Even though it’s the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall I won’t be addressing the relevant and memorable occasion in this post as fellow blogger Hyde already has. Instead I will be addressing the other side of the Wall. Far west of East Berlin in fact. I’m talking about the west of capitalism now.
It had been eighteen months since my last trip to the US, the longest stretch that I had ever stayed away from home since leaving the United States in 2000. The last time was March 2008 when my older daughter Vera was 15 months old and I was newly pregnant with my second daughter Stella. My pregnancy and the anticipation of relocating to another country prevented us from planning a trip any sooner, but I was determined to celebrate Stella’s first birthday, a big milestone in Korean culture, in the US with my family this October. This expat entry is about culture shock in reverse. It’s about all the things I miss and have forgotten about life in America.
Consumer Gluttony. My husband and I have spent the first week of our trip on a shopping spree thanks to the strong euro, the lack of sales tax on clothes and shoes in Pennsylvania and our compulsion to make up for lost time. After about four straight days of getting into my mother’s SUV and spending lots of dollars at the various outlet malls in central Pennsylvania READ MORE »
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