Tuesday, if all goes well, we will sign off on the sale of our home here in central Tucson. It’s hard to put down into words how I feel about this, but let’s just say that I am very much looking forward to Tuesday.
I’ve chronicled in this blog some of the reverse culture shock that I felt when I moved back to the US from Japan — my inability to look at people in the eye during a job interview (considered rude in Japan); my struggle to “re-learn” English; my frustration at certain cultural challenges (diet, cars) that makes it hard to lead a healthy lifestyle. But, there was and is a part of me that wants to buy into being a citizen of my own country and acting like everyone else. So, after Ben was born, we bought a new car and then a house — otherwise known as fulfilling the American “dream.”
The American Nightmare
It entertains me to see the number of articles about how “homeownership isn’t all that great” now that the housing market has crashed, but just five years ago someone writing an article about that would have been lost in the shuffle to buy, buy, buy. The idea that homeownership somehow changed standard of living rippled through government at all levels, and we saw janitors and hamburger flippers signing on the dotted line to buy a place of their very own. We bought a few years before the general frenzy, in 2002, but were greatly encouraged by our friends and family to “buy as much house as we could afford.” more »
