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6. Almost Home
- University of Wisconsin Press
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124 6 Al most Home An ar bi trary set of boun dar ies de ter mines your rights and con trib utes enor mously to your suc cess or fail ure. To be born in Bar Har bor, Maine . . . leads to a vastly dif fer ent life than to be born in Bur kina Faso. John Yemma, Chris tian Sci ence Mon i tor, July 5, 2010 Born near a small town in east ern Ore gon (pop u la tion 900), a high, dry place of deep can yons, Mark’s child hood was filled by county fairs, ro deos, 4-H clubs, and FFA meet ings.1 Sit u ated in one of the least pop u lated areas of the United States, Mark’s school was the only one for miles on end. Twenty-seven sen iors grad u ated with him that year. Most of them re mained in the area, doing farm work, run ning small shops, op er at ing the co-op. They liked the life style, the pace of liv ing. Their plan after high school was sim ple—to get mar ried, have kids, and set tle down where they came into the world. Decades later, most of them are still there, quite con tent in re peat ing their parents’ sea sons, if only at a more high-tech rate. Not Mark. For some rea son, he grew up dream ing of other worlds. Small-town life was not in the cards for him. Mark loved music, es pe cially church sing ing, but had no idea of what to do with the rest of his life. One of the few in his grad u at ing class to go on to col lege, after high school Mark at tended Oregon’s land-grant uni ver sity, a nat u ral choice, since it is known for its ag ri cul tu ral pro grams. The school choir caught his at ten tion dur ing fresh man year. After dis cov er ing that the uni ver sity had an ex change pro gram with a Ger man school, he de cided to study abroad . . . and never came back. Ger man uni ver sity life was in ebri at ing, Almost Home 125 the stu dents so cos mo pol i tan, and Ger man cit ies were sim ply too much of a feast for his ar tis tic taste. So the kid from the American North west found his home in Ger many. The food, the music, the the a ter, the mu seums all made sense to him, all seemed fa mil iar. De spite being so re moved from every thing he’d known, Mark was home at last. There he found his beruf, his call ing. After stud y ing voice, he has spent a life time sing ing opera in one of Germany’s most im por tant com pa nies. In Ger many, he also fi nally found love. He has set up a won der ful life with his part ner, who is an actor, in a taste fully ap pointed flat in one of the nation’s most cul tured urban cen ters. This year he started his Ger man nat u ral iza tion pro cess. Mark’s life is as re moved from that of his high school friends as it could pos sibly be. But it is home to him. Su zanne hails from a small town in Mich i gan (pop u la tion 11,000). She too dreamed of liv ing abroad while she was in col lege. Her plans were a bit dif fer ent from Mark’s—she wanted to visit and live in sev eral coun tries. The first one she chose was Japan. She en rolled in the JET Pro gram, an in itia tive of the Jap a nese govern ment that places American col lege grad u ates in as sist ant teach ing po si tions in local Jap a nese pub lic schools. Japan was sup posed to be Suzanne’s spring board, but once there life took a dif fer ent turn. On her sec ond year in the coun try, she met the man she would marry. Twenty years later, Su zanne is hap pily set tled in Ai zumi, with a Jap a nese hus band, her nine-year-old twins, and a dot...