Being Home

It’s good to be home, it’s good to be home!

It’s been five weeks since we landed and we’re still a bit nomadic visiting family and friends all over the Midwest. We have signed a lease in our old apartment complex and I almost have a job squared away so our nomadic life is almost over. I am really, really, really, looking forward to a normal life. I traveled 50-75% of the time during my last 18 months of my job, spent 13 months traveling around the world with Jacquelyn, and will have traveled around the US for around two months before finally settling down. After almost three years of being a nomad, my feet are no longer itchy and I’m ready to have some sort of roots!

It’s been fun to hear what we missed during the last 13 months and catch up with the people who mean the most to us. I thought we did OK keeping up with what was happing back in the US but it’s clear we missed a lot. I’m happy we’ve had a handful of weeks to catch up with family and friends before jumping back into real life!

We haven’t had any real difficulty coming back to the US and haven’t had ‘reverse culture shock’ at all. I have a couple theories why: 1) we never had time to fully adapt to a different culture since we moved around so much, 2) we were ready to come home. The most difficult issue I encountered, driving on the correct side of the road, is no longer a problem so I’d say we didn’t have any problems returning and were able to sort of pick up from where we left off.

The weirdest thing I encountered was realizing I have lost A LOT of English words. This has been especially difficult when interviewing for technical positions as there’s a lot of words I haven’t used for some time so I’ve had a difficult time explaining technical/complex problems simply because I’ve lost the words! But that’s not the worst, the worst is forgetting simple words like ’rust’; I’ve had to resort to saying things, ‘that red stuff that grows on metal when it’s wet’. It has been surprising to say the least.

I’m happy we came back to the US in the fall. It’s been great weather so far and I’ve been able to enjoy some hiking, star gazing, and beautiful leaves. Overall, it’s great to be back :).

Enjoy the photos!

Chris W.

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