more questions than answers about the Internet and settling in...

We finally moved out of the hotel and into a house!  It’s an enormous relief to have more space and be able to step out the front door into the outdoors, no matter how hot it is.  I haven’t had to get into a car in three days because we can walk from home to a park and a supermarket.  It turned out that we got here just before a major holiday, so many of the people we’ve met so far have left the country for the week or are busy with long-planned activities.  I didn’t plan anything because I was too busy packing and unpacking yet again and arranging to shift carloads full of the debris of five people and two months from a hotel to a house without an address. We were thrilled to discover that like in the last couple of places we’ve lived, the kids in this compound all play out in the street. Unfortunately for me, the mothers don’t spend any time outside, though they’ve been friendly in the moments that our paths have very occasionally crossed.  Most of the men haven’t even said hello to me, though they have chatted with my husband.  I’m craving connection with real people in the same room as me. I think right now I most need to talk to another woman enough like myself that we can make each other laugh. I’m not patient enough to wait for this, so I gravitate to the Internet where I can find news and amusing stories and friends, even though those friends are all out of reach.  

I love the connection and worry that it’s not real enough. It is and it isn’t.  There are moments when I have almost been able to feel the hands of far-away friends on my back, urging me along, ready to steady me if I stumble or crumple.  Then again, how long can I go without having a real conversation with a real (not online) person outside my family before I crack? Facebook has been invaluable for reconnecting with people, and being able to offer some version of support even if we’re not close enough to take someone’s kids for the afternoon or make them dinner. It’s good and easy to be able to click “like” or even write a few words and support them wherever they are, but are we all even more “out of sight (site) out of mind” than we were pre-FB? Are we lost when we don’t post? I'm glad to know I have friends around the world but it can be hard to connect with them for more than the few seconds it takes to interact via FB.  Too expensive to call, to complicated anyway to try to find a time that works for both of us when kids won’t pop up in the back of our Skype-screen, needing us or fighting, piercingly, with each other. 

How does Facebook/e-mail/blogging help or hinder settling in? Does it prevent me from connecting and reflecting on my latest move?  Or is the act of writing and regular feedback helping me to process the experience and create a narrative for myself?  Living in France my junior year in high school, there was no internet and I only made very occasional phone calls back to the US.  I relied upon letters from friends for connection to my previous life.  It was a hard year- how might it have been different if I’d had Internet access and FB had existed? I wrote long letters and longer journal entries as I made sense of my adjustment to living in a small village in the center of France with a very different family from my own. Would internet and the real-time world of e-mail and Facebook have shut me off from new experiences or helped me cope and connect to more people in similar situations? 

I'm asking more than I'm answering but this break will be over soon and group activities for kids will recommence, which will bring opportunities for parents to gather together.  I can hold on.