I've written before about feeling like I have many different homes. The place I was born, the place I grew up, the places I went to university, the places I've lived with my husband. Even though we'll be here for almost another year (but probably be gone before 2015), I'm already starting to feel sad about moving away. This place isn't perfect. Today the wind and rain were so strong that our bins flew across the road, and I saw several broken and abandoned umbrellas. The public transport isn't great, and it takes my husband an hour to get somewhere on the bus that would be about a twenty minute drive. But it's still a place I'll always be fond of, this town by the sea where we got better at being married and made all sorts of plans for the future. I'll miss our friends, and the constant greenery, and the weird trees. I'll miss the cliffs and running by the sea in the morning.
It's exciting, though, to look forward to where we'll be next. I can't even say what state or country we'll move to for sure yet, but we love talking about it. (Well, I love talking about it. My husband might get sick of these conversations after twenty times.) We'll be moving together, though, which makes it a bit easier. Really the hardest part about having lived so many different places is all the friends you leave behind. It's so much easier now, though, when people can talk for free over email or Skype or a million other programs. So right now, I'm doing my best to love every thing about where we live, including the constant rain and old flat.
I really loved this post because my hubs and I just had this surprising conversation the other day. We are expats living in Taiwan and we were flying back from Bali and when I saw Taiwan on the plane's map, my heart filled with this sense of "we're almost home!!!" when I had never really truly thought of this Asian island as home before. I guess that's the great thing about travel + being an expat; you get to collect many homes and families along the way!!
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