Look back and smile on perils past. --Sir Walter Scott
I look back on my life and it is interesting how you can pinpoints forks in the road where a key event or decision led you in a new direction. Maybe you knew it at the time, maybe you didn't. In high school I got to be an Exchange student to Skopje, in then Yugoslavia, now Macedonia. My trip over there was fantastic -- I was matched up with A Sister and A Family. I saw sights and smells and tastes like never before. I traveled within the country -- seeing beautiful cities, older than I could imagine, many things lasting only in my memories as they have since been destroyed by War. The experience open my eyes to a bigger brighter world. At the end of my stay My Sister got to return with me and stay with me and My Family. Experience my life, our country. Sadly, she did not like it -- besides being homesick and I think she was not prepared for the differences in our worlds. My family and I did our best to make her feel at home -- with similar foods and routines as well as a host of new experiences to live and places to see. In the end I do not think she was flexible enough to bend and enjoy Capitalist America and all that that meant. We were only 16 after all. Sadly, she asked to move out of our house and stay elsewhere. This was heartbreakingly crushing for me -- I did not want to carry on with the group activities, with the other Brother and Sister pairings. I did not want to see or talk to her ever again. I felt insulted, angry, hurt. But my mother said we had a responsibility to see it through. So I did. I went to functions and was her sister, as best I could be given the situation, given my age -- introduced her to the Mayor, attended gatherings with her, paid for her trip to the Grand Canyon (where she didn't even get out of the van to look), took her to school with me to meet my teachers and my friends. It was hard, character building. For ages I was mad. Finally now, I can look back and remember the joys of the experience. I can smile. Mainly I see how it led me to life that has spanned the globed, to a viewpoint that, for the most part, throwing governments and politics aside, life is life where ever you are and that people are people everywhere and basically the same, basically nice. I often wonder what happened to my sister. I heard a rumor awhile ago that she had moved and forged a life for herself in London. I wonder how the experience changed her, maybe even prepared her for her choice to depart her home. Hopefully she can look back on the experience, the good, the bad and the ugly and smile too. I wish her well.
I look back on my life and it is interesting how you can pinpoints forks in the road where a key event or decision led you in a new direction. Maybe you knew it at the time, maybe you didn't. In high school I got to be an Exchange student to Skopje, in then Yugoslavia, now Macedonia. My trip over there was fantastic -- I was matched up with A Sister and A Family. I saw sights and smells and tastes like never before. I traveled within the country -- seeing beautiful cities, older than I could imagine, many things lasting only in my memories as they have since been destroyed by War. The experience open my eyes to a bigger brighter world. At the end of my stay My Sister got to return with me and stay with me and My Family. Experience my life, our country. Sadly, she did not like it -- besides being homesick and I think she was not prepared for the differences in our worlds. My family and I did our best to make her feel at home -- with similar foods and routines as well as a host of new experiences to live and places to see. In the end I do not think she was flexible enough to bend and enjoy Capitalist America and all that that meant. We were only 16 after all. Sadly, she asked to move out of our house and stay elsewhere. This was heartbreakingly crushing for me -- I did not want to carry on with the group activities, with the other Brother and Sister pairings. I did not want to see or talk to her ever again. I felt insulted, angry, hurt. But my mother said we had a responsibility to see it through. So I did. I went to functions and was her sister, as best I could be given the situation, given my age -- introduced her to the Mayor, attended gatherings with her, paid for her trip to the Grand Canyon (where she didn't even get out of the van to look), took her to school with me to meet my teachers and my friends. It was hard, character building. For ages I was mad. Finally now, I can look back and remember the joys of the experience. I can smile. Mainly I see how it led me to life that has spanned the globed, to a viewpoint that, for the most part, throwing governments and politics aside, life is life where ever you are and that people are people everywhere and basically the same, basically nice. I often wonder what happened to my sister. I heard a rumor awhile ago that she had moved and forged a life for herself in London. I wonder how the experience changed her, maybe even prepared her for her choice to depart her home. Hopefully she can look back on the experience, the good, the bad and the ugly and smile too. I wish her well.
No comments:
Post a Comment