raising kids overseas

This is a picture of the worker shacks at the back of our house.
Jasper & Poppy will not grow up like their American counterparts. I worry sometimes they will resent the fact that they didn't grow up in the middle-class culture they are from. Instead, they have grown up being a foreigner, often among the poor and exposed to things most people only see on "National Geographic." Perhaps they will resent the fact they didn't enjoy the affluence we could have given them; the same-language/culture friends they could have been surrounded by, the comfortable, spotlessly clean and beautiful American home they could have grown up in. The piles of presents at big birthday parties, or the beauty and glitter of America at Christmas time. (The glitter of America at any time, really.) Instead their friends have been from poor Asian farming communities; so different it would take another article to describe them. Our home was a rough Thai country home, full of bugs and lizards, the furniture simple, the floor plain cement. No libraries, no playgrounds, no nice school, no organized sports, no English t.v. channels, not much of anything that resembled what most American children experience growing up. Sometimes I wonder if they will resent it, but I don't feel sorry for them. What they are gaining is immeasurable in comparison. They are growing up able to move about the world as internationals, comfortable in both the West and East. The eastern mind is far removed from the western mind, and westerners inadvertently offend simply by being themselves! It is a difficult tightrope to traverse. Just yesterday a Thai pastor told Kennedy, "You know how it is, the Thai are so easy to offend. It just takes a tiny bit!" Poppy and Jasper are learning to be aware of all the small things that count up to so much in this culture while they are still children, later it will come to them naturally. So they will move back and forth from the West to the East with ease. They have also learned to respect and love both those of affluence and those in poverty, and it will not merely be a lofty idea that "all are equal under God." They will feel comfortable around the very poor, even of other cultures. Not just a temporary nervous tolerance, done out of principle, but done naturally from life experience. They are also learning another language, very different than their own, from the earliest years of their life. These are good things they will gain from growing up here. I don't think they will lose much from not having American t.v. but I do wish we had access to a library. Sometimes I sure wish they had a nice school. As far as parks and playgrounds, where we live now has them.
In the long run, I don't think I will wish to change much in their childhood experience. I hope, when they grow up, that they will feel the same.