A STRANGER IN A FAMILIAR LAND Arlene and I have just returned from a visit to the U.S. over a year and a half after our departure to become Expatriate residents of Italy. Emerging extended family health issues played a role in motivating the timing to make the trip back to America. And of course, we were missing our grandchildren, the rest of the family and many friends. But now, after a year and a half absence, going to America felt somehow different to me. I want to be sure Arlene has the widest latitude to give her own impressions of the American visit experience. So I will simply say at the outset, I am primarily expressing my own personal reflections. I have reached the stage of acclimation to Ascoli Piceno that in leaving for the U.S. I felt I was now leaving ‘home’ to go visit a distant but very familiar place. In setting out on this trip, I think neither one of us was entirely sure how we would react going back to the familiar, the easy and the comfortable. We knew we would be thrilled to see family and friends but would that make the leaving once again all the more difficult? And now having started to become more familiar with Italy, how would our new Expatriate experience in Ascoli look after getting a refreshed look at the homeland we are now ‘from?’ As I expected, arriving back in the U.S. was not the same as when I had previously returned from travel. When I showed my U.S. Passport to Immigration at Tampa, Florida and hearing, “Welcome Home,” I wasn’t feeling as though I was really coming ‘home.’ Yes, I was coming back to the sights and sounds I was accustomed to and where I could now look forward to being physically close to people who are very important in our lives. But in another sense, I wasn’t ‘coming back’ because I actually felt more like a visitor in the country where I was born and used to live. I have talked before about the transition to the Expatriate life where as I am acclimating, I gradually am becoming less and less of an outsider ‘observer’...