Since our return, numerous people have asked me if I am happy to be back in the States. My honest answer is that the return has been bittersweet. I was sad to leave Iceland, but I am happy to be home. We met some wonderful people in Iceland, with whom I enjoyed socializing regularly. However, we also have some great friends here, and it was very nice to get back to them as well. My grandmother asked if we intended to move back to Iceland. I was quite surprised, since I have never seriously contemplated becoming at expat. I suppose that the concept was not quite as foreign to her, since her father immigrated to the U.S. In any event, I reassured her that we intend to remain permanent residents of the States, although we certainly are interested in future sojourns like our stay in Iceland. Even the screwy nature of American domestic politics has not yet induced me to seriously consider living abroad permanently.
If there is one feeling that returns whenever I think about our time in Iceland, it is tranquility. That may seem odd when you consider that we pushed ourselves to see as much as we could and we also fit in a hectic three week visit to Europe. However, there was just so little stress compared to our lifestyles back in the States. I think that it is fair to say that I was living an artificially easy life, though, since problems around the apartment were ultimately someone's problems (althouugh I tried to help fix them), the car was a rental that was supplied by Bifröst, and I did not have a job. Sally noted to me in September that she is feeling overextended again and the stress of jobs, houses, cars, and the kids in school and extracurricular events certainly does make our time in Iceland feel like nirvana in comparison. It is tempting to think that we could achieve that level of relaxation again by permanently moving to Iceland, but then all of these problems would move over with us permanently and I do not think that it would be quite the same.
Overall, reintegration back into the fabric of our community has been almost trouble-free. Our friends welcomed us back and have shown interest in hearing about Iceland. The girls have fallen right back into the same crowds of kids, with whom they ran before. Some of Spencer's friends moved out of town, but he seems hardly to have noticed. He picked right up, playing with many kids he knew before we left and with some new ones whom he had never met before. Essentially, we have had almost no reverse culture shock, which was a shock in and of itself for Sally and me, because we certainly felt a fair amount of culture shock back when we returned from our study abroad years as undergrads. I really could not be happier about the ease with which we moved into the community at Bifröst and the ease with which we moved back into our community at home.
Ultimately, I am very happy that we took the family on this adventure. The kids gained a much better understanding of the size of the world and the differences between people and cultures. This sort of knowledge is not particularly valued by our culture, but I think that it should be. I am proud of my kids for tackling the challenges of moving to a foreign place and interacting with the natives extensively and, ultimately, successfully. I think that this experience really boosted their self-confidence and gave them a chance to hone their social skills. They are currently doing well in school, so I do not think that their semester of schooling at Hraunborg and Varmaland negatively impacted their academic progress either.
All of us want to travel abroad again as soon as possible. Not surprisingly, the top destination choice is a return to Iceland to see our friends and to visit the places we missed the first time. Of course, finances and time considerations make such a trip difficult to conceive at this point, but it will be something we will try to manage someday. We also think that another overseas sabbatical would be nice. However, as the kids get older and enter high school, it might be more difficult, academically and socially, for them to be gone for a semester or a year. We figure that we will play it by ear.
In the meantime, I am enjoying being home and spending time with our friends and family here. We managed to see all of our Colorado relatives over Thanksgiving, which was nice, since we had not seen some of them since 2011. For the upcoming Christmas break, we are also hoping to see most of our friends on the Front Range and to do some turkey hunting with Gunnison friends down at my parents' farm. Since we have all of the Christmas break available to us this year, we went all out when we decorated the house this past weekend. It helped to make up for the minimal decorating that we did last year, which was necessary so we could get around for the early January departure for Iceland.
At the same time, we are also attempting to import to our house and lives some of the experiences that made Icelandic life so appealing. We sporadically speak or read Icelandic to try to become more fluent; we bought an espresso machine, so we can continue to have those early morning espressos and cappuccinos; and we recently got a hot tub. It is not exactly the same as soaking in Icelandic thermal pools, but it approximates the experience enough to make us happy. Also, I finally got the trampoline put up that had been sitting around here in pieces for the past few years; since trampolines were nearly ubiquitous in Iceland, the timing seemed appropriate in the end.
As Janurary 4, 2013 approaches, there is a certain melacholy feeling around the house, since we realize that a whole year will have passed since we first arrived in Iceland. This melacholy was heightened this past week, when we received a care package of Icelandic candies, drinks, and shirts. They were gifts from Emma, who mailed them from Washington, D.C, which she and some of Pálmar's female relatives visited to shop the Black Friday sales. They and other Icelandic friends hope to visit us next summer, but airline fares may keep that from happening. Despite the difficultes of distance, time, and money, I hope that we can maintain our friendships at home and abroad and that our connections to Iceland can be strengthened even as our permanent residence remains in Colorado.
