries and cultures. We can give them the tools to understand each of their homes and guide them towards a coherent identity in teenage years. Ultimately, nationality is only one part of identity. Children will also become graduates of such-and-such a school, tennis or football players, members of religious groups, fans of rock or rap, and so on. Children who grow up with healthy self-esteem and the skills to fit in and move competently in various social groups will not be easily thrown by the whereareyoufrom dilemma. Parents and schools can help children develop just these skills. "Where are you from?" does not need to become a heart-wrenching reminder of a personal lack or loss. It can become just a nuisance question -- or even one to play with. "I just love messing with peoples' stereotypes", says one expatriate child. "Just when they think they have me in a pegged, I drop in something about my years in Pakistan, or the Ivory coast, or the fact that I speak fluent French, and they have to think again." As parents, we can help our children avoid a sense of loss at not belonging to one country in the same way as their peers at home do, but to revel in feeling at home around the globe. We can give them the world.
Love is blind they say, even scientists, who gleefully point to studies that show how the rush of emotions place blinkers on our brains, shutting down rational thought. 'Falling' in love with someone from another culture is hardly a misnomer. We truly prove our love with the ultimate commitment -- launching ourselves off the hard ground of our personal reality into the unknown of another. By taking a partner from another culture we tacitly agree to share and explore a new reality in ways that reach into the most vital and intimate corners of our lives. What does it matter if we shut down a few more synapses as we bungy jump into this new adventure? The pity is that this blissful state of irrationality often lasts only long enough to get us to the church (usually after we have neatly written our name on some paper or another) or across a border. In my case it took me to a Swiss registry office where I was asked if I would accept my husband-to-be as 'Oberhaupt', oh oh! That was the beginning of a journey that has sometimes seemed like a Disney version of snakes and ladders. If the average marriage has the odd obstacle just square it and you have an intercultural partnership. The average conversation can do it if you throw in one of those run-of-the mill miscommunications. "Did he really mean to tell me he's had enough of me?" Don't get me wrong, I would be the last to knock intercultural partnerships. My husband and I are happily on our way to a silver wedding anniversary, but like most people who come from different cultures we've had an eventful journey in more ways than one. Let me see, we're on our fifth country aren't we, or should we add the places we landed in after being evacuated out of Africa? But we have been lucky. We did get around the obstacles -- we might not have. We might have gone our separate ways and been faced with the problems of sharing children across the world, or one of us might have had to spend a lifetime 'away from home' because of these shared loved ones. Intercultural partnerships are often a matter of 'tou;ch and go'. On the other hand when 'go' means leaving a country; lifestyle, friends and possibly children, most of us think twice, or three times, saving many intercultural marriages. The stumbling blocks of these partnerships start with the fact that no matter how schizophrenic we become we can still only live in one place. '"Your place or mine?" is a question with immense consequences. If the marriage lasts, one partner will live far from family in a culture that is often not welcoming, and that these foreign partners will often be unable to 'make their own'. Even with the best of intentions the fact that one partner is out of his or her 'natural environment' changes the power balance in a marriage for a long while -- long enough in any case for it to require a weighty mass in the coin of effort, earnings, or straight battling it out to balance the scales. If a marriage ends "your place" can become a heartbreaking liability. There are countries in which divorce is a matter of who has the most power and influence and this is rarely the foreigner. Some foreign partners limp off the battle-field in the direction of home with nothing but the shirt on their backs. But going 'home' after years away is also fraught with challenges that must be faced carrying the heavy burden of a failed partnership, missed friends, lost opportunities. Where children are involved, the theatre of intercultural life slips into the tragic. Either children will be taken far from one partner or, as if often the case with the present shape of western law, the children cannot be taken from the country they have grown up in. Foreign partners must now return home without their children or face life alone in a foreign country. Would I have chosen differently if I knew what I do now? Probably not, but I suspect that I will not be able to resist heaping advice and warnings on our children when they stand at the same crossroads. Intercultural marriage is a journey into another culture and into ourselves. It adds another dimension to life, but is rich in irony. Just those things that appealed most in our partners are often those that cause us the most problems when the magic transforms into the mundane. The differences that added spice to a courtship can sour a relationship. But just as often it can sweeten, if we let it. Did you really want to be called sweetheart all your life? Doesn't 'Schatz', 'Cherie', or 'Querida mia' add just that little something to your understanding of life and love?
Sally says, "Looking back, I can understand why I let Albert run our lives when we went to Zurich. I felt helpless, so I left everything up to him, but it was a mistake. He didn't handle our finances well and even messed up things with his own family" Getting married or moving in with a partner is to enter a state of constant negotiation; who takes out the rubbish, how much should be spent on books or wine, and whether having a manicure is an essential expenditure. When children arrive the number of issues to negotiate doubles, or triples: what should be spent on children's toys or what crib to buy, whether a three-year-old should still be in diapers or a ten-year-old allowed to wear make-up. To have an equal say in any negotiation, partners should have similar status and power. Of course, this is rarely so, even if you live in your home country, but the rule of thumb remains. Unfortunately, those of us who fall in love with someone from another culture and agree to live in their country find that equality can be particularly elusive. Moving to a foreign country catches most of us off guard. We may suffer from culture shock, feel disoriented and out of sorts. Our self-esteem suffers, at least temporarily. We struggle with the new environment, unable to cook the simplest meal, for example, because we can't identify the ingredients in the supermarket. We are constantly at a disadvantage. In the local language we think we sound like complete idiots every time we try to communicate and we'll lose any debate. Anyone who has grown up in the area has a network of friends and contacts. How things work is second nature to everyone, including our partners--but not to us. While we are going through the trials and tribulations of adjustment, our partners feel right at home. They know where to find things and how to go about organising their lives. Their network of friends or acquaintances provide help and support when they need it. In-laws will surely be living closer than our own family. The chances are that our partners' opinions on any subject, including relationships and child rearing, will be backed up by many of the people around us. Love bridges many differences, but romance aside, these are not good conditions under which to establish a well-balanced relationship. Foreign partners are disadvantaged, especially if marriage and the move to the new country coincide, because patterns of negotiation are established in the first year or so. However, with some shared understanding and good will many of the problems can be solved. Emily says, "We had our phone cut off because we didn't send a change of address and didn't get the bill. At home I organised these things but when I came here I left it all to Hans. Now I get angry because he forgets. It's time for me to start doing it again." We may be helpless when we first arrive, but we don't have to stay that way. Taking back control of our lives as we get to know a country gives a sense of satisfaction. Many partners will be relieved at not having responsibility for every bill, appointment, enquiry or complaint. Astrid says, "At first I only spent time with his friends. Now I've made some of my own and I go to my church as well and feel a lot better." We have to adapt to a new country, but we can't remake ourselves. As Popeye used to say, "I yam what I yam." There is a fine balance between adapting and keeping a healthy sense of our own identity. Finding friends and activities that suit us rather than slipping into our partners' lives helps keep this balance. This is more disruptive in the short term--until a balance is found between partners' interests and networks--but far healthier in the long run. When discussing an issue, be it politics or child-rearing, do your homework first. Partners have the weight of the country behind them, so in a discussion about schools, for example, read up on education, visit schools, talk to teachers or discuss it with those who already have children in school. Partners' networks can also be helpful. Partners' friends are often ready and willing to accept us into their network. Their acquaintances and contacts can also serve us. Whenever possible use partners as advisors rather than organizers. Ask them how they would go about doing something, rather than just letting them to do it. Abroad, extended family can be a great asset or a burden to bear. Far from our own family, it is wonderful when in-laws really feel like family. It is worth putting some effort into these relationships. On the other hand, if they resent foreign spouses or their 'strange' ideas, they can become a problem. In their country, you will have to do the lion's share of adjusting but decide what is the minimum of effort on their part that you need to maintain a satisfying relationship. Make "your way" as palatable as possible; inviting them to celebrate Christmas your way in your home, for example. If this doesn't work, encourage partner and children to keep up their relationships, but limit your own. Put your effort into more satisfying relationships. In a foreign country, we don't stand on even ground with our partners. For a while we will have to rely on their love, help and compassion, but with hard work and determination competence can be regained, step-by-step. There is a lot in it for our partners as well. As we win back abilities and rights, we can also take on responsibilities again. We once again become the individuals they fell in love with. And the "partnership" fulfils its promise.
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