A whole year?

It will never be done

We finally got the last box of Chloe's stuff that we mailed from Pamplona before we left for the rest of our trip. It took six weeks by boat and the box looks like the crew mistook it for a beanbag chair. Now the logistical aspects of the exchange year are officially finished. I was asked if I'm relieved and happy to have it all over and officially done. No.

But I don't really understand the question. I was asked much the same question almost 24 years ago after our wedding ceremony as we were preparing to leave for our honeymoon: "Aren't you glad it's over?" The question implies that the process was a huge bother, something to be gotten through rather than enjoyed, as if the preparatory work was not worth the effort to produce the resultant experience. Or that Chloe's year abroad was a temporary glitch in our lives and now that it's over we can all get back to "normal." It's more than just a memory that she'll box up and revisit only for nostalgia's sake. It's not simply a transitory event; it is another experience that contributes to the shape of who she is. It is, for Chloe, normal.

I'm also a little sad because questions like this make me realize that it's as if Chloe was never gone. Everything seems too normal since her return, which seems to diminish the importance of her year away from home. Part of that may be because we were in frequent contact so there have been few surprises on either side. And part of it is probably because she's a nice, well-adjusted person who is doing an excellent job of incorporating the things she learned into her personality. It takes some work to not be an obnoxious returning exchange student and she's making it easier for everyone who stayed home.

But there are little surprises. Chloe needed to return a call but I'd deleted the number from the caller-ID log on one phone. I looked on the other phone but I'd deleted that log too. So I got the the extension out of our bedroom and started to scroll through that log. "We have three phones? Since when? I had no idea we had three phones!" I bought this set of phones after she'd left last September. And lots of our conversations are prefaced with "Do you know about . . ." or "Did I tell you . . ."

What to do with those digital images

When you're away on your exchange and you fill up the media card in your digital camera, be careful how you get rid of the photographs and videos you have stored there. If you upload them directly to a computer they'll probably be fine. But some programs default to converting the photos to a much smaller file size so they'll upload quicker and won't take up as much room. Be especially careful if you upload them directly as an e-mail attachment because they'll almost always be made smaller. Photo files (usually jpeg) are compressed by discarding information in the photo file, which means some of the detail is lost. That's fine for e-mailing a photo home to mom of you standing under the Eiffel Tower, but not so good if you want to blow up the photo so you can crop away the guy on the side trying to sell you a glow-in-the-dark Eiffel Tower so you can have an 8 x 10 printed and framed for next Mother's Day.

Chloe learned the hard way. For the first half of the year she used Abby's computer to burn CDs of all of her photos before she deleted them from the memory card. After Abby went home I'm not sure what Chloe did, just that she has photos saved to a CD that are all but useless because they were saved at such a low resolution. She can't have a print made of her and Nana in the cathedral with Olite in the background because the photo is a bunch of relatively large squares instead of detail-filled tiny pixels. She also has a CD filled with nothing but the shortcuts to photos that she'd uploaded to her family's computer, where we hope the photos still are.

And be especially careful about emptying videos from your card. The first time we transferred photos to a CD at a commercial place was in Pamplona, where we transferred everything on the card to a CD. The employee asked if we wanted to check the photos and we did, when I noticed that none of the videos had transferred. She explained that the software isn't capable of that (that proved to be the case in Rome and Paris as well). If Chloe hadn't spoken Spanish we wouldn't have asked questions and probably would have believed the message on the machine (all of the machines we saw had an English-language option) telling us that the transfer had been successful, after which I would have deleted everything on the card, including the videos of San Fermín that were still there but not on the CD. It can take a lot of time to review a CD full of photos, time that can seem like an eternity when four people are waiting behind you at the Vatican Museums for their turn to empty their cameras. But if you don't take that time you may inadvertently erase some of your memories.

There are many options for emptying your camera's media card including the simple but expensive option of buying lots of them. A Google search will turn up more information than you'll ever be able to read. If you read the directions for whatever method you choose you can avoid being disappointed with the photographic memories of your year abroad.

Yeah yeah, I know

Our time since we got home from Europe has been uneventful. Chloe asked what we were doing this week and mentioned that we haven't done anything fun. Obviously, she's dismissed our too-frequent trips to Costco, watering the pots on the deck, and her sewing new curtains as not fun. This after she went two days in a row to go inner-tubing behind a boat only to have the boat fail both times. This is their reaction after the second time:

Christopher, ever helpful, reminded her that she'd "been in foreign lands for a year so no one is interested in your complaints for, oh, another 365 days." But she knew that already. She's actually done a good job of not complaining about the lack of very much to do around here and has exhibited zero symptoms of Insufferable Returning Exchange-Student Syndrome.

Evil is not the right word

I was involved in a discussion about the correct use of Hispanic/Latino/Spanish as adjectives (there is no consensus, and if someone insists there is, know that he or she is offering an opinion and not a definitive answer) that evolved into a discussion of prejudice and Chloe's stay in Spain. In Spain an adult asked Chloe if there were Jews in her school at home and, when she said "not many," the reply was, "That's good. It's better that way." That is such an ignorant, ridiculous thing to say that there is no point in arguing with the person who said it. The only thing to do is to demonstrate by example that some people find bigotry offensive and that everyone should.

I've written before about the prejudice in Spain against others, especially those with darker skin (Chloe didn't live in the rest of the world so I can't generalize about other countries). Americans tend to be more careful about vocalizing their prejudicial feelings. That doesn't make us any better, just a bit more disingenuous. Please understand that I am making generalizations here and am not implying that all Americans are secret bigots or that all Europeans are overt bigots.

In Spain Chloe bought and still wears a rubber wristband - one black, one white, intertwined and inseparable - that supports anti-racism on professional soccer teams in Europe. Apparently blatant racism is not uncommon and a Spanish coach was fined for comments he made to a French player which, unfortunately for the coach, were picked up by a TV crew and broadcast. Racism in soccer is such a problem in Europe that 1.5 million of the wristbands sold out quickly. Even after accounting for bandwagon-jumping, that's a significant number.

Based on the assertions I made above, the discussion turned to accusations that the entire country is "immoral," "evil," "shameful," and "condemnable." One person asked why there wasn't an "attempt to keep participants [exchange students] out of the clutches of immoral people." But prejudice is so much more complicated than that. None of those people are immoral or evil and to imply that Chloe was within the clutches of anyone is insulting to her and to us, her parents. To blanket any group with the label of evil and immoral after only a brief conversation is prejudicial. If we limited our exposure to people who harbored absolutely no prejudiced or bigoted opinions (not just about race) we wouldn't be able to occupy a room with ourselves. Me, I think evil thoughts about people who use the word comprise incorrectly (like I did until I learned the proper way just a short time ago) or who double-space after terminal punctuation or who indiscriminately toss apostrophes on the page and leave them where they fall regardless of where they belong.

In this discussion (about racism, not my struggle with pedantry) I mentioned that the sponsoring organization comprises lots of different people, including a bunch of older white guys who do wonderful things for their communities and for many poor nations, but many of those members would have a heart attack if their daughters brought home black boyfriends. These are not evil people and most of them would be ashamed to admit that they feel that way. But, their good works throughout the world and their exposure to the exchange students they sponsor help to slowly change their racist opinions.

Eating the food or learning the traditional dances of a culture are tiny parts of the point of cultural exchanges. I can stay home and learn how to make paella but only by living with people in another culture can I appreciate that many of our differences are neither good nor bad, they just are. Except lukewarm beverages and the lack of washcloths: that's just wrong.

Back posts

I've backfilled some of the Europe-trip posts, which you can find if you click Europe trip (under Categories in the right column). I'm up to just before the bulls run on July 7. Still have to finish between then and Rome and fill in Rome, our personal audience with the pope (us and a few thousand other people), Paris, only one rude Parisian, the Eiffel Tower rigged with explosives, the night train (not a big fan and despite what the travel agent tells you, expect a co-ed compartment), Berlin, a train employee in Berlin from Spokane, Flensburg, and our departure from Copenhagen after a stay in the only dumpy, smelly hotel on our whole trip (and the only one, I'm chuffed to bits to say, that I didn't personally book).