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...