Our Thanksgiving here was wonderful. Friends invited us and five other people for a Texas Thanksgiving Feast. We guests brought tasty tidbits and desserts but they did the turkeys, dressing, green beans.....the whole thing. They even found a can of jellied cranberry sauce for Ned. Dinner tasted like Thanksgiving is suppose to taste.....or the way it always tastes in our family. I enjoyed every bite and I felt so close to the friends that were there. It was like being with family, except for missing the grandsons.
It reminded me of one of La Gringa in San Miguel's blog entries. She was writing about an interview that she did but near the end of the entry she wrote:
One thing I would have liked to discuss is how easy it is to develop friends and social networks among expats. True, it would be difficult to leave one's family and friends in the U.S., but as I've mentioned here before, many expats in SMA see their friends as pseudo-family. I cannot tell you how many times older expats have talked about the care and support they receive from others in the community. So in a way, the network can mitigate the difficulty of being away from one's extended family.
Actually we haven't felt much difficulty in being away from our family because we travel back and forth and talk on the phone and have emails. I don't think it is anymore difficult than living in different locations in the USA. Without the convenience of all the ways we have to communicate these days, it would be more difficult. But still I do agree with La Gringa that we have friends who have become like family in a fairly short period of time. Much shorter than it would take if we moved to a new location in the USA.
Why is this? I think that you already have something in common with many people who move to Mexico because living outside the USA certainly isn't everyone's cup of tea. And I guess that we are looking for a sense of community AND because most of us are not raising children and working full time, we have the time to build deep friendships.
I'm so looking forward to seeing our Texas family soon. We have a new niece. Jack may be as tall as me when I see him. Dexter will make me laugh. Time for conversations with the sons and their families. But in the meantime, I feel loved by and connected with my San Miguel family.
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2 comments:
Boy are you right on the money about the ease of making friends here. We all come to San Miguel because we have in common a love of the culture and the place. Then we find we're all in the same boat: looking for new friends, so we're open to new relationships. One of the principal reasons Jean and I moved here was that the people we met on our visits were so welcoming and supportive.
That sense of community among expats is especially satisfying among us boat people, who keep in touch by VHF radio, ham radio, email and, of course, now follow each other's blogs. I have more friends here in San Carlos, Sonora, than I ever did in the States.
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