Dear friend,

I remember reading once that we, as human beings, have two consistent social difficulties, saying ‘hello’ and saying ‘goodbye’. Not in the general sense, but rather in getting to know someone and also in finding closure. This is easy enough to see with children getting to know one another. In the course of 3 hours two kids can meet, act shy and uninterested in each other, begin a conversation, start playing together and then on saying goodbye, feel like they are being torn from their best friend, before they even know each other’s last name. ‘Hello’s’ and ‘Goodbye’s’ can be difficult, and they can also provide us with new opportunities.
I’m writing this on a plane heading to Japan. My family will spend tonight in Narita (actually tomorrow night as we are not over the international date line yet), and then Sunday we are off to Dalian China where we plan to live for the next three years.  We made the decision to move in late April and so there has been a whirlwind of activity to get us here, and (finally) on our way. As a result we had to go through many ‘goodbye’s’ in the past week.

But ‘goodbye’ has a really different meaning in this day and age.

60 years ago ‘heading to China’, (more specifically for back then, Hong Kong), would have probably meant a boat trip and reconnecting with friends would have meant slow correspondence through posting letters that would take weeks to arrive back in North America.

Just over 30 years ago, when I was 10, my grandparents went with an Aunt and Uncle on a tour of Europe and Asia. Back then, a long distance phone call was quite expensive. So, Uncle Mike worked out a system to report back to us that ‘all was well’ for free. He would say he was my grandfather Leon, and call home collect asking for himself. When we got the call, we would reply, “I’m sorry, but he isn’t here” and the operator would hang up. Before hanging up, the operator would say, “I have a collect call from a Mr. Leon Burnstein for a Mr. Mike Woo from Tokyo Japan.” Thus we would be informed of their location and know that ‘all is well’.  A few times on the trip they requested to speak with us and we accepted the call, but numerous times we used this little strategy to get free trip progress reports. [Sneaky, and effective… I have a whole other post in my head about how students today can also be sneaky and effective and we should be rewarding them for this].

From avoiding costly collect calls 30 years ago, we move to the free flow of information today. Elaan Bauder is now coming home from a trip she took to Europe and the Middle East. My wife and I had almost daily email reports whereby she gave us a wonderful description of her journey. This included a voice memo from Egypt, (or some would say podcast). We shared in much of her adventure.

So essentially we are not saying ‘goodbye’ like we would have had to on a similar trip years ago. With Google Chat, iChat, Skype, Twitter and even Facebook (when they aren’t blocked), we are connected in ways we never used to be. As Bryan Jackson said in a post about my POD’s presentation, I’m “moving halfway around the world (while essentially residing in the same place).” To many people I’m a blogger here on Pairadimes, or datruss on networks like Twitter and Diigo… Places I will continue to ‘reside in’ regardless of my geographical location. A quote by Marcie T. Hull has stuck with me for a while now, “Access to the Internet has changed our very concept of geography; it becomes almost an idea like time. It has a construct but all the miles melt away when you are on the web communicating synchronously and asynchronously.”

And yet we did have some very difficult face-to-face ‘goodbye’s’ to go through this past week. But as hard as these ‘goodbye’s’ were, they were also very therapeutic for me. You see this trip has taught me a valuable lesson… I don’t make enough times for my friends and family. Why? Because I let ‘life’ get in the way.

As I head on a new adventure, I’m ready to share that adventure in a new way. I’m not going to leave my friends and family behind, and in fact I’m going to make a concerted effort to reconnect in ways that I didn’t make the effort to do when my friends were in my geographical ‘neighbourhood’!

I’ve already started. I seized an opportunity to meet with Alec Couros and Jen D. Jones since they were in town for OpenEd09. I couldn’t join them in the conference, but as I scrambled to leave, my good friend Heidi Gable helped to coordinate the dinner meeting. In meeting them, I had the opportunity to also meet a number of great educators as well. Previously digital friends that I have now met face-to-face… connections new and yet old to foster further!

I got an email from my sister, Sharon, who lives in Toronto, today while we were in the airport. Our correspondence went like this:

From Sharon
Hi All,
You are probably in flight right now… I just wanted to wish you all the very best on the “Truss Big Chinese Adventure”.
Love to the kids… hope it is a smooth adjustment for them.
Keep in touch… send lots of pix.
Luv Shar.

From Me
5 min. from boarding to Japan. Love to all,
funny but we will probably make more of an effort to stay in touch now, so in a way we are moving closer! ;-P

From Sharon
Love u… always glass half full!!

I have two important personal goals to work on in making this move. I need to work on my ‘hello’s’ as there are many wonderful people I’m going to meet in China- new friendships to discover and nurture.  And also, there are some great friends I must reconnect with and stay connected with as I move forward. My glass is getting ‘fuller’ by the minute, and I feel fortunate for the possibilities that good friendships bring! Perhaps I am simply avoiding the hardships of saying goodbye, but in this day and age, I don’t think geographical distance is a reason to say goodbye.

If you are reading this, dear friend, keep in touch.
Dave.