Prof. Judith McMorrow (Law), along with her husband Rick Reilly and children Elizabeth (left) and Anna, celebrated the lunar New Year — Jan. 26 — in China, where McMorrow is working during the 2008-09 academic year.
Home Away from Home
Taking her family along to China for her Fulbright project seemed a good idea to Judith McMorrow — and she hasn't changed her mind
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When you pack up and move 7,000 miles from home to a place where English is rarely spoken, there are bound to be some adjustments, as Prof. Judith McMorrow (Law) and her family have found.What was the "quick trip to the store" in the family car now usually involves traveling by subway, bus or foot, and often takes half a day — assuming they don't misread signs or directions. At Halloween, there were no trick-or-treaters to greet at the door. The Internet, or an hour-long trip to an international Goose and Duck sports bar, was the only way to follow the Red Sox last fall, instead of via the familiar tones of radio announcers Joe Castiglione and Dave O'Brien.
As for Election Night 2008, well, there was no election night: She watched the returns on CNN at a hotel reception — over lunch.
Still, halfway through her Fulbright-funded sojourn at Renmin University in Beijing, McMorrow is doing just fine — and so are her husband Rick Reilly and their daughters, Elizabeth (11) and Anna (nine), who came along for the duration. The four have settled into a life that, while hardly identical to the one they knew in Newton, nonetheless has a recognizable home-and-school rhythm and includes travel to, among other places, Hong Kong and the Great Wall.
To be sure, a Fulbright project is not a family vacation: McMorrow has teaching and research to keep her busy and objectives to achieve during her tenure in Beijing. And while McMorrow, Reilly and the girls have formed new acquaintances, leaving behind family and friends as well as the creature comforts and reassuring routines of home is by no means easy.
But McMorrow is abundantly grateful for this rare opportunity, from a personal as well as a familial standpoint. Spending so much time together has strengthened the family bonds, she says, and given them new insights into each other, individually and collectively. It's an experience that simply cannot be measured in grant dollars.
"It truly feels like home here," says McMorrow, in a recent e-mail. "We're together, we are learning new things everyday, and we are traveling as a family a great deal. I often feel like this is more like home than I expected, and Rick often feels like it is vastly different from home. Either way, we often talk about our shared experiences to help us all better understand this experience.
"Just like home, you have to manage the balance among several vocations: your professional life, being a spouse and being a parent. We also have the added role of serving as an ambassador for the United States, since we stand out in daily life. At times we all wonder if we're doing our best job in any one of those roles. More often than not we are better off, much better off, being together."
Going on a Fulbright to China was a highly attractive proposition for McMorrow, who is interested in the practice of law at the intersection of legal cultures — especially an emerging one such as that in China.
From the time she first applied for the grant in the fall of 2007, she and her husband envisioned a family journey: The children were at the right ages where they could benefit from a long-term international experience, she says, and Reilly — a retired labor-management arbitrator who in 2003 earned a master's degree at the Woods College of Advancing Studies — with his "inherent sense of adventure" is a perfect model of life-long learning for Anna and Elizabeth.
Yet McMorrow says her first instinct was to opt for a one-semester grant ("I am the worrier and was concerned about insurance, pension and all those practical details."). She credits Boston College for its support of her project, and in particular BC Law Dean John Garvey and Vice Provost Patricia DeLeeuw, who saw her work — with its potential to cultivate ties with Chinese law faculty — as benefiting the University.
Once she was awarded the Fulbright, McMorrow and her family had to make arrangements both for their life in China — particularly enrolling their daughters in an international school — and the one they were leaving behind. Renting their house was relatively easy, says McMorrow; cleaning it was another story. But after filling up numerous boxes and stuffing them in the attic, selling one of their cars and shipping the other to their oldest daughter in Denver, and enlisting assistance in dealing with financial and household matters during their absence, the family set out last August on the 20-hour trip to Beijing.
McMorrow cites "food and illiteracy" as the biggest challenges the family has faced thus far. The children in particular have found that Chinese Chinese food is different than what they're used to, she explains, and so the family often sticks to Western meals if they're dining together. "Rick and I often have lunch together — another benefit of this experience — and experiment with local restaurants."
Language, unsurprisingly, has been the most difficult adjustment, and yet McMorrow notes that for all the frustration and inconvenience of lacking fluency in Chinese, there are positives as well. Because the girls receive more language training and are in a highly diverse school as well, they have taken a leadership role in interpreting conversations and "negotiating life here," says McMorrow — all of which has boosted their confidence and skills.
This has "reshuffled the family deck," McMorrow notes, with Anna – the youngest – the strongest Chinese speaker in the family, and Rick the weakest.
McMorrow and Reilly, meanwhile, try to be philosophical about their language struggles: "Sometimes a simple miscommunication – which happens daily – is the source of fascinating conversation as we figure where in the chain of understanding the gap occurred. We are developing lasting lessons on the language of culture."
For bouts of homesickness, there is Skype — a program that enables the user to make calls via computer — and e-mail, as well as the family's blog [reillysinchina.blogspot.com] and occasional visitors, to help them share news, anecdotes and events.
"At first everything was new and exciting, so you didn't focus as much on missing the folks back home," she says. "But slowly you realize how much you miss that morning walk, and the thoughtful conversations with friends at work, and seeing our older daughter and son-in-law."
McMorrow, for her part, is finding satisfaction in her work. In addition to teaching classes at Renmin and lecturing at other colleges, she gets together with students to talk about legal research or law careers, or simply to learn more about their "lives, hopes and dreams."
"China has expanded legal education tremendously. Young graduates are pouring out of law programs throughout the country. But the legal system is not sufficiently developed to absorb these graduates. What they will do, and how they will change China — if given the opportunity — could be the research project for a hundred scholars in the years to come.
"But that," she adds, "is another story for another time."