Ah, but back to where I started, which was in a pensive sort of place. Our second year is nearly up here and we will soon be returning to the States for our annual Sultan-sponsored respite in our legal place of residence. Thanks to continuing Omanization at the university's administrative level (and if you can see the relationship between Omanization and the following statement then you get a prize), our previously enjoyed Sultan-sponsored stopover in the European capital of our choice is no longer Sultan sponsored. Sigh.
The other expats we know here are a philosophical bunch who enjoy giving their two cents, as do we all, and have lately been warning of a coming shift in our thinking regarding the States. They pontificate upon the something-something that occurs during the third contract year. "You will go home and stay home for as long as you can in the first two summers and then, after that, you might go for a couple of weeks...three tops."
This is the crowd made up of individuals who, during their first two years here, purchased a little place in Cypress or an old farmhouse in southern France and, once they retire from life in Muscat, will move there. They have the sweet furniture collected over years of travel in Asia, and awe-inspiring wall hangings, instead of the press board furniture given by the university, and the blank walls we sport. They have stories of wild adventures gathered throughout their lives of expatness, and a laundry list of other countries in which they have lived. They are the crew who jumped on this teaching abroad boat back when no one did it. They are largely childless and terribly adult. In short, they are not us.
We look at our rotten snot-nosed kids and wonder how we could NOT return to the States every summer for as long as possible. Muscat is very kind to them in so many ways. This year they have developed new social connections, taken up music, studied art, been entrenched in a weekly drama class, and raised a cat and tadpoles to adulthood. They have decorated our press board home with dozens of canvases of all sorts of artistic interpretations. They have become adept climbers and hikers, swimmers, and explorers. While they have become all of these things within a very friendly and supportive foreign country, in just as many ways they need to maintain their connection with their home country and to do what is purely American, at least for a few months.
Curiously, this year has brought them into a study of the American Revolution and the events leading up to and immediately following it. Our tag-along students who are not of the American persuasion our fascinated by the story that unravels at the hands of our history book one battle and famous colonial at a time. However, my little Americans do not seem equally fascinated. Silas will jolt and squeal when he hears a place name he knows but that is the most they give.
As a matter of fact, while Hamid wants to examine the American climb to independence and world dominance with an eerily despotic inquisitiveness, and Alfie wants to role play George Washington's every move, the American crowd hangs back with, at best, an aloof detachment. What do they want to know? "So what was England doing at this time?"
Yes, they continue along that slippery slope of Britishness and I feel hopeless most days to stop them. Tian returns from weekend play dates with a marked change in her vocabulary and phraseology. She has ceased using the words "kind of" or "very" in general parlance and now opts for "a bit" or "quite" instead. Tehva describes things as "horrid" and pronounces the word "bottom" with a strong "t" instead of using the good American "d" as in, "My goodness your bott(strong T)om looks big in those trousers." They are small changes, and amusing ones. Changes are to be expected of course. But balance is important, and balancing out 9 months here with three months there is barely a balance at all.
In light of this, we will continue with the Sultan-sponsored extended holiday time. I mean vacation.
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