No Welcome Back Party For You

So much to say and so little desire to say it.

Except someone just posted in facebook “I love so many of you here in the United States, but really (husband), when can we move away permanently? We can Facetime, Zoom and visit our friends and family. I’m ready. NOT JOKING.”

On FB, the flag below is waving back and forth.

First of all, the Swiss flag is square, you dumb Americans.

I’m kidding. The woman who posted this is not dumb at all, but the comments were predictable.

“I’m looking into New Zealand!”
“Man I wish I had dual citizenship!”
“Croatia!”
“We’re applying for our Malaysian visa!”
“I’m thinking of moving too!”

And on and on.

Lately I have not engaged much in these types of discussions. They stress me out and matter little at the end of the day. The same woman posted about how children should be off limits in a political debate. She was referencing Trump making jabs at Biden about his son last night. My response to that was “I’d like to hear about how they are going to take care of the citizens of this country and the issues that effect us, not what their adult children are doing” and someone replied to me with “even when implies that their children are being Bought to gain access to the VP father?! Ok”

I mean, that sentence literally doesn’t make sense.

To the “who wants to move?” post I commented “I wouldn’t consider myself a huge patriot, and I understand why people would want to jump ship, absolutely, but as someone in a position of privilege, I’ll stay for those who can not leave. I’ll stay to try and use my position, however weak or strong it may be, to help others in my country survive in any small way I can. It’s sort of the ultimate privilege move, I think, to leave. If ex-pats return after those who stayed behind (by choice or not) worked to keep it all together, I’m not sure I’d throw a welcome party. The pendulum will swing back.”

And now I shall step away from Facebook.

In better news, here’s the best practices paper my UPAA colleagues and I worked on for months. I’m pretty proud of it! You can click on the photo to read the paper online.