I am on fall break now, which is weird since I'm used to it being in November. My classes don't start again until the 17th of October, so in the meantime the Korners want to show me more of Switzerland. I've been around the Luzern area since we got here and I am really excited to explore around. More about our adventures next post.
My dad's sister, Mary, and her husband, Jimmy, were here last week. I've never spent anytime with just them, but I am so glad they came. To be honest, the Lehner family has always kind of scared me. They can be loud, obnoxious and derogatory. I have been a more one-on-one person than a crowd person my whole life, so 25 Lehners was always too much for me. I spent an afternoon and two evenings with Mary and Jimmy and we just talked. It's amazing how you can know someone your entire life and in just a few hours you can get to know them a hundred times better.
I grew up in a hippie-ish family and community. And considering Madison, a hippie city too. "Democracy Now," "The Ed Shultz's Show," "Stephanie Miller," etc, etc, made up much of the background noise to my childhood. I didn't know much about politics during the Kerry-Bush election, but I remember being bummed when Kerry lost. And happy when Obama won the next one, I was a little more informed, but still based everything on what I heard and, of course, what my parents believed. Well I've got older and smarter, I can come to my own conclusions about that kind of thing, although the imprints of my progressive upbringing will always reside in me. When I was younger I resisted the usual absence of potato chips, ice cream and cookies in our house. In first grade I came home with an untouched lunch, because I was too embarrassed to eat my tuna salad, fruit leathers and CLIF bars in front of the other students, who lunched on fruit roll-ups, those SMUCKERS PB&J sandwiches without crust in the individual plastic packages and Slim Jim's. I wanted normal parents, who fed me normal food like everyone else. Over the past months I have educated myself about food, and it being my body's energy source I've realized it's important to give my body what it needs in a healthy and measured way. In this time, I have come to not only agree with what my parents preach, but to cherish their knowledge of food, land and the world around me, and through that a new respect for them has grow inside me. I once was embarrassed to have a mom with graying hair, a car with 15+ bumper stickers, saying "Support Family Farms" and "Alternative Energy is Sexy" and a dad who wore only underwear for 90% of the time. But no longer. I am proud that my mom doesn't dye her hair, she is not ashamed of her age, something our society has made into a burden instead of a opportunity. And hell, my dad could wear nothing, which he does often, and still look amazing. He is a perfect example of how the number of years you've been alive is just a number, and not a disability. In fact, I think he looks better with every passing year. I feel like a completely different person than I was even six months ago. Of course on the outside it's still pretty similar, I'm still annoyingly clumsy, something I got from my dad and unfortunately will probably have forever. I still have the same bally nose and purple, ice cold limbs. But something slightly shifted on the inside and it changed my entire outlook on pretty much, well, everything. Especially myself, I have respect for myself which it didn't exist before. I always considered to be very Swiss, I could just feel it, so I've had respect for my Swiss heritage forever. But in the last two months here, in Switzerland, I have learned something else as well...
People say that because the United States is such a melting pot, that we have no real culture. Many Americans may be obese, racist and ignorant, but there are just as many who are not, probably more, and I think many of those Americans forget how lucky they are to be American. Until a month ago, I was one of the people who said that I hate the US, that I am not going to live there when I get older, because I am going to do anything to get the hell out, and well I succeeded with that, at least for the meantime. But I realized no matter what I do, I am American. I thought it was funny when I asked some people in my class in the first week of school if they could travel anywhere, where would they go, and they said United States. Now I see their fascination with it. It took me moving halfway across the world to realize it, but I no longer have a problem with being American, because despite of how f'ed up the government is, I am proud of who I am. And I am American.
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