BOTH THE BEST, AND THE WORST, OF GROWING UP OVERSEAS

Back to School Open House

Dearest Friends,

Know what I love about this picture? Check out the two boys center front. Look at the way little Travis, one of the youngest kids in the school, has his arm draped over older boy Jamie's, as if they were brothers. In a community this small, our kids made friends with everyone, and they soon learned that friends were not a disposable commodity. If you ditched your friends whenever they pissed you off, you'd end up very, very lonely, so they learned how to compromise. They learned that they could have friends of all ages and nationalities, and of both sexes -- kids whose interests and beliefs weren't necessarily the same as theirs, and who wouldn't always agree with them on every little thing. They learned that people could like them just as they were, even if they didn't have the "in" toys and clothes. Heck, they no longer had any way of knowing what was in! They learned that it's actually far better to have a teacher who makes you work hard, but stimulates your imagination, than it is to coast along in utter boredom. They also learned that it was important to balance that hard work with plenty of physical activity and creative opportunities. They thrived on being able to move about the classroom, and interact with the other students, including those in different grades. Most importantly, they learned that the universe was a very, very big place, and they were not the center of it -- that our way of doing things was not the only way, or even necessarily the right way. All this was the best thing about growing up overseas -- and it was the worst thing too, for it was going to make it very, very difficult to go back to the old way of doing things, and all but impossible to go back to the old way of seeing things!