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Another Milestone 2015

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We finally reached another milestone, the complete end of travel and the normalizing of life making it a great way to cap off 2015 and start 2016. The past few years have been amazing for us, in a good way, but I’m glad it’s over: for the first time in 37 months, I do not have a flight/trip scheduled or planned, for the first time in 29 months, I know where I will be living and working the following year, and after spending every day with each other for 18 months, Jac and I finally spent a couple days apart when she went to visit her family. I once thought it would be nice to be a traveling sales engineer type guy but I now think the idea is pretty awful. I think too much travel is completely possible.

In a stroke of very good luck, we moved into the neighborhood we lived in previously. In some ways it’s like we never left and in others it’s amazing how much has changed in the last two years. I’m starting to get back into a daily routine of going to work and I have to admit that I am very excited to have coworkers, a desk, and projects to work on. I never would have thought I would have been excited to go to work but I find myself thinking about how great it is to be back in a normal day to day routine.

Unlike conventional wisdom said or what our expectations were, we never really experienced culture shock on our return to the US. I think it was because we were excited to return to the US – we had completed what we set out to do and we had thoroughly enjoyed every moment. Staying outside the US would have simply been filling time.

Since we’ve been back we’ve had a chance to run around the US, enjoy some of our old favorites like hockey, and try some new things like an unseasonably warm winter in Minnesota. We are actively looking for the good food we had overseas and making some of our favorites. Much like books being made into movies, our cooking is similar but just not the same. Good reason to go back and visit our favorite spots again in the future :).

All in all, it’s great to be back. The honeymoon sure hasn’t worn off yet. I put up some photos of the random things and stuff we’ve seen since we’ve been back. We’re happy to be back in the US and we’re happy to be back in Minnesota :).

Enjoy the photos!

Chris W.

Being Home

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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.