Expat lessons from our return trip home

How could this holiday recap be any more timely?

Perhaps if it were written weeks ago. Nevertheless, I'll soldier on. Besides, you were bored by waded through all those other people's holiday stories a fortnight ago. This recap will seem fresh and new.

{Ed.'s note: Lame justifications, aisle one.}

The Christmas fair at George Square in Glasgow, with the City Chambers as backdrop.

Why is this recap so damn late?

Well, it was a vacation, after all. I've been slow to get back into the blogging groove. Photos needed uploading and editing. And then my iPhoto crashed (not the first time); got somewhat restored; and now taunts me with a hideous gobbledygook of disorganization. Tens of thousands of photos were jumbled and albums were lost. To top it off, our internet connection has been periodically AWOL (not the first time).

{Ed.'s note: [Yawn.] Lame excuses, aisle two.}

Lesson 1: Working in Europe provides oodles of vacation days.

Counting travel time, our trip back to the States lasted 24 days. Of those 24, eight were weekend days, four were public holidays, and three were employer-provided days off. Kate thus took off nine days of work.

In the U.S., taking nine vacation days would eat up most of a worker's yearly allotment. Unlike most of the world, the U.S. has no federally-mandated minimum number of vacation days. Nor does the U.S. have any federally-mandated public holidays (i.e., days off work), though most employers give employees days off for holidays or a compensatory day if the employee works on a holiday. On average, most U.S. employers choose to provide between 10 and 15 days per year, with perhaps additional days for long-term employees.

In the E.U., by contrast, all member states must provide full-time workers with at least 20 paid vacation days per year. Many European countries provide more time. The U.K. requires that workers receive a minimum of 28 vacation days, plus eight public holidays (nine in Scotland). Kate's employer, a university, provides an additional three days during the week between Christmas and New Year's Day.

Christmas in North Carolina.

So when Kate took off nine days in December to travel back to the U.S., it didn't decimate her vacation time for the year. She still had 19 days earlier in the year for vacation. As it was, she didn't even use all of her vacation and carried over a few days into this year.

The lack of vacation time in the U.S. is a significant disincentive for us to someday abandon expat life and live again in the States. Give up two or three weeks of vacation time per year? That's cutting vacation time in half. It's not a necessarily a dealbreaker, though with a few more years under this system it might become one.

Lesson 2: We miss people a lot more than we miss places.

On our return trip home, the first stop was a long-awaited weekend visit to see friends in New York. Two friends (and their wee one, Molly) live in Scarsdale, outside New York City. They hosted us and two of our other friends (and their wee one, William) who live in Boston. Our happy nontet hung out all weekend in and around the house. We were joined for a quick evening visit by two other friends (and wee one, Sam) who live in NYC, and a third friend who was back from London visiting family in New York.

Boneheadedly Strangely, I didn't take a single photo the entire weekend. Here, Trish reads to Jackson and her wee one, William.

The other wee one, Molly. These two photos are courtesy of William's dad.

Before the trip, we had pondered making a foray into the City to show Jackson a few touristy things, such as the Statue of Liberty. We realized, however, that an expedition downtown with three toddlers would inevitably cut into our quality visiting time. Traveling in multiple cars, herding and placating the little ones, keeping everyone warm and fed — we would be busy, but in a way that detracted instead of enhanced our time with everyone.

Is Kristen pregnant, or did she just eat a really big dinner?

After eighteen months away — and even longer since we had seen all of these folks — the weekend was just what we were craving during our expat lives: pure visiting time with people we missed. Expat life leaves you bereft of family and friends for long stretches. Your social circle is radically altered. You find yourself missing old colleagues and bosses; neighbors and their pets; former professors and mentors; even check-out clerks and baristas.

Phone calls, emails, texts, blogs {Ed.'s note: Nice subtle plug.}, Facebook, Skype, and Facetime are fabulous tools to stay connected. But none of them can truly substitute for a face-to-face conversation. Nothing beats being in the same room, around the same table, sharing a meal or a beer.

You can't hug an email.

Jackson hugs Grampa Bill.

Nana and Jackson explore at Marbles Kids Museum.

As for the locations and places we've left behind . . . no big whoop. It was nice to peek into my old office at work. I enjoyed the familiarity of driving around Raleigh, a city I know well, and had fun spotting little changes that had sprung up over eighteen months. Perhaps if I had a Scarlett O'Hara-ish attachment to a house or property, I'd feel some pangs of longing. Maybe if we had lived in a truly distinctive city, like New Orleans, with its own culture and vibe and history and music, I'd be aching for the place. Would I have been thrilled to go to another Durham Bulls baseball game or a Duke basketball game? Of course. Missing those teams, however, isn't the true draw.

Posing with our friends Kristen and Stephen (and rear-facing Nicholas). Too many snapping cameras meant too many places to look.

For us, the ties to America are about relationships, not municipalities. About family and friends, not restaurants and sports teams. About people, not places.

Lesson 3: You won't have time to see everyone.

In New York, there were many more old friends whom we could have tried to see that weekend, but the logistics of trying to see even more people over that short time would have devalued the time we spent with the friends we did see.

1912 dance card courtesy of Wikipedia.

The second stop on our trip was in North Carolina, where we lived for roughly eleven years before moving to Scotland. Even with eight full days and two partial days, there were too many people to see with too little time. Our dance card overflowed. It still eats at me that we only saw about half of the folks we wanted to visit.

It wasn't a matter of setting tiers or hierarchies of folks we wanted to see. For some things, it was a question of our own professional commitments, such as finding the most convenient times to see our old coworkers, or my need to complete two full days of continuing legal education credits. In other cases, folks were away on their own vacations. At some points, the simple distance across multiple towns and counties proved too daunting to make time in already-packed days, much less worrying about meal times and nap times.

As it was, we flitted here and there for lunches and dinners and playdates. In the final analysis, we needed to (try to) leave enough time for the most important visit: family time with Nana and Grampa Bill. Seeing our families was, naturally, the main impetus for the trip.

We made a valiant effort, but we couldn't fit it all in. Not even close. It's one of the consequences of having moved far away and then returning for a visit. You know you can't do everything or see everyone. Circumstance and happenstance play a large role in how things play out. In the end, you can only sigh and resolve to see all the others on the next trip back.

Lesson 4: Readjusting to the homeland is not a challenge.

I suppose if we were gone a very long time and living in a significantly different culture amidst an unfamiliar language, then readjusting to the States on a return home would be a shock. Over time, both you and your home country change, usually in incremental accretions which only gradually lead to significant divergences. Eventually, possibly, you could encounter some genuine culture shock returning home.

Let's face it, though. That ain't likely. Particularly in the interconnected world we live in; with global news and dozens of ways of staying in touch; with converging norms and social mores; with shared movies, television, music, sports, literature, fashion, internet memes, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and on and on; with all that, you'd have to work hard at isolating yourself to not know about life in your home country.

A classic North Carolina delicacy.

We were gone eighteen months and living in a U.K. culture quite similar to America's. We came back to pretty much the same place we left. For sure, some of our old synapses were suddenly refiring. Ugly strip malls. Congestion. Fast food joints at every turn. Same music styles, same clothes, same left-wing and right-wing news channels, etc. Even if a decade (or two? or three?) had passed before we returned, there would be a heckuva lot more that had stayed the same than had changed.

It took only a few minutes to get used to driving on the right side of the road instead of the left. We had some food cravings to satisfy, but once those itches were scratched they largely faded from our consciousness. I enjoyed being able to watch college football bowl games with people who actually care about the sport. The supermarkets and Super Targets stocked all the same products as ever.

Christmas lights, music, trees, television specials = the same as always. We celebrated New Year's Eve in Colorado pretty much the same way 'Muricans have been for decades, with drinks and dance music and counting down the televised ball drop in Times Square.

Kate with her sister Tracy and our niece, Macie. Kate is a selfie master.

Tracy's husband, John, and I recline on the couch.

Happy New Year! Kate's other sister, Rachel; her husband, David; and John all photobomb our lovely selfie.

"Readjust" is much too strong a word. It's more like sliding into an old pair of slippers, comfy and reassuring.

Lesson 5: Gas is much cheaper in the U.S. than in Europe.

Wowzers.

Not a newsflash, I know. But still.

The current cost of petrol (i.e., gasoline) in Glasgow averages to about £1.07 per liter. Roughly 3.8 liters equals a gallon, so a gallon of petrol here costs approximately £4.07. At today's exchange rate, a British pound equals $1.50.

December gas price in Colorado.

Thus, a gallon of gasoline in Glasgow currently costs $6.11.

Compare that to the average U.S. cost of gasoline. In the majority of states, gas costs $2.00 or less. In the lower 48 states, the highest cost is in California, at $2.46. For the further-flung states, Alaska averages $2.69 and Hawaii averages $3.27.

On our trip back, we bought gas in Colorado for $1.91. Brought a smile to my face.

Most of the time — except for our long road trips — the cost of petrol here in Scotland is easier to accept because we use so much less than we did in the States. We're down from two cars to one. Kate walks to work and I don't need to commute. We can walk to shops and restaurants more easily. I'd guess our gasoline consumption has dropped by nearly two thirds.

Thank goodness.

Lesson 6: Red-eye flights with a toddler are a crapshoot.

Our three year old is a champion traveler. He's flown dozens of times. We work hard during flights to keep him well-fed and happily occupied.

A red-eye flight, though, is pushing it. Our flight back to Scotland from Colorado started at 4:30 pm and took 7-8 hours to fly to Reykjavik, Iceland. We had an hour and a half layover, and then a two hour flight to Glasgow. When we arrived in Glasgow, to our bodies it felt like 3:30 in the morning. Moreover, few people on the first flight were tired enough to fall asleep. Couple that with drink and food service, trash collections, and back-of-the-seat video screens, there was more than enough activity to keep a toddler awake.

Are you sensing where this story is going? We were headed toward something that looked like this:

Our niece, Rosalie, had a momentary meltdown on Christmas. (It's not fair to use this photo, since she's generally so happy.)

First, Jackson didn't want to even consider the idea of sleeping on the flight. Eventually we coerced cajoled him into lying down, but then he'd pop back up again. Then he was fidgety. Then he was genuinely tired, but couldn't get comfortable. We were getting exasperated, which didn't help matters. Then he started whining and pouting, kicking out in frustration. His whining went on and on, growing more desperate. He couldn't control himself any longer. Epic meltdown in three, two, . . .

And then he fell asleep. Not for long; only about an hour and a half. The crisis, however, had passed.

In our game of craps, we somehow rolled a seven.

This was all luck, and perhaps a bit of biological need for sleep. It was not, let me emphasize, a parenting win. We were powerless. He was the geyser about to burst, the earthquake ready for destruction.

The red-eye flights were hard for us adults to handle gracefully. For a toddler, it was a 50-50 proposition to remain calm, at best. Make that 80-20. Or 90-10. Whatever the odds, we pushed them and somehow squeaked by.

My advice: don't roll the dice this way. Find a better flight time. We will, next time.

Lesson 7: Bring additional bags or buy more luggage, but whatever you do, don't mail your stuff back.

You'll feel awkward and embarrassed and foolish to roll up to the airport counter with all that luggage. You likely will need a cart. On our flight back this time, we used two carts to waddle up to the ticket desk. Jackson perched atop one cart, the sultan on his sedan chair. Your suave expat aura is kinda blown when you're wheezing and cursing how much crap that kid got at Christmas.

Some will sneer at you, holding their single carry-on bag. But you'll do it anyway. All those bags — even if it costs you an extra-bag fee — is much, much, MUCH cheaper than mailing stuff back.

{Ed.'s note: / Because you know I'm all about those bags / 'Bout those bags / No mailing / }

Exhausted boy after his red-eye flights awaits yet more luggage. Still to be collected were another suitcase and another large box.

No matter what, don't mail things back. The mailing costs are high, especially if you want to track your stuff or see it within a month's time. How much do you really want those books, or jeans, or pepper jelly? It'll likely cost hundreds of dollars to ship back some Christmas presents.

And then you'll pay again when you receive it.

Say what?

I speak the truth. For example, the U.K., like many countries, taxes you heavily for anything you bought overseas and send back. They sock you with VAT taxes, customs taxes, excise taxes. They even tack on a "handling fee" for opening up your packages, rifling through them, and then waiting for you to pay their extortion fees before giving you your lawfully bought items.

But you're taxed on more than just what you bought yourself. Last year, we paid $280 to receive gifts that other people sent us for Christmas. That's right, we paid hundreds of dollars for the privilege of receiving gifts from people who had already spent hundreds of dollars mailing them to us.

How much did we pay to lug things back on the airplane?

Nothing. On most international flights, each traveler is entitled to two checked bags for free. We traveled to the States with three large suitcases and a car seat. We came back with four large suitcases (we had packed one bag inside the other on the way to the States), as well as two boxes and the car seat. In addition, each traveler on international flights is typically allowed a carry-on bag and a "personal item" (i.e., a smaller bag, like a purse or camera case). So we had a total of five carry-ons and personal items. All told, we brought back ten bags, two boxes, a car seat, and a limp toddler. Free.

Heavy luggage  vs.  mailing costs, taxes, and fees.

No contest.

Lesson 8: When you live overseas, you might see some family members more than when you lived back home.

During our time in North Carolina, my parents lived close by and we saw them often. They've visited us in Scotland multiple times already, and we hope they'll have some lengthy stays this year. But moving overseas has necessarily meant less frequent visits.

Fewer visits, but at least I can lure Nana and Grampa Bill to places like Paris.

By contrast, Kate's family lives out west, in Colorado and Idaho. When we lived in North Carolina, we didn't see them all that often, sometimes not even once a year. Remember our Lesson 1, above, regarding the lack of vacation time in the U.S.?

Now that we're in Scotland, we've seen them more. Much more. Both of Kate's sisters and their families have come to visit for two or three weeks at a time. The next trip is scheduled for this coming summer. Their mother, whom we call Grammar, stayed with us in Glasgow for a couple of months, and we expect more long visits in the coming months.

Two summers ago, aboard Her Royal Majesty's Yacht Brittania with Kate's sister, Tracy; her husband John; their kids Garrick and Macie; and Grammar.

Last summer with Kate's sister, Rachel, and her husband, David, at the Clava Cairns prehistoric site in northeastern Scotland.

So living overseas helps draw folks to you for longer visits. An interesting place to visit? Cheap and easy proximity to a continent of exciting tourist opportunities? Free lodging on their trip? Yessir!

Family sledding.

Expat life also helps you prioritize time with distant loved ones, maximizing the chances you get. Our trip home a few weeks ago allowed us ten full days, and parts of two other days, in Colorado. That's longer than any of our previous holiday trips.

Counting their upcoming trip to visit us next summer, we'll have seen Kate's sisters and their families for at least four weeks, and as much as seven or eight weeks, over the course of two years. That's far more than the one, or at best two, weeks we likely would have seen them if we hadn't moved overseas.

Tectonic shifts at a dinosaur museum.

Racing back to the car from the playground.

We moved across an ocean, but doubled or tripled our time spent with them. Chew on that.

A dram for Santa

We had a lovely Christmas. I hope you did, too.

Christmas season starts earlier here than in the States. You know how people complain when they start seeing Christmas decorations or hearing Christmas songs before Thanksgiving? In the U.K. there's no Thanksgiving. Christmas decorations started to appear in stores before Halloween. (And Halloween isn't a big deal in Scotland, either.) Television advertising for Christmas starts sometime in mid-November.

And long before that, there are signs and print advertisements. Indeed, the first Christmas advertising we encountered was in July. A large banner was hung along a street corner on the Great Western Road (one of Glasgow's main thoroughfares), encouraging folks to make their Christmas dinner reservations as soon as possible. Although that banner was an early outlier, we started to see more and more signs and banners in early fall, exhorting us to make dinner reservations for Christmas and/or Hogmanay (i.e., the Scottish term for New Year's Eve). It seems that going out for a fancyish family meal on those holidays is a popular activity, though my own anecdotal measurements reveal the majority of people still celebrate at home.

We started to get into the Christmas spirit in the middle of December, which is earlier than normal for us. I think that's partly because the Christmas season had started earlier than we're accustomed to, and partly because this was the first Christmas that Jackson somewhat understood and was excited about. One Friday night we headed downtown to see some Christmas lights and a holiday fair.

No need for Rudolph's nose to glow when the entire reindeer herd are piercing apparitions.

Kate and Jackson are in the red and blue "balloon." This was Jackson's first ever fair ride.

Ice skating around the Sir Walter Scott pillar and statue. Glasgow's City Chambers are in the background.

Merry-go-round.

We also took Jackson to sit on Santa's lap. In the U.K., it's typically called visiting "Santa's grotto." Is Santa in a cave? No. At least, not any more. Apparently, some department stores in Britain used to make fairly elaborate caverns for kids to visit. Nowadays, it generally looks more like a house or workshop.

Not particularly grotto-like.

Jackson has a decent grasp on Santa. He understands that Santa wears red and white, has a white beard, brings presents, rides in a sleigh pulled by reindeer (especially Rudolph), and lives at the North Pole. But he doesn't completely grasp that Santa visits only once a year, and keeps asking where Santa is right now. He woke up from one nap, spread his hands in confusion and said piteously, "I can't find Santa anywhere!" As though he had somehow misplaced Santa in his crib.

During his visit to Santa's grotto, Jack got to watch a short movie about Santa, eat some candy (called "sweeties" here), sit on Santa's lap, and receive a small present on the way out. He was excited to see Santa and watch the other kids sit on his lap. When it was his turn, Jack took a minute to warm up, but eventually mustered the courage to ask for "choo choo tracks."

Jackson was not instantly at ease . . .

. . . but conquered his misgivings.

As we neared Christmas, the days were getting shorter and shorter. I've written previously about how our daylight has been fading. On December 21, sunset was at 3:45. Even during the day the sun never gets high overhead, so it always gives the impression of being early in the morning or late in the afternoon.

Facing west over our backyard on December 21 at 3:45 pm. It was completely dark within half an hour.

Sun at midday in early December.

We received several Christmas cards from our Scottish neighbors. All of the signatures came with an "x". We assume that means a "kiss," as in XOXO. But we haven't asked. None of the cards came with hugs, apparently.

The "x" is a "kiss," right?

For our Christmas meal, we decided on turkey. There were, however, some other options available in the grocery store, including goose and duck. So we picked up a duck to eat earlier in the week.

Delicious duck.

One of our friends from Stornoway, on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, explained that Christmas could be a little more austere in the highlands and islands than in the lowlands. Presents weren't numerous, and often they were handmade. On Christmas Eve, they traditionally would leave some carrots for the reindeer, and biscuits (i.e., cookies) and a dram of whisky for Santa. We decided to adopt the dram of whisky tradition.

Making cookies for Santa. Note the "Bicarbonate of Soda," which is what baking soda is called here.

A gift tube of whisky.

Daddy tested a couple of drams to make sure it was acceptable to offer to Santa.

We had wrapped most of our presents a little bit early this year and kept them in one of our guest bedrooms. If we had put the presents under our little tree, they would have been too tempting for wee hands to avoid. To ward off Jackson from finding the presents, we told him Mattie got the room really dirty and muddy, and thus the door had to be closed and he couldn't go in. Our story worked. After he went to bed on Christmas Eve, we loaded up the tree, took a picture, and went to bed.

Presents hiding.

We got the narrowest tree we could find, to avoid taking up precious floor space.

We don't have a chimney or mantelpiece, so we borrowed a clothes rack from Jackson's room to hang stockings. And yes, Kate insisted that the cat and dog each got a stocking, too.

Jackson was delighted with his Christmas haul of loot. We had skipped his June birthday this year because we flew to Scotland two days later and didn't want to add stuff to bring with us. (Friends and family still got him birthday presents, so he was still in good shape.) Our plan had been to celebrate his birthday late, but in the midst of getting our lives set up here and having months of visitors, we never got around to it. Moreover, since we had packed almost all of his toys in May to cross the Atlantic in a shipping container, their arrival at the end of June was an exciting explosion of old toys that were suddenly new and exciting again. I doled out his old toys over the next several months, which kept him happy and amused. Actually, I still have a box of old toys that haven't been used since May.

We've had some new presents for Jackson stashed in our closets since this summer, which were intended to be birthday presents but ended up as Christmas presents. So Jackson made out obscenely quite well this Christmas. In general, we gravitate toward simpler and classic toys -- wooden trains, Mr. Potato Head, books, Play-Doh, etc. -- though he got a LeapPad, as well.

We followed advice to get IKEA tracks (plain, good quality, much cheaper than other tracks) and dress it up with Thomas the Tank Engine trains and fancier bits and pieces from other wooden train sets. I think it was good advice.

Mr. Potato Head was a hit.

The kid got nearly 40 books from various friends and family.

Mattie got a sock monkey and an antler, among other goodies.

We spent all of Christmas day opening presents, because after every toy was opened Jack had to spend time playing with it. He actually savored the experience, rather than ripping through everything all at once. We were still opening presents when a few lonely vet students dropped by for drinks in the evening; one student stayed for dinner and played with Jack.

Christmas day also had a slew of "Christmas editions" of popular television shows. Sitcoms, game shows, Doctor Who, Downton Abbey, all had special holiday episodes. We were interested only in the Downton Abbey episode, but there were all sorts of choices available.

In the U.S., the public holidays are usually December 24 and 25, but in the U.K. the public holidays (called "bank holidays") are December 25 and 26. The 26th is Boxing Day. Although the exact origins are unclear, the day in Britain historically was when workers or servants received boxes of gifts or money from their employers as a thank you for the year of hard work. Since oftentimes the servants had to work on Christmas for their masters, they were allowed off the following day to visit with family and could take home their boxes, sometimes with leftover food.

Nowadays, Boxing Day in the U.K. is a major shopping day, somewhat akin to Black Friday in the States. Retailers offer sales, people line up early, and folks go out and spend, spend, spend. According to some estimates, one in five Scots went shopping on Boxing Day this year.

We didn't go shopping. Instead, we've had mostly relaxing days of playing with toys, walking the dog, and reading. We spent one morning in Edinburgh being tourists at the National Museum of Scotland -- a fantastic museum that deserves its own post, at some point -- and on another morning we took a gentle hike in Mugdock Park.

Looking across a tiny loch at the ruins of Mugdock Castle.

Kate had off six days for Christmas, with a bit of working at home. She'll be in to work for Monday and Tuesday this coming week, and then off for five more days, again with a little working at home. We're pondering heading up into the highlands next week for an overnight trip to see some dolphins, but the details aren't quite worked out yet and we might wait until the spring.

So, it has been a quiet Christmas for us. We mailed some late presents. {Ed.'s note: "late" is how they roll.} It's the first time in many years that we haven't spent Christmas with either my family or Kate's family. They all got extensive Skype and Facetime visits, though, and we haven't felt lonely. I'm hoping next Christmas we'll either travel back to the States or have visitors here. But this year was a fun change of pace and an easy introduction to Christmas in Scotland.

"Daddy, that's not for eating." Darn, just before I took a bite.