Reflecting on what could have been...

Okay, so first I will "snack" on my words from my previous post about my glorious pony ride. My upper inner thighs at the hip joints and my left inner lower leg are not exactly happy campers this morning...LOL I was starting to seize up a bit yesterday and today I'm definitely sore. It was worth it though! I've signed up to ride again next Wednesday with Mae this time! The kids are off school now for two weeks as this is the big spring school holiday in the U.K. Tim has to leave on Sunday so it will just be me and the kids until the 10th when my Mom is returning to help me. I swear I have the best parents on the planet! They are, once again, putting their lives on hold to make sure I am okay and able to manage my life here. Tim and I are both overwhelmed by the support we have received from them ever since we left Canada in 2000. They both deserve a gold star. :o)

So, as for reflecting, today should have been the day the money exchanged and keys were handed over to the new owners of our house. Sigh. We would be off to the hotel awaiting our flights to Canada on Sunday. I'm trying to stay positive but there was a knot in my stomach when I woke up this morning. I just want to go home. The kids seem unaffected by all of this and they just accept things and move on, as kids do. Thank goodness!!

I sent an email to our local BBC radio station this week and they called yesterday saying they wanted to have me on the show this morning but I never did get called back. My email was in relation to a topic that they were discussing and as I was sending my email there was communication read out from another caller in an "anti-immigration" vein. I added to my email how sick and tired I was of the negative attitude in this country to foreigners/outsiders and I added that I couldn't wait to be back in my much more tolerant home country. Now of course, not everybody here is racist and racism exists every where in the world but there is a simmering intolerance here that is disturbing at times. I feel very sorry for people from the U.S. who live here because, in my opinion, they are treated quite poorly. I am lumped in with them because of my accent and people seem to change their opinion of me instantly when they hear that I am, in fact, Canadian. Funny how they were distinctly unfriendly to me one minute and then very interested to speak to me the next. The war in Iraq has had a very negative impact on the lives of U.S. natives in this country and that is unfair. Why anybody should be judged because of the accent and their country of birth is beyond me. Narrow minded and ignorant sums it up. It is this negativity that I will NOT miss when I return home. Now that said, I have met some wonderful people while I have lived here and I will shed tears and suffer heartache when I finally have to say goodbye to them. The host of the show this morning seemed to be distressed that so many foreigners were saying that they find the U.K. to be very unfriendly to outsiders and I must echo this sentiment and I agree that this is probably particularly true for those from the U.S. (Then again I met a family who moved to Oxfordshire from the north of England and left two years later because they found everyone her so unfriendly and insular, go figure!!) I have found it, overall, difficult to get to know people here, to break through the barrier of being "different". As far as I'm concerned, and it's taken me a while to form this opinion, it's their loss!! I am a "people person", I love meeting new people, I'm fascinated with peoples lives, stories, history, etc. (I always pity the poor soul who gets stuck sitting next to me on an airplane, hehe.) If they can't be bothered to speak to me because I'm foreign, then they can "sod off" as they say! I think back to when Delsin was starting toddler/playgroups and I could attend these session for 2 hours and not one person, other than the staff, would speak to me. I stopped going and then changed my mind because I didn't want Delsin to suffer as a result of me feeling insulted. At a group that I attended locally, the staff approached me and introduced me to a lovely South African lady and asked if I would chat with her as she was feeling a bit isolated. Gee I wonder why, could her skin colour and accent have anything to do with that? I think yes. She is lovely, university educated, intelligent, funny, and all those narrow minded twits lost out on meeting such a fantastic person. Again, their loss. My older boys have been harassed for their accent, been told to "go back to their own country", called "Canadian bastard", and are genuinely confused as to why they can be subjected to racist comments and behaviour and I have no answer for them. The schools took the opinion of it being a "he said/he said" situation and since they didn't actually witness any of this behaviour towards the boys then they can't do anything about it. I get this instant image in my head of an ostrich with it's head in the sand. I've heard rantings about the "damn Poles & Eastern Europeans" invading the country and living off the taxpayers and taking jobs away from the Brits. Give me a break, they are obviously willing to do work that the locals won't consider and if they are being hired "under the table" then that is the fault of the employers, not the workers. Others say they are all a bunch of criminals, so does that mean that the prisons are full of immigrants then? I think not. Most immigrants come to any country to have a better life and many need help to get started, of course, and it pays dividends to the host country in the end when they become tax-paying contributors to society. The world is such an interesting, colourful, dynamic place if you let yourself be open to other people and experiences. There was another interesting point that was brought up during the show that immigrants are expected by the Home Office, in this country, to learn the language and adapt to fit in to the local culture. Pity this doesn't always work both ways. When we lived in Belgium we ended up in an area full of ex-pats, many of them from the U.K. Our children all went to local Flemish speaking school and Tim and I accepted that we should learn the local language to communicate better with teachers, merchants, doctors, etc. etc. We took language lessons provided by Tim's company and I know that other courses were readily available and some ex-pats took advantage of this as well. There was, however, a very arrogant attitude among some of the Brits that "everyone here knows how to speak English, so we have no problems communicating". That isn't exactly the point though, is it? You are in their country, being paid your ££ salaries, paying your taxes in the U.K. but living a very comfortable life abroad so you would think the least you could do would be to make an attempt to learn the local language. Some did but some couldn't be arsed. Very hypocritical don't you think? I will take back many positives from my time here and try to push the negatives to the back of my memories. I just needed to get some of my experiences out of my brain.

Wow, I guess I had more to say on that than I thought! That radio host should be glad she didn't have to speak to me after all...LOL Don't get me wrong, I don't regret any of my time abroad, it's all experience and we have some brilliant memories to take back with us! How fortunate for our kids that we were able to bring them abroad. We left Canada with three kids and we are going back with four, we are extremely lucky people. I am not a spiritual person but I do believe that everything happens for a reason and we gain so much from our experiences in life, good and bad. My life is much richer for the last seven years abroad and one thing that has never changed is my pride at being a Canadian!

Right, time to 'carpe diem'! I must admit, I'm so NOT a morning person so this has been bliss to sit around in my jammies, drinking coffee, listening to the radio, checking emails, surfing the 'web as all the kids ended up on an "inset" day from school today. Now must get Cammy out the door for a day out with friends and Mae & I are off to Oxford with my U.S. friend and her daughter. Tim is working, poor guy he is very stressed with his work load right now and dealing with the time change means he works later into the evening. I'm sure for Connor is will be a day of geeking on the PC and Delsin will choose to indulge in some DS time and lots of Cbeebies! :o) Did you know the Teletubbies are 10 today (learned this off the radio show this morning too!)? **shudder** Mae was obsessed with them as a baby/toddler but she she may also have PTSD as a result. Funny story--------> Mae had a Teletubbies calendar above her change table in her room and she loved all the pictures, except for one! What possessed the makers of a product for young children to include this is beyond me! On one page was a "felt drawing" photo of the "scary lion" with the rhyme, "I'm the scary lion, with the big scary teeth, I'm scary on the top, and I'm scary underneath". Geeze! It scared the crap out of Mae and she would burst into tears every time we walked into the room. We finally had to flip the page because she would just scream and cry. We still tease her about it and she gets upset when we start chanting the rhyme. PTSD courtesy of the Teletubbies! True story!

Have a great day all, hope life is grand where you are. Do me a favour and send me a buyer for my house if you have a few spare moments! LOL Love to all.

Laura :o)