Dr. America

We recently heard about a couple of our friends who have job opportunities in far flung places overseas. Both of these friends are in the business field and are at various levels of excitement about the possibility of living for awhile outside the red, white and blue borders (chopsticks? will I have to use chopsticks??! how have they not discovered the fork yet?).

I had the opportunity to live in Russia in high school and I absolutely loved it. It changed my outlook on life, my view of the world and so many other things that I consider it to be one of the most formative times of my life. So I was bemoaning to Tyler that our kids wouldn't have the opportunity to ever live overseas since plastic reconstructive surgery is not a big global/export-type job.

 I know, I know. My husband is a plastic surgeon! My kids won't get to live on a Mediterranean beach! WAAH WAAH! Don't worry, I hear myself. But I also want to raise kids who are aware of the world around them, and more importantly, the people around them. I want them to understand that not everyone lives like we do - and that's okay. I want them to understand how incredibly blessed we are and also to appreciate the richness of intricacies of other cultures. I feel that the best way to do that is to be there and see it. 

Tyler plans on making quite a few humanitarian trips for medical missions all over the world, and once the kids are old enough I want them to come along and help in any way they can. But living there is completely different than a one week speed course. Would I have had the chance to visit tiny villages in Siberia, track voles at a spartan Russian bio-reserve which also had it's own dance club (naturally), experience the horrors of gridlock Moscow traffic when cars have decided to screw it and just drive on the train tracks, have market vendors trying to sell me abnormally large and misshapen produce that I later find out was harvested near Chernobyl, have my neighbor's kids tell me that their father - the one with the mercedes and driver constantly waiting for him to speed away at a moment's notice - was just a house painter, be almost kidnapped by a boozy-smelling construction worker who offered me 3 rubles to buy a metro pass because I didn't have any money and was stranded at the metro station and everyone else who looked well off had ignored me when I tried to ask for help and I was crying and he said that I needed to come home with him to calm down and he would take care of me and what's my phone number and where do you live and how can you not know how to say your phone number in Russian when you've been speaking with me for the last 5 minutes and once I distracted him I ran behind a wall and hid until he got on his train. And I only got to live there a year - how much more I wanted to do and experience! Would I have had any of those experiences in a week? Probably not. 

So...on second thought about having my kids live overseas...

Anyway. The good news is that I just found out about some great overseas opportunities for plastic surgeons! In North Korea and Hungary! 

North Korea sounds particularly enticing with Kim Jong Mentally-Il as the leader (Look! I just got on their watch list. There! Now I have two strikes! Now we won't be able to get in the country. Or, more likely, out). Hungary may be exciting too - I mean, beauty pageants FOR plastic surgery!?? What more could a plastic surgeon who  spends most of his time putting people back together after cancer, accidents or other traumas (the majority of real plastic surgery cases) want? And how proud of their dad would the kids be? (see that contestant up there wobbling in her heels because her boobs are bigger then what should be humanly possible? Yeah. That's my dad's handy work. No, I won't donate to your charity for starving children. Can't you see I'm watching something important??). 

For now I guess we'll just stay put here in America. I suppose it offers everything we're looking for in terms of job security, freedom and food. I guess there's always L.A., which, I suppose for us Ohioans, is as good as foreign.