Our global village

This post is a little bit of a rerun.  As I sat down to type, I felt like I had blogged on this before.  And I had.  (Previous post here.)  At risk of being redudant, I'm going to write anyway.

Both kids have just celebrated their birthdays with sleepover parties, and my mind is kind of boggled by the diversity they've been exposed to during our time here.  John invited his four best friends:  two Americans, a Dutch boy, and a South African who's also an Irish citizen.  Emily's party guests included a British-American dual national and girls from the following countries:  the United States, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and Denmark.  Emily's Girl Scout troop counts as its members three Americans, an Australian, a girl whose father is French and mother is Canadian (which I guess in a way makes her French-Canadian, but not the Quebecois kind), and one whose mother is Bolivian and father is Belgian.

I'm not sure what the long-term impact my kids' years at an international school will be, but I hope it has helped them to be tolerant and open to getting to know people from different backgrounds.  At the end of the day, what's important isn't our differences, but what we have in common.  For the boys, what they had in common was thinking fart noises made by balloons were raucously funny.  For the girls, it was talking about books they've read, movies they've seen, and boy bands.  From the beginning of our time here, it was clear that where someone is from wasn't of consequence to the kids.  When I ask them where someone they've met is from, they often don't know.  It simply doesn't matter to them.