hanging out and chasing lizards

Sorry for not blogging sooner - life is just flying by here. We have been to Geneva (or thereabouts), Italy - Sue even got back to California in the mix. There were so many funny little stories to tell, and yet nothing so exciting that it had to be told. We have tucked in lots of hiking and lots of eating, lots of biking and lots of sleeping. Sounds like we never left California...

Being here is different,though. We had a nice picnic in the park with a set of parents and kids from the school: a couple from Toronto (husband here for some banking job) and another from Houston (husband in the shipping business). They had been here 9-12 months, and said that you never really feel like you are here. I don't know if that is a function of thinking this is temporary, or not fitting into the culture, or the fact that it feels like vacation everyday because you are surrounded by people who talk a foreign (to you) language and hence you logically conclude that you must be on vacation. I have hope that when we move to our "permanent" housing in July that we will feel more settled - but then the parade of California friends will start arriving, bringing on that vacation vibe - practically the entire summer. So maybe, in September or so, when everyone is gone and the kids are back in school, maybe then we will start to feel settled in and "at home"...or maybe...

Our friend Aslam drew a graph on a piece of paper the other night. He said he had gotten the chart from a friend who had been an expat a while back. Imagine a line drawn from left to right showing time marching on, with a little hill at the beginning, followed by a huge trough at least 5-10 times as big as the hill, followed by an flat line that is a small amount higher than where you started. He said this is your mood on an expat assignment - excitement at first, followed by a long, large deep depression, followed by some level of acceptance that makes you a tad happier than you were when you arrived but not as high as the high you had on the little hill when you first got here. It was actually quite depressing because I could imagine it isn't far from the truth - isn't this supposed to be the adventure of a lifetime, this amazing life experience you can't have just staying at home?

Well, when we went for a bike ride this weekend, we passed by a set of garden plots. It is quite common here, as so many people live in apartments, that they can rent a piece of land (probably 20' X 30' or so) and have a nice garden, often with veggies, flowers, an occasional pond and most often a shelter with table and benches and a grill. So as we passed the garden plots, we saw group after group - be it family or friends - with wine and beer and the grill going, out for a Sunday meal together. That to me, was witness to an amazing life experience. Getting together with friends and family to eat and celebrate nothing more than the joy of another weekend is really as good as it gets - anywhere in the world.

But wait - I finally rememberd a story worth telling - and I have a picture to boot. On one of our great hikes in Italy (props to the two boys for being good sports and keeping up) we found a bright green lizard with a bright blue head. You would have thought we were in Costa Rica or something - what is a technicolor lizard doing in Northern Italy? Anyway, Eric and Karl became obsessed chasing this lizard to get the perfect picture - they must have spent 15 minutes chasing it from one bush back to another - you could see the poor thing breathing its little lungs out from exhaustion (I was praying it was not some rare almost-extinct species). Finally they chased it up the tree, and - wala - our nature photography at its best.

Anyone who can ID the lizard for us gets a prize!

Ciao!