musings on living overseas

I thought that Amsterdam would be a lot further away from Wisconsin than it's turned out to be. Sure, geographically it's still an ocean and a roughly 7 hours plane flight away, but I thought that living here I would feel more disconnected from everyone back in the States than I have. It's been 5 months since I've seen any of my family. Even when I moved off to Madison for college, I used to see my parents pretty regularly (for the first year and a half I got to see mom every month when she fetched me for my orthodontic appointments). After Mom and Dad moved back to the Waukesha area, it was easy enough to hope on the Badger Bus, and head home whenever I wanted. It was never very often (I can recall only one time when I decided I was overwhelmed with work and didn't want to be in Madison any more, and I emailed my parents and said I was showing up at the bus drop-off in a few hours. Mom did my laundry, I got to meet their new cat, and I actually got some work done), but it was nice to be able to swing over for things like the 4th of July. And of course there was always the major holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas, and the New Year's gathering on Dad's side of the family, and often Mom and Dad would come to Madison for my birthday. But in the interim between these things, though, I never was much one for phoning home or anything. (Usually the only time that a phone call won out over an email was when I was in the middle of cooking something which wasn't turning out and I needed an answer NOW). Most of our communication was done by email, and it was sporadic depending on how interesting our respective lives had been. As for friends, when Phil and Amy lived in Madison we got together fairly regularly, but after they moved away we saw them maybe once a month, if that. And other friends sometimes I'd see various times in quick succession and then not catch up with for quite a while.

The thing is, things aren't that much different now that we're here instead of there. I've talked one the phone with one friend twice since we've moved here, and that's quite a bit more frequently than we ever talked on the phone (other than "hey, are you awake? I'll be over to pick you up in about 10 minutes") before. When I email my parents, I usually get a response within 5-30 minutes, just as I used to. In fact, in some cases, the increase in the physical distance seems to have contributed to a decrease in the mental distance. I find that Joel and Dad IM and email rather frequently. This is both weird and good. Good in that I'm very pleased that my husband and his father-in-law get along so well, but weird in that, for example, Joel found out about Dad having shingles before I did! For the last month or so, Amy and I have been emailing 4-5 times away, sometimes more than once a day. I remember when she was studying abroad and we used to send each other regular long emails, and we've settled into that same habit now. This pleases me greatly, because while I'm not big on socializing with people I don't know very well, I am big on being able to talk about things with a trusted friend who can sympathize and give advice. Now I know that if things are going bad (or good), I can email her and tell her and get a response within a day or a few days. It's sort of funny how we're closer now that we're farther apart than we were when we were closer together. As for Joel's parents, they call every other weekend or so, and as we never got to see them more than once a year or so anyway, if we can convince them to come visit before the end of summer, things aren't that different there either.

So, except for the fact that I can't catch a bus and head home for the weekend whenever I want to, things really aren't that different than they used to be, and in some cases I talk with my friends and family MORE than before. This has made living abroad far easier than I feared it might be - though given all this I was a bit surprised at how home-sick I suddenly got when I realized that all of my family was going to be gathered together for Christmas, and I wasn't going to be there, and this time I didn't have the reason that Joel and I were at his parents' instead. Being able to call home while everyone was there and getting to talk to pretty much all of my relatives really helped a lot there.

In some ways, I'm rather surprised at how quickly the last 5 months have gone. Not that 5 months is a long time, but rather that second semester starts in just over a week, and I've got everything planned out for that, and then it will be summer and we'll hopefully finalize our dissertation topics and our advisors, and then it will be the end of summer and we'll have been here a year and will have only three years left - suddenly, trying to figure out when we're going home for a visit and when we'll have people come here for visits, it seems like we don't have nearly enough time to fit it all in! I'm glad that the next 3 1/2 years look like they'll be as good and as busy as this past half year as been.