“You’re kids are so special.”

“Excuse me?” I spin around in my seat to see who is talking to me.

An older man, who is up out of his seat on the way to the airplane washroom, has made a point of coming over and telling me how well behaved my daughters have been on the long-haul flight back to Canada.

“Disney gets the credit. They haven’t seen any of these movies,” I joke. “And they’ve had a lot of practice on planes!”

He asks me a few more questions and I decide it’s easiest to just give him the short version of our story. ‘We were living in Indonesia, we stopped in France, where we used to live, and now we’re going to Canada to visit family before we move to Africa.’

To be honest, I’ve come to get a kick out of the reaction on people’s faces when I give them the brief run-down of our ‘normal’.

I took his compliment with a smile, but didn’t let it go to my head too much because I know it’s only a matter of time before we have a completely different experience on a flight, or in a restaurant, or shopping center.

So that was my first welcome home. The man smiled at us as we crossed paths again at customs, asking the kids if they were excited to see their grandparents in typical friendly, polite, Canadian-style.

After an airport welcome full of hugs and “Look at how big you’ve gotten!” comments(thankfully directed at the kids and not me) we were on our way.

Confession time.

When it was time to book my ticket to leave Indonesia, I was more than ready. It was my first time living on a compound, let alone a compound that functioned 100% in French. The vacations in that part of the world were amazing, but I can’t say I was in love with the day-to-day life. I had had enough. I was ready to go. (Side note-You can read my whole story on life in Indonesia in Once Upon an Expat.) Leaving seemed so far away that when I booked my ticket out, I decided to take my daughter out of school a month early and leave at the beginning of June to go and spend some quality time with our family.

I felt ready to turn the page.

As if like magic, the second my ticket was booked I wished I had stayed longer. There were friends I’d miss, going away parties I was suddenly sad to not be there for. The time flew by and before I knew I was on a plane heading for Canada.

Friends were posting pictures and suddenly my boring old compound looked lush with tropical greenery and the warm heat was radiating through the pictures and a was shivering in rainy France.

I quickly forgot the traffic and my paranoia of getting Dengue from the mosquitoes. I no longer cared that it was too hot and hilly for me to run outside or that I hated that I couldn’t drink the water from the tap.

It’s as if the clouds lifted and I saw the sun shine and the palm trees more clearly. I was grateful for the fact that my kids were in the pool so much that they went from clinging to the edge with water-wings on their arms to having my four-year-old jumping off the diving board in the deep-end and swimming like a fish without a flotation device in sight.

I walk through the big city of Calgary and now appreciate the quaint neighbourhood we lived in Indonesia, not worrying if my kids were out in the yard by themselves. Dare I say I was missing the compound? As many things as I didn’t like about living on a compound in Indonesia, there were just as many good things. Memories were made: my youngest stopped using diapers there, my oldest started riding a two-wheeler. Friends were made, my French improved, and Indonesia will now have a special place in my heart.

But being in Calgary I realized that there were the simplest of things that my kids had no idea about. Enter reverse culture shock(again)!

“What’s that?” my four year old asked.

It was only then that it dawned on me that she had never actually seen a school bus before! In France the yellow school bus doesn’t exist. Kids are either driven by their parents or they use coach buses. There were other firsts my girls had this summer: Canada Day, Stampede parade, camping, canoeing, s’mores, tubing behind a boat on one of Ontario’s many lakes. Things that were regular, normal parts of my life as a kid growing up in Canada happily introduced to my kids this summer by grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. It was fantastic.

As I sit here tonight, with a million bags at the front door awaiting their 4am taxi to the airport, I’m obviously thinking about Africa. Tomorrow we will be residents of The Republic of Congo. I never would have seen that coming! I’m a mix of emotions and quite aware this move will be different from anywhere we’ve ever lived. Would it be easier to stay home? Of course, but where’s the adventure in that? So outside of our comfort zone we step, once again, and we see what we will learn from Africa. My take away from Indonesia is to see the beauty while I’m there.  It’s easy to be a critic. Anyone can point out what’s wrong with a place, but sometimes the challenge is to find the good in a place that challenges you.

I’ll talk to you from Congo!

Lisa 🙂