settling in

Hard to believe we were living on a different continent just over two months ago. While I'm sure our long term perspectives have been forever altered by living two years in Sweden, it seems it's the more immediate things that jog the memory:

-Weather. A friend yesterday was complaining it's been the coldest July in Ohio for many, many years. The average has been between 75 & 80F. Yet for us who have lived in Sweden, the weather here is typically 15-20 degrees warmer than the weather there in the summer. You could almost get by the whole summer without shorts there, though you didn't want to. The country also nearly shuts down in July because of everyone's 5 weeks of vacation. That won't happen in the U.S.

-Recycling. I was pleased to find that the community we moved to in Cincinnati does recycle. And we try to recycle everything we can. I anticipated recycling would be a lot harder than it has turned out to be. Sadly though, I go to events every week where large amounts of recyclable things are discarded, even though recycling is an option. I am also pleased to find that a couple of the grocery stores we've patronized have recycling bins for their plastic handle bags in the front lobby, including Kroger, the nation's largest grocer. It's a start in the right direction. I can tell America is thinking a lot more about recycling than when we were here before.

-Traffic. I think that if U.S. drivers knew how efficient round-abouts are in controlling and speeding up traffic flow, they'd be at every corner. In the long run they also save money on electricity and maintenance too. Did I say they sped up traffic? Can't tell you how many red lights I've sat at after returning to the U.S. thinking that that stupid light was robbing me of hours off my life. Round-abouts people, round-abouts.

-Coming down to earth. There was something exotic about being an American abroad. People asked you questions running the gambit, from policy to fashion. I even had a teen-ager ask if I knew Justin Timberlake. Yeah, right. I asked him if he knew ABBA. There was also something cool about being an expat living abroad. I remember being in an indoor swimming pool with the family and David Bowie's song 'Young Americans' was playing on the radio. Everybody else around us were Swedes. My eyes met Mon's across the pool during the chorus and we shared a smile and it just froze the moment. So many Americans back home just couldn't get their minds around being abroad. You always heard the story that they always longed to travel, but having a long term opportunity to stay somewhere was unfathomable. We count our blessings in that sense. Now it's just back to John from Cincinnati. Again.

-Family. Man. I wish there was a land where all our loved ones were in one place.