Foreign fallacy

I watched the Obama - Romney debate last night on foreign policy.   I didn't catch onto Romney's strategy until I listened to the PBS commentators afterwards:  Romney was trying to be calm, agreeable,  less aggressive, even the hurt puppy, to appeal to women.  He wanted to come across as someone who isn't scary, isn't ready to go to war at the drop of a hat, in order to appeal to women who evidently worry more about that than men.  (And perhaps that's true).

I'm voting for Obama anyway, but I have to say I thought he came across as more personally connected to foreign policy than to some of the other issues they've discussed.  (Except health care).  I was thinking about why it appeared this way to me, and I've concluded this:  So much of the news in the last four years has been economic:  to tax or not, to bail out or not, to spend or not, the price of houses, how many people are out of work, the percentage of increase or decrease in unemployment and home sales . . . numbers, numbers, numbers.    This isn't completely the case, of course:  some news stories focus on human examples of these economic realities.  But more than ever in the last four years, I find I can't listen to the news on the radio for more than 5 or 10 minutes, because it's so much about numbers and financial institutions and strategy.

Obama seemed very personally connected to foreign policy last night, because he's been living it the last four years.  He's been living all the issues--economic, environmental, health care--but health care is (at least in the news, often when it's discussed) completely intertwined with money, too.

But, as I was pondering why the president seemed to take all the issues so personally last night, why he glowered at Romney as he realized that Romney was just going to repeat everything he said about foreign policy because he didn't want to appear scary--as I was thinking about this, I realized that foreign policy, more directly than any other issue a president tackles, involves people dying.  President Obama--anyone who's been in that office after four years--has seen people die on his watch, die as a direct result of him sending them to war, or of the results of what other countries do because of our relationships with them.  People dying is not necessarily the US's fault, and there's not necessarily anything the president can do to prevent our citizens, our soldiers, or other countries' citizens from dying, but that's very often what the stakes are in foreign policy.

I thought of all the students and faculty I've worked with, from the Middle East and all over the world, and how they would react to the unmistakable assumed superiority of the US that both candidates projected.   How we arbitrarily say that Iran must never have nuclear weapons and Pakistan, who already has 100, can't have any more.  Nobody mentioned India, an enormous presence (and nuclear-armed too, right?)  I understand that these issues aren't so simple; that the nuclear arms race was called a race for a reason, and I can accept arbitrariness in who's nuclear-armed and who isn't.  

But do WE always get to decide?  Really, the US gets to be the decider of these things?  I guess a candidate for the US presidency can't say otherwise.   And if I'm honest, having grown up in this country it's hard for me to imagine the US as not having some kind of major influence in the world.  I just wish it didn't have to be voiced in such starkly simple and arbitrary terms; that Obama didn't have to say, "If I am president, Iran will not have a nuclear weapon."  And Romney to say "Me too, and I'll even cripple them some more."

At least, to me, the debate brought out Obama's decisiveness in an area of experience that Romney just doesn't have.   In that way, it seems a bit unfair even to debate foreign policy, when one of the debaters has been in charge of it for the last four years.   It made me think of the sobering influence a US president has over the lives of people.  That foreign policy means life or death at times, and it's complex and messy and important.

Teenage passions

I'm a college counselor at an international school.   My students apply to colleges/universities in the US, Canada, and UK.   If you've attended any admissions information sessions or applied to college in the US in the last 10 - 15 years, you've probably been urged to tell colleges about your "passions."   For colleges with a selective admission process--that is, who require more than rigorous classes/high grades/strong test scores--they distinguish between students based on what makes them interesting.   Interesting in the context of their particular campus, to be sure--but increasingly, it's the student with a "passion" for an instrument or a cause or a subject (multiply that times 10 for a sport) who is "interesting," rather than the classic "well-rounded" applicant.

When I first started working as a college counselor almost 10 years ago, I may have used those words:  "Tell them about your passion."  Eventually I stopped doing that because it began to sound trite, to ring hollow.  To me, it assumes that everyone who's seventeen or eighteen is passionate about something, and that if you're not, then you're not okay.  It even sounds like that to me, 30 years older than my students.   I did have a passion when I was a senior in high school--music, specifically playing violin and flute--but  even though I applied to a couple of music schools, I don't think I ever said "I'm passionate about playing violin"  to anyone.   I said I wanted to be concertmaster in a major orchestra someday, which was much more recklessly ambitious, but I don't think I would have ever called playing violin or flute or singing in ensembles a passion.

I suppose that concept, as a catchphrase for college-admission cachet, is relatively new, developing as more students apply to college and more students apply to more of the same selective colleges.

In the last four years--since I've worked at a school that teaches the French national education system--I've noticed more keenly a blank stare or a whisper of fright across a student's face when an application, or a university rep, has asked a student to describe a passion.  I'm not sure it's a concept that is contemplated as much in other cultures as it is in US culture.   We toss around the word "passion"  freely here in the US, without embarrassment (not a love-of-another person passion, but a consuming drive for an activity or subject), as if we should feel free to go around telling people we have a passion for reading Faulkner or rowing or blogging about sports.   If it's truly a passion, shouldn't it be obvious to others?  Do we have to name it?

Well, of course we have to name it when its importance is implied, or directly asked about, on a college application.   I find that many of my students have a difficult time naming a passion, and I'm on their side where that's concerned.  Their school day is consumed with classes from 8:30 - 5:30 on many days, working toward huge end-of-2-year exams whose results can determine a lot of your life.   This is the case in many, if not most, other countries.  

I put this out there to wonder if I'm right, whether the concept of having a "passion"  for something is a particularly American one . . . or if even naming something as a passion is a very American thing to do.  I don't know.

What if I just want to be President of the United States?

We hear every day, and we have heard for the last two years, about Mitt Romney's changing positions. He wants to protect a woman's right to control her body; the same day, he says he is firmly pro-life.  President Obama modeled his health-care bill after the Massachusetts plan that Romney implemented when he was governor, yet Romney would repeal "Obamacare"  on Day One of his presidency (except for the parts that everybody likes, such as denying coverage for pre-existing conditions).

I'm sure it's no secret that I'm an Obama supporter and generally vote blue.  I am not posting this to try to slam Romney, believe it or not.

While I will add that his aggressive behavior to Jim Lehrer during the first debate, and his "47 percent" comments, have not endeared him to me, my overriding impression of Romney is that he just wants to be president.  Period.  He wants to be president of the United States, and that desire seems to be his substance.  I respect his devotion to his church and family, and I can respect his ambition.  But after two years--even four years, remembering him from the 2008 Republican primaries-- all I can say I really know about a Romney presidency is that he wants to be president.

Now, normally showing that you're "hungry" for a job is a good thing.  In fact, the first time I ever realized the similarity of running for president to a 2-year job interview was in 2000, the first time George W. Bush ran.   I got the distinct impression that he didn't want the job he was interviewing for.  To me, he didn't have that fire in his belly, that sense of urgency that usually comes through in a candidate's interviews and speeches.   I had never noticed that before in any presidential candidate.

So, I keep saying to myself, it should be a good thing that Governor Romney wants so badly to be president of the United States.  Usually wanting a job means you'll take it seriously and you know why you want it, what the job will satisfy in you and what you want to accomplish in the job.

But there's something missing.  I still have no idea why he wants to be president, why it matters to him.      Yes, on many--perhaps most-- days during the campaign he has expressed differing philosophical views about the role of government than Obama.  (In the debate last week, they suddenly sounded more alike).    Maybe he does believe in less government, and maybe a hell of a lot less federal government in people's lives, than Obama does.

I realize that, as I started this post, I said I wasn't going to harp on Romney's changing positions.   But I think that's why my impression of him is what it is.   I don't know what's at his core.  If he is elected, I have no idea what would or would not change in the first month, three months, six months, one year, of a Romney presidency.  I can't recall ever feeling this way about a candidate.


Mitt Romney, more than anything, puzzles me.  And he points out a conundrum that is larger than himself.   What does it mean that a candidate just wants to be president?  If that's the case for Romney, is that enough to make him an effective president and a serious, circumspect leader?  Is it enough just to really, really, really want the job?

Guru-ma: Back to school

Guru-ma: Back to school: The "Wedding Cake"  building at Cal Tech, where I visited last week. This week--last week--next week--lots of us will head back to schoo...

Back to school

The "Wedding Cake"  building at Cal Tech, where I visited last week.

This week--last week--next week--lots of us will head back to school.  

When I was a kid, I loved going back to school.   I was usually bored in the summers, and missed my friends.  I also tend to like an imposed structure, or purpose, in my life and school provided that.   (And, luckily, I was interested in most of what school had to offer).

I'm still going back to school.  I've only had a couple of jobs in my life in which I didn't have to go back to school.  Something about school obviously clicks with me. I've worked in three colleges and three high schools, constituting most of my career.  I have yet to figure out exactly what it is about school that resonates with me.

And as I creak my way back to school this year, rev up the school gears again, I'm still wondering what it is about school that has always drawn me in.  I read about school and college even on my vacations, even when I swear I won't.  I can't help it.

So what's up with school, as a profession?

(Hmm . . . I've just noticed that this building, above, looks faintly religious, as many college buildings do.  Lots of college architecture is modeled after Gothic cathedrals or 60s-era churches.   Maybe there's something to that?  Check out this Arts & Sciences classroom building at USC--Univ of Southern California--which I visited last Wednesday).

The slab of vulnerability . . .

Click on photo to enlarge

I started this blog to explore the notion of leaving one's country and coming home.   A Canadian friend and colleague at my school in Zurich was eager to hear about the adjustment of coming back to your home country.  I didn't know what kind of adjustment issues to expect when I moved back to the States after five years overseas in two countries, but I expected to feel that I was "adjusting"  all the time.  I expected to be bombarded with culture shock.

In fact, I didn't feel that way at all.  Many elements of life were a relief:  I knew how to find an apartment in the States.  I discovered that, after five years of letting myself live in the housing that was provided or found for me, on or very near campus, it was exciting to look for an apartment in Washington, DC.   (And when is finding an apartment anything other than a chore)?   Knowing from afar how the system worked was reassuring.

I couldn't name it during those five years, but living in a new country made me vulnerable in way I'd never been before.  I don't know if others of you have experienced this, but I now realize that the foundation of me the expat was resting, 24-7, on a concrete slab of helplessness.   I don't mean to be overdramatic--and maybe this is just me-- but I can see now that part of my day-to-day Amy-ness that I lived pre-2003 (pre-India, pre-Switzerland) was replaced with a layer of vulnerability, helplessness, openness, fear, blank slate, whatever you want to call it.  It has taken me four years back in my own country to know this about myself.

To illustrate this, I can attach the vulnerability to a particular element of life, in both places.   In India, the snakes on campus and the big gecko in my kitchen took the rug out from under me, 24-7.   There was nary a single second of any day in three years on campus that I didn't look for that cobra on my office window (this had happened to my predecessor) or take a step back when I flipped on the fluorescent light in my kitchen, for the disappearing tail of the huge gecko that lurked or lived in the masonry walls.

In Switzerland, the label on that slab of vulnerability read GERMAN, two kinds of German that are different enough to be different languages.  You are not the same person anymore when you can't read your own mail you take out of the mailbox when you get home:  the stuff from your insurance company, the political candidates'  flyers, the newsletters from the gemeinde (the county).  I can begin to imagine how immigrants to the US feel when they arrive here and don't speak English.   Part of me felt ashamed, part of me felt helpless, literally like a baby in an adult parallel universe.

On the other hand, I did get used to hearing another language around me in daily life.   In fact, when I would come back to the US in the summers, it would almost feel too easy that I could understand all the announcements over the PA system in the airports and recognize the newspaper headlines.

So when I moved back to the US, I was excited because I could speak the language and talk to the landlord and live in whatever part of the city, or suburbs, I wished.   I could make small talk with the people next to me in the elevator, in the grocery cashier's line.  I could talk to the tourists on the DC Metro or bus, if I wanted to, or if they asked me directions.  I could introduce myself to my neighbors.

Click on photo to enlarge

And the opposite was also true:  because I came back to the States to work in a French school, where the classes are taught in French and a majority of the emails and the meetings are in French, I felt as though I was still living in another country.   French is the only other language I understand fairly well.  I still work at the Lycee, and I still feel as though I go to another country every day.

Because of this last fact--that I came back to go to a little island of France every day, and live in one of the most diverse cities in the US--I never felt the downpour of culture shock that I anticipated.  At the same time, speaking the language and knowing my home culture began to chip away at the slab of vulnerability.

The real adjustment, however, has been . . . .   well, I will save that for another post.  And welcome anyone's reactions.

Trust, in another culture

Today, with my mother, we saw "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel."  It was better than I had expected. I had expected stereotypes--of the Brits and the Indians and the relationship between them--and many of those stereotypes were played out.  But it also had a Bollywood feel to it, as well as seriousness:  it was a movie full of people in their 60s and 70s faced with how to afford to live in retirement, what to do with their lives, or both.  My mother was quite sobered by the lives played by Judy Dench and Bill Nighy and other wonderful actors.

And as my mother told me, I saw different things in the film than she did.  I saw, literally, that I'd been in exactly the same place as the actors in the movie.   I saw elements of myself, a foreigner going to work in India who tried at times to put up resistance to the sensory overload and cultural difference that India is.  It reminded me how embarrassed I am that I felt that way:  that I wasn't one of those who embraced it all with positive spirit.

One of the characters in the film laments that she never knows what to trust, or whom to trust, in India:  the waiter tells her the milk is pasteurized when she knows he's lying; the group were given airbrushed pictures of a palatial building where they would stay, which turned out to be a falling-down grand hotel.  And I remember feeling the same way.  By the middle of my second year, I was travelling with a friend from the States during the spring break and had completely hit the wall with my cynicism:  How did I know if that shawl was really cashmere?   They were all pure cashmere, supposedly, but how could they be?

And I suppose that's the question at the heart of our journey into a new culture:  Whom do you trust?  What can you trust about it?  Is the building you're trying to find really around the corner?  Does Yes mean Yes when it's said with the speaker's head moving side to side, as if saying No?  So many layers of language and culture get in the way.

I use the example of India, but I feel it keenly in my work culture now (which is French).  And I know that anyone coming to our country, the US, must feel the same way.   We're a country, after all, that only knows one language.  What can you trust?  Whom can you trust?  How do you tell the difference?  I think the answer is complex, and lies in meeting people where they are; putting oneself in the other's shoes, to the extent you can.

How do you know whom to trust, in entering any new culture, even at home? Work culture, college culture . . .  Patience, positive or optimistic attitude, watchfulness, keen observation, trying to learn the language, somehow showing this new country you value your experience there?  All of the above?   Tell me your thoughts, because it's important.

Springs of Peace

Yesterday, June 24, was the birthday of one of my sisters.  She's brilliant and beautiful and one of the most strong and generous people in this world.  I admire her so much I'm too awestruck to say it to her.

So I think she would appreciate me posting this honor of her, and in memory of Sylvia Gift Nabukeera.   Sylvia--"Sylvie" or "Gift"--was a student who graduated from Mahindra United World College of India (the international high school where I worked from 2003 - 2006).  Sylvia left on a journey last year on June 24 to go back home to Uganda.  She stopped off in Nairobi and was killed, her body found on the streets almost a month later.

Sylvia, too, was brilliant and beautiful and funny and strong.  She was always singing, and could laugh off almost anything, including a snake bite on campus and the trip to the hospital an hour away.

I was reminded of this anniversary yesterday by Sylvia's friends from MUWCI, who have started an NGO to fulfill her goal:  providing drinkable water for her village in Uganda.   They wrote a much more moving tribute to Sylvie than this one.  I was reminded that Springs of Peace http://springsofpeace.wordpress.com/about/ has raised $5,000 toward their goal of $20,000, a great accomplishment in one year.  

I was reminded to contribute (which I hadn't yet done, to my chagrin).   Sylvia's description of her project is moving.  If anyone could have done something about it, Sylvia could.   She was a ball of poised energy and passion.  Let's hope we can help her project succeed.

Those who've started this project--Barbara, Julianne, Rachel, Shane, and Pravina--are smart ladies who know what they're doing.  (Hell, they knew what they were doing much better than I did, even as seventeen-year-olds).  You can trust them with your money!  Please give whatever you can to help the people Sylvia cared about, to Springs of Peace http://springsofpeace.wordpress.com/about/

I didn't know I would have two anniversaries to mark yesterday, one happy and one sad.  I'm grateful for my sister's happy day.  Let's turn the sad one into as much happiness for others as we can, for Sylvia's sake.

I had a thought-provoking conversation with a good friend recently about dual citizenship.

Him:  What a strange notion, having two citizenships.  How can you have allegiance to two (or even more) countries?   What if they are countries in conflict with each other, each making demands on you, such as mandatory military service or civic service?

Me:  I get your point, but I think the majority of people with dual citizenship are born into it; they don't acquire it.   I know people with dual citizenship who are thoroughly bi-cultural and bilingual:  they've lived in both countries, have a parent from each country; speak both languages.  This is who they are.   What can you do about that?

Him:  True . . . You've had more experience with that than I have.   It's complicated:  There are people with only US citizenship, for example, who have never lived in this country.   Are they as American as someone who immigrated here and became a citizen?  (And by the way, the requirement that you have to be born in the US to become president is archaic . . .)

Me:  Yes, it's complicated.    Are you saying that countries shouldn't allow dual citizenship?

Him:   Well . . .

I don't have any answers.   I'm not sure there are answers, but it's a fascinating topic in this world where people are more mobile than ever.    What do you think?

Obsessed with pictures

This picture came from the cloister of a monastery in Italy, Monte Oliveto Maggiore, that I've been fortunate--lucky--enough to visit three times.  I noticed this sign the third time, as we were getting a tour.  It's funny:  underneath this sign was a fresco on all four sides of a courtyard, telling the story of a saint (whose name I'm embarrassed to say I can't recall at the moment).   There were paintings of battles, and worship.  The artist who finished the fresco cycle was nicknamed "Sodoma."  (I'm calling on my art-historian friends--you know who you are-- to remind me of his real name, which I think begins with an L).   Somehow Sodoma was a good enough painter to overcome his nickname.   And perhaps this order of monks had a sense of humor.  

I was struck by this sign, reminding the monks to practice silence and respect and observance.  It was odd to think that monks needed reminding, as if they were young schoolboys in short pants, to be quiet and not run around the courtyard making loud noises and defacing the art.    We had just sung for these monks, the time I took this picture, and it was hard to believe that they could be anything but respectful and observant of the rules of the sacred place they walked about every day.

I'm going through a phase of looking back at the pictures I've taken in the last nine years, since I lived overseas; I'm frenetically trying to decide which ones to print and even more difficult, which ones to put on the walls of my little apartment.   They all seem worthy.    Maybe it's a way of dealing with the unbearable richness of the experience.   At fifty, I feel overwhelmed by memories.   Suddenly it's apparent that I have lived, and have managed somehow to accumulate lots of pictures.  

Silenzio e rispetto reminds me to look at the art and to try to be patient:  not to worry that I won't remember it all at the same time; that it will take many trips around the cloister to examine all the details, and that all the single details don't necessarily matter.  It's the whole story that matters.  

I don't know if the monks actually pay attention as they are admonished to practice Silenzio e rispetto.  I don't know how many years the sign has been there--probably a lot, since the S in rispetto has been re-painted.   They must see the sign fifty times a day, and don't take note of it consciously anymore.   But it called out to me, and still does.

It's time to write again

What topic shall it be?

Despite this blog's title--What's it like, coming back to your country after being away?--I'm feeling very domestic.  I'm not talking cooking; I'm talking about things happening in the US.

So President Obama said today he believes marriage between same-sex couples should be legal.   My home state, North Carolina, strongly disagreed.   Yet in the last election, NC elected a Democratic governor who's female.

So why aren't people's votes consistent?  or why aren't their general political beliefs consistent within themselves?