Distantly close

I think I miss my family more in America than in China. For one thing, China is a whole different country on the other side of the world, so it makes sense for it to be far away. While California is quite different from Georgia in many ways, it is not oh-so-foreign. (Although I must say, many people are a little afraid of the South. They think they'll stumble across a lynching or something.) They even have a few Chick-fil-a's out here. So now that I share the same country as my family and we are even on roughly the same day/night schedule, it seems like they should be closer.

Another thing is, I am around a lot of people with family. In China, most people don't have family nearby. English teacher friends have family on the other side of the world. Even students are separated from their family for the first time and feeling it much more than me. But here it seems like lots of people have all kinds of family around. All those born and bred Californians. A number of the people I work with are even born-and-bred Pasadenans. I wonder what that would be like - to live all your life in one place? It sounds confining.

Some people even live in the same place as their friends, which I think is a pretty cool idea. Difficult to accomplish, though, since it seems like people move all the time. My friends can't even settle on the state or country to stay in (I'm one to talk, huh?).
Even if I stayed in one place though, it wouldn't really help. Usually my family is spread out across three or four states and/or various countries in the world. I rarely have more than one or two friends living in the same state. They are also spread across a dozen states and/or various countries, plus the whole of China.

I admit that I have seen more of family and friends this year. Getting married is apparently a good way to accomplish that. I have seen all of my close friends once or twice this year. I have seen all of my family twice this year. So this is definitely a step up from the normal summer-back-from-China. The extra 10 months have helped.

So, thank goodness for cell phones and email and skype and blogs and facebook and increasingly expensive air travel. Face-to-face is apparently out of date.