From Mr. Wise

(or rather...Wise Mr... at student of .he has traveled extensively with his family in the past and wrote Dan this email over the weekend. What a timely missive for me to read...

Welcome Back!  I hope your trip went well.  By the way, I hope you and your wife prepare your children for "reverse culture shock". Having been out of the country for a few months they're very likely to go through the up and down cycle of elation with returning to what's familiar followed by disappointment that they've left an exciting situation in Spain followed by over-critical reaction to their old surroundings/friends and so on.  Kathy and I didn't recognize it until we read about culture shock, and once we knew what to look for we could almost set our watches to it as we observed our kids.  Good news is that it passes pretty quickly, bad news is that it's pretty common to go from euphoria to near depression and not understand why.  For what it's worth...