Backstory Part 4: Back to America

Living in a foreign country that doesn't speak English as its primary language as some serious draw backs when you have young children; especially if you have only ONE child.

Baby Girl was three years old and still wasn't speaking. She would just make grunts and sounds when she wanted something. By the time she started Pre-K she only had 100 words in her vocabulary. We paid for speech therapy, but it only helped a bit. She was in need of intensive speech therapy that we couldn't get in Korea. We were lucky to get the two days a week the speech therapist was available. She was the ONLY speech therapist in Seoul.

Even though Baby Girl was at one of the top international schools in Seoul, her teacher was a complete moron (even though she was an American certified teacher). I'm convinced til this day that she was just a shit educator. Lazy in her work and sporadic in her teaching patterns. She was not hands on with the children, and the fault was never with her.

On top of the fact that Baby Girl didn't have a decent teacher, she was always surrounded by the Korean language. We knew that she wasn't going to learn English until she was immersed in it every day. We made the difficult decision for Baby Girl and me to move back to Houston. Greg would stay behind in Korea and finish his contract.

Up until this point, Baby Girl hadn't been to America. We left the states when she was three months old. The only exposure she had to American culture was me, some Americans we occasionally spent time with and the American food we purchased. She didn't even realize that the people I talked to on my "computer screen" were my actual parents. She was only familiar with Greg's parents and knew them well. It was cemented in her mind that they were real people. America was an alien concept to Baby Girl. The only home and culture she knew, was Korea.

The day came to say our goodbyes. Rorie wasn't exactly sure what it meant to leave. She saw me crying and hugging her father goodbye. She turned to me and said, "Don't worry Mummy, we will see daddy tomorrow." She didn't understand that we were leaving and it would be months before we would see her father again.

We boarded the plane and started our 20-hour journey to America. We landed in Los Angeles first and then took a short flight to Houston, TX. It was evening time when we landed. My father was at the airport to pick us up. My father saw Rorie and went to hug her, but she ran behind me in fear. She had no clue who this man was and why he wanted to hug her. My dad's feelings were extremely hurt. However, Rorie didn't know him and didn't like strangers getting to touchy feelly. We left the passage pick up area and walked into the garage with all our baggage. He packed our bags into the car and took us to our new home.

The first week was very interesting for Rorie. She had never seen me drive until we reached America. And she never experienced read American food or people. I always think back to the time I took her to Luby's. When we walked inside, she immediately covered her nose! The smells were offensive to her. I ordered her chicken strips, mac and cheese and green beans. She didn't touch a bite of it. She wanted Korean food. For awhile, I did cook Korean meals for her, but after some time I didn't know to cook Korean food anymore. She is still fond of kimchi, seaweed and rice, but loves American food as well.

Over the months I was able to get her used to American food. She also had intensive speech therapy, and she made new American friends. We were finally settling into American culture when I got the call the beginning of 2015. My husband was moving us to Russia.