is there a reason why people think socializing with our neighbors are important
Like Christine, we live in a village in a foreign country that isn't English-speaking - Mexico in our case. Despite the language barrier, we have a friendly relationship with our Mexican neighbors, and that's very important to us, since we want to be known as good neighbors and be welcome in the neighborhood and the country.
We also hope that they watch our home when we're gone.
In this culture, they throw street parties. Recently, there was one right outside our front gate, and we were invited to join them and eat, drink, and dance. Children are included, and stay up quite late. It's good for them to see us like that, and we learn more about them as well.
But back in the States, we rarely knew our neighbors, and rarely even saw them. Also, we rarely traveled on foot, which is more characteristic of this village life, and causes us to run into several people that we know whenever we go out. Strangers greet strangers in passing, and we frequently join friends at restaurant we both chose. Just this morning, we took the dogs out for some exercise, and ran into our friend Judy, who we spoke with. She heard that we were looking for a new remote for our digital video recorder (word of mouth is more effective in this environment than the one we left), and offered us her spare.
One more observation, a little off-topic. Upon moving here, I was reminded of my childhood, when we did everything on foot or on bicycle. This gave us a detailed knowledge of the neighborhood. I knew the name of every street I crossed, knew where every shop was, knew the places where there were hols or inclines in the streets, etc.. Then came adult life, and all that changed. I drove everywhere, and wasn't looking at most of the street names or most the shops I was passing, and was unaware of where the street wasn't level since I wasn't walking up or down those grades.
But here, we have that kind of familiarity with our neighborhood again because we have that life back.