Repatriation - Announcing You Are Leaving

One of the harder decisions is to decide when to tell everyone you are leaving. Not too early, but not too late. And I suppose it is the same effort when we came here, except for telling family. Of course, that was a part of the decision and action as well, when to officially tell our family that we were really coming home. Before we could do that, we had to mentally get there ourselves. Tom has loved working here and would have loved to stay. Natalie did not want to talk about repatriating at all. I could go either way.


And telling people you are leaving is not the same as saying goodbye. Every notification comes with a "I'll see you again before I go" response. You know you are putting off the inevitable, but it seems right. The people you need to share your decision ranges from people at school, your ayi, your driver, your favorite bartenders. The waitress at Blue Frog who always gets the drink order wrong. The members of the Filipino bands that you think you will miss, but you won't. Lucy, who made the best clothes at the market. The fake market has it whole set of special people to visit. The shoe store where the girl is best at tracking down your size and color; Jackie, your bag guy, whose sister is still in jail due to getting caught selling fake L.V.; Juli who sold you Tommy Bahama when people still wore Tommy Bahama; Maggie who insists that paying 500RMB for a silk robe is a cheap price; DiDi and her sons who will sell you shoe bags, pashminas, scarves, and the occasional set of silk coasters; and the rest of the characters that have acted as your guides through this surrogate American Mall. Can't forget Susie and Julia. For all the jewelry I never needed. 


For me, the effort to tell people I was leaving was actually hardest of all. Because in reality, I won't be back. Most of the people I've known will disappear. Just like any other time I have changed the course of my life. However, this seems different because I have never had such a large contingent of people acting as my specially curated community. The community I built for coping and getting along in a world away from what I knew. I placed individuals and groups into this community, and though some were swept away along the journey, many have become what I used to think of as family. I look for their smiles or maybe their frowns. Their good English or their terrible Mandarin. Now most of them feel transparent to me. I tell them I am leaving and they look beyond to the next American expat who can fill the void. I am ok with that though. If this wasn't case, could I leave? Maybe not...

Dear Shanghai,
I just found out I am leaving. Don't worry, I plan on coming back. It's not goodbye, I have time yet. Just letting you know this might be the 2nd to last time you see me...
Shelly

Volunteer

Natalie decided that instead of begging for a dog, she would be proactive and work at a dog shelter or rescue organization when we returned to the U.S. We agreed that if she was volunteering time and they asked her to "foster" a dog, we would be open to that. Only good can come out of her learning to volunteer for things she is passionate about. Here is the letter she sent to a shelter in the Dayton area. She hasn't heard from them yet, but this made me smile anyway!

Dear Helpers and Founders at Puppy Pals Rescue,

My name is Natalie Bramer. I am nine years old. I currently live in Shanghai, China, where I have been living for the past five years.

I am emailing you to ask if I can help work and foster at Puppy Pals. I have always loved dogs and now want a chance to help them and spread dogs to loving, happy families. I want to help as many dogs as possible and give them the life they deserve.

A couple of years before I was born, my parents, Tom and Shelly Bramer, owned a teacup poodle that they had bought from a breeder. The poodle was too small to be a show dog, and was given to my parents agreeably. They named her Shelby. My first memory of my short life was her licking my cheek on Christmas morning when I was two. It was only three years after I met Shelby that she passed away while my mom was on a business trip.

I didn't really understand it at the time. I only remember that when I woke up the next morning, Shelby was not there.

When I was four years old I moved to Shanghai, a large, bustling city that was located in Eastern China. I begged for a dog, pleaded, coaxed, and asked and asked and asked for one. My parents said they would think about.

I found a particular breed I liked on my friends dog breed book. I did research on them, and found shelters in a suitable price range, driving distance and correct management. Dogs caught my eye and I asked my parents harder than ever.

This year, my mom suggested that I might prefer working at a animal shelter. At first, I was reluctant, but the more she talked about it, the more I was drawn to that idea.

I set to work looking for a reliable shelter that needed helpers, and after tiring and frustrating work, I found Puppy Pals Rescue. I looked at the dogs and noticed the paragraphs you submitted onto the website about needing Foster Parents. I would gladly accept any chance to care for a dog for periods of time.

Please reply back with your answer at natratb@gmail.com.

Thanks,

Natalie Bramer

Repatriation: From Decision to Buying a House

Our decision to repatriate was not a surprise. Every year since 2006 we have discussed the opportunity to stay or go. Same company or different company. Same circumstances or different circumstances. Natalie firmly said STAY. Tom felt STAY on most days though you could catch him after a hard day at work and he would change to a GO. I could have gone either way. As a family we had agreed that me not working (at a paying job doing something I am actually skilled at) was something that needed to change. I tried starting my own consulting company, but quickly realized that planting the seed of "entrepreneur" in a generally risk-adverse individual required significant care and growing time. Alas, this spring indicated the maturing time for self-employment was going to be longer than required to justify us staying in China. So that eliminated the opportunity to consider any "local" packages. 


I know from talking to other families that this "stay or go" decision will typically be determined by how ingrained into the local lifestyle you have really become. So living in a villa with all the amenities, having an Ayi to help with everything, having an awesome educational experience for your children, all was outweighed by the desire to keep Tom employed. And once you know there is more than a 50% chance of repatriating, the scale shifts quickly to GO. You don't want to be that family that decides to STAY but then finds out two weeks before the end of the school that STAY = TERMINATED. So, we decided to GO. Natalie refused to speak about GO until a month or so before our move date. I built a Plan with all of the things that needed done. Then I made a Shanghai Bucket list with all the things I wanted to do/buy/see before I left. We told family. We told friends. We settled into the idea of returning to a place we knew and people we remembered.


After the Decision was made to GO, you quickly realize you need a place to live. the company would fly us back for a "look-see" trip so we could LOOK at houses and hopefully SEE one we could live in. If we had kept a house, this trip would be easy. But we didn't. So we had a clean whiteboard and decided to focus on finding a school for Natalie. Truth be told, she was the reason for the cohesion in the first place! The opportunity for her to experience life outside of the US, to have an international school experience, for her to spend time with me since I took a break from working, all of those things were a primary driver behind coming. So of course, we had a great responsibility to ensure that all of those benefits were not undone when we returned. So we picked a few school districts in the Dayton area that seemed the right fit. I am sure that every returning child offers a unique set of considerations. For Natalie, it is all about teacher and faculty attention, which partially translates to student to teacher ratios, but not exactly. The other consideration was finding a home which accommodate, at least partially, care after school. I plan on going back to work so we will have to figure out what she is going to do every day after school. And really, that was it. We don't have other demands such as test score achievement or academic success in general, though these two outcomes seem to support the first need in terms of teacher attention. All of this research was easily supported by my Plan as it was simply information in, decisions out. My kind of project.


So once settled on the school options, we started on the house search. Our second criteria for a home, was somewhere that allowed us to have/build a sense of community. Not so easy in Dayton area since it is basically all suburbs. But we used general guidelines such as distance to school, commute time, walkability scores, etc. to fine-tune our house search. This is not easy from thousands of miles away. Thank goodness for the internet! Don't misunderstand me, the internet did NOT lead us directly to the house we bought [or perhaps current tense is better here, so buying], but it did help us with the selection process. What houses are selling for, what do they look like, how long is it taking, does the neighborhood have lots of houses for sale and why. Using the internet we were able to build a short-list of homes that we wanted to look at further. We primarily used Zillow, though we also used local resources such as Trulia or the Dayton Area Board of Realtors. But I personally like the Zillow apps for the Android (kindle fire) and iPad. The only thing missing from all the apps and websites was a way to track houses and a ranking for them. We did that offline in a spreadsheet. When looking at a property on the internet, we would score the potential from 1-5 with 5 being the "Have to See". By the time of our look-see trip to the US, we had about 30 total homes scored from 5 to 3 we could give the Realtor. We had made comments about what was appealing about the property and the potential drawbacks. The Realtor was able to discern our needs (generally) from looking at the list. I think this made the whole process much more efficient and was really the only way we were able to find a house so quickly. Who knew the Plan was going to move along so nicely? I did have to add some detail around the actual arrival back home, such as buying a car, getting Natalie enrolled in school, public library cards, etc. The Plan was shaping up quite nicely!


We flew in on Saturday, looked at houses Sunday and Monday, re-looked at our favorites on Tuesday, and put an offer out on Wednesday. Then back to Shanghai to figure out what we just did! Everyone thinks that finding a house in such a short time is nearly impossible. But it wasn't that bad. I think it has to do with the way American's think of housing. But I won't digress here on that and instead will just summarize by stating that we did not feel the need to buy above or even at our means. We were not looking for a house we loved because we realize that a house is just a place to hang your 127 pictures and art pieces and a mantle for your 7 Buddha heads. As long as there is room for that new dining table and chairs I had made here, we are good! [Tom would require full disclosure on my part so I will state here that one house we really liked had to be eliminated due to the fact that my new table would NOT fit into the dining area. Though I consider this more a flaw of the house rather than my buying habits!]


So, we found the house. It turned out to be the first house we looked at. It was not even really on the market yet and so was never on our list. We didn't love it per se, but it met all our criteria, required little improvement and was "move-in" ready, was in a convenient location, and the price was right. Done. Oh, except that we found out the roof needed to be replaced. But we found out while at the airport waiting to leave. I'll not digress to share the whole story, but will summarize by saying we bought the house BUT will need to replace the roof in the next few years. Then there was the paperwork to buy a house. We had to close from Shanghai. Which meant going to the US Consulate to get some papers notarized. And at $50 a notarization for a total of $300, I realize that instead of going back to the US, I should have become a Notary Public and set up shop here. So we went the US Consulate, signed our mortgage papers, and overnight-ed them back to the Title Agency. The Title Agency then contacted us to let us know that, oops, they had missed one form to be notarized. So, they emailed them and we trekked back to the US Consulate, hoping we could just get the one paper signed and not the whole stack. Which they did. So another $50 and we were done. [We are currently waiting for the actual closing which will be the week of June 11.]  What about the Plan you ask? How did we adapt the schedule? Well, I actually started consider the result if we stopped using the Plan. How could I possibly think that I could identify all the things that had to be done to get three people out of China and back to the US?


By the time we returned from our home visit, the impact of our decision to repatriate had settled into my consciousness. It had really just hovered around my subconscious before, appearing only when discussing houses with Tom or talking to Natalie about public schools. The reality was frankly, a bit overwhelming. As ready as you might think you are to accept a major life change, it can gnaw at you while you are sleeping and impact your decision making ability for simple things, like where to eat dinner. You get caught up thinking things like "We should go try new places before we leave" or "This might be the last time we eat here." Then there were relatively simple activities I needed to do like find the Ayi a new family. But that has turned out to be one of the most complicated. And it's still not finished. Seeing that activity on my list every day and not seeing how I was ever going to successfully complete it left me dismayed. And so, I abandoned the Plan that I had determined would be my own personal salvation. I hadn't been able to keep it up to date anyway, instead of doing what I though I should be doing, I was busy doing things I had to do like deciding if replacing the house on the roof was important enough issue to abandon the house and buy another one. And trying to find replacements for Skipper and Gilligan (our two Terracotta Warriors) as they had deteriorated to the point of not being able to be packed and shipped. I guess my point is that there was not a whole lot of value in feeling good about checking activities off the plan. It just made me feel like there was a whole lot of other things I wasn't doing or even knew I should do. 


Which brings me to the conclusion that learning to adapt is the most useful skill we teach our children.  That concept brings some things full circle for me personally. A big part of the decision to come here was to give myself a break from the work stress that was resulting from the premise of my career being the most important thing in my life. It wasn't, it isn't. So I sat that career aside for a while, then I tried it again, and set is aside one more. And now I am prepared to try it yet again. Along the way I have had to adapt my own personal definition about what a career is and what role it plays next to Mother, Wife, Daughter, Sister, and Friend. I am not sure I have completely figured that out yet. However, recognizing it needs to adapt is a step in the right direction. We have a home in a community and we have friends and family awaiting our arrival. The home stage is set and we begin the new life in 11 days. 

Repatriation: The Plan

I have decided I should be blogging to help keep my sanity during our repatriation from China back to the U.S. Consider it a comedic look at the CLASH of two very different cultures. If it works, and I keep my sanity, well, that is a bonus!

Everyone says that sometimes the repatriation is harder than expatriation. In our case, I will have to agree. Selling a home was easier than buying a home. Giving up work was easier than going back. Moving to Shanghai with a 4 year old was/is easier than moving to the US with an almost 10 year old.  But I am getting ahead of myself. The repatriation all started with a plan...

Repatriation is process just like anything else. You can manage it like a project, just like implementing a new system or building a house. You can, but you won't. (oops, that might have been a spoiler!). All families who repatriate share a common experience:

1. Decision: The company decides that they can longer "afford" expatriate services OR the trailing spouse finally puts their foot down and announces "Enough is enough. I want to go back!". Or in our case, Tom's favorite hole-in-the-wall bar closed.
2. Prepare living arrangements in home country: If you kept your house, then you give notice to any "renter" that you will be returning. If you don't have a home, you will get 24 hours in your return location to find and buy a place to deliver all of the junk you will be bringing back with you (see #8 below).
3. Announce to everyone you leaving. This includes schools, friends, ayis, drivers, landlords. don't forget hairdressers, favorite fake market vendors, the Filipino bands you have somehow come to adore, the local Jewelry vendor who makes you jewelry you will never wear but need to buy.
4. Pack: You cannot believe the stuff you bought 5 years ago. And you will have insight into the HOARDER you have become. Oh, and thanks for leaving a few very hidden white elephant gifts on that bookcase!
5. Exit to home Country: Probably it would be best if you just keep circling the earth time travelling until you reach the point where your adaptation had not yet reached the "edit undo" point or the plane's toilets fill up (which will happen before you reach that former condition!)
6. Arrive in home country: Haul your 27 bags per person through customs indicating you are repatriating from a third-world country which explains why you have 12 unused deodorant bottles, 35 Pashminas, enough green tea to get your through finding a new source, Christmas bracelets for friends for the next 6 years, and two Chinese Fu Dogs you bought after packing but couldn't live without. No, you are not importing spices, that box of douchin(豆豉) was for the airplane meals.
7. Culture Shock: This continues until you begin to question what nationality you really are. You end up with the cable you said you would not get, driving to the Starbucks two blocks away, and eating Taco Bell again. Your guilt from these transgressions eats away at your resolve to be that better person you thought you could be.
8. Unpacking: This step also continues until you begin to question your sanity in accumulating ALL THIS STUFF.
9. Settling In to Americana: This is the one step where you are now in control of your destiny and can define your own story. An opportunity to use all the bad experiences to form a new, smaller footprint, less materialist, community-oriented family.

I originally had a plan to deal with each one of these steps. I used a few tools, but settled into a combination of Excel and Evernote. I had about 130 activities in Excel, most with dates. I documented the names of all the contacts for relocation, I started researching houses on Zillow in the city we were moving back to, and then we got to step #2. And I threw away the plan. Well, actually, I did refer to it a couple of times subsequent to the 4 weeks of jet lag that the resulted from our house hunting trip. Generally speaking, I abandoned it. Not out of desire to approach something this important willy-nilly, but because trying to manage such a personally impacting event proved too difficult for me. When a task needed to be handles with precision and authority, I found myself instead agreeing to go to lunch with friends or visiting a place I had not yet seen. An email that needed to be sent to clarify a move-related question was sent late or not at all due to my desire to maximize time doing activities that I would not be able to do when in the US, such as elbowing my way to the food scales at Carrefour. I have no rational explanation for this poor Project Management behavior. Though perhaps it was a way of managing the risk associated with the mental stress that accompanies a repatriation. Yes, that sounds intelligent and unavoidable, so let's call it that: Repatriation-traumatic stress disorder (RTSD). So clearly I was simply participating in alternative activities to help reduce the potential impact of RTSD.

My point in relaying this "throwing out the plan" phenomena is to emphasize that repatriation makes individuals abandon their normal behaviors. Not just abandon, as normal behaviors become almost poisonous when trying to cope with the idea of leaving a place you learned to be a part of. This is different than when we came, because we had always been American and we never attempted to be anything else (except maybe French while visiting St. Martin for 5 days). And we knew we would return to live there someday, so there was no need to grieve or feel regrets for the America we left behind. Anyone who reads about Third Culture Kids know that kids will create their own third culture from the recipe of combining their home and host cultures. Adults are disadvantaged in that this recipe does not result in a third culture at all. I feel like it I do when I have tried to make bread: too much flour or too much water, doesn't rise enough, or too much. For me at least, the two cultures are too incompatible to make something confortable to live in. So instead, we mentally prepare for living back in the US by abandoning most of the culture here in China. the peculiar challenge is to find the parts of myself and the rest of the family that have truly been changed and then find a way of accommodating that in the US. Off the top of my head I know that includes Community, my personal walkability score, and rice cakes.  Reinvention of sorts. I am holding on to that thought for now as it is my cup-half-full view.

So where are we in the process? We are at the packing step. But more on that AFTER I locate the elusive head to the new TerraCotta Warrior that these guys are building a custom crate for...

Daily Picture Grade 4 - Day 172

Last day of school. Last day of school at Concordia. Last day of school in Shanghai. Thought today's picture should be one that is unique to attending an international school in China. Our bus has a driver and two "ayi's" or helpers. I have ridden the bus back and forth to school and will tell you that these two Ayi's put up with a lot of crap from the kids. In the U.S. the bus driver would simply not let the misbehaved kids ride. Anyway, these two ladies have been riding the bus to and from school with Natalie for the last 5 years. Every year we give them a "Red Envelope" or Hongbao (红包). This year we also got a picture. Thanks to Ms Bao and Ms Wang! (Not sure of driver's name). Natalie had a very sad day, it was very hard to say goodbye to friends and teachers at school. She will knows she will make new ones, but it is still sad to see this big part of her life going away.

"Thanks bus Ayis and Driver! Goodbye Concordia!"

Daily Picture Grade 4 - Day 171

Today is the 2nd to last day of 4th Grade! LAST DAY FOR A UNIFORM! Sad for me. And Natalie a bit disappointed about it too. She is not much of "fashion diva" (her words) so wearing the same clothes every day was an easy routine. But today she tried to wear the same thing she wore the first day of Kindergarten (though I think she wore a skort the first day). 

"Last UNIFORM Day!"

Daily Picture Grade 4 - Day 170

Whew, back on track with the publish time and date. Two more after today.  And I took a great picture of her in front of the green bamboo and flowers. But this was one we took so she could see the spaghetti on her face! Yes, she had spaghetti for breakfast. Pretty sure she warmed it up. But this was so much more Natalie than the posed one. Today Tom and I are headed to the last ES Chapel where the kids who are leaving are recognized and given a cross and a special prayer.

"There is NOT spaghetti on my face! Oh wait, I see it..."

Daily Picture Grade 4 - Day 169

I rode in the van with her to the bus stop so thought I would get one from inside. Hard to see, but there is pop tart in her hair. Breakfast these last weeks of school are not so great!

"POP TART HEAD"

Daily Picture Grade 4 - Day 168

Back from Beijing, but slept through her leaving so another no picture day. Our return flight from Beijing did not land until after midnight, the Middle Ring road was shutdown so our taxi driver selected an alternative route which required him to drive 95 MPH. Scott, Alyssa, and I were exhausted by the time we got home at 1:45 am. Hence the sleeping through. I found a picture where I think Natalie felt the same way I did that night/morning. This is how/where we found her at the end of her 4th Birthday Party. The funny thing was that this was just a family birthday and there was not a big party. Ah, to sleep like that in the hallway!

"Sleeping Beauty"

Daily Picture Grade 4 - Day 167

This is from her 2nd Beijing trip (did she only go twice?) was when we flew there before flying to North Korea. She lost her first front tooth while eating at Hooter's. Good thing the Tooth Fairy had GPS...

"My first front tooth!"

Daily Picture Grade 4 - Day 166

I know what you are thinking. I have forgotten the Daily picture for a week. And you would be wrong! Not forgotten, just busy and not here and no time to load the one picture I do have. Never fear, I have some fun pictures to make up for the gap. Scott and Alyssa Stinson were visiting last week, so we headed to Beijing early Tuesday morning. Natalie stayed with Aerin so wasn't here in the morning. Plus we were gone until Wednesday very late and not up before she went to school Thursday. And since Tom is not a big fan of my Daily Picture project (sigh, another post perhaps?), I decided not to request special assistance and instead will use the retro method I've used previously. Since were were in Beijing I decided to use a couple of pictures from Natalie's previous visits to Beijing. Here is the first, from 2008 when we went with the Bramer's. I could have picked a fun one from The Forbidden City or one after we climbed the hard section of the Great Wall, but to be honest, this is one of my favorites. She seems so young to me. She was just 6. And travelling through China during the October National Holiday was taking it's toll on her. Lots of pictures to be taken by Chinese tourists who had never seen a blue-eyed child before.

"I is tired."