Home?

Lately I have been doing a lot of thinking about living here vs. America. With Mimi and Papa’s trip and them being so enthralled with every sight they took in here, as well as a comment from an Aussie from of Charmaine’s about the difficulties of readjustment once we go home (which really got me thinking), I thought it was high-time I wrote this post.

We have officially lived here longer than we lived in our last apartment… The apartment where we decorated and prepared for a new baby, where we welcomed Kaden after his birth, where we lived when Stu proposed, where we adjusted to life with a baby… The place that had felt so much like home and that I missed so much when we were first here (and still do, to be honest).

But now we’ve been here almost a year and after all of the adjustment and tears and stress, this place really has become home in a sense. I think if I would have been more open to experiencing Abu Dhabi for what it is, this revelation would have happened much sooner. Unfortunately it took me much longer than I would have hoped. But that’s the problem: we’re at home here now. So as we approach our year mark and talk about our future plans, it’s becoming more of a tough decision to figure out what to do next.

Marcia and my Mom have recently sent emails asking about when we might be coming home and the easy answer is, I just don’t know. With the economy, which is the biggest worry for us now, we’re not sure we’ll be able to get decent jobs that we can survive on, let alone that will facilitate home ownership. So until things start to look up back home, what’s the point of even considering moving back there while we have such a good and lucrative job here? The other thing is that we want to have a dollar-amount goal before we leave, which we keep faltering on. Sometimes that dollar amount puts us here through July, sometimes it’s December. When you factor in the economy, it makes us even more unsure.

On top of everything else, the friends I’ve recently made here have been such a find. I spent so long here with one-sided, back-stabbing, unhealthy friendships and missing out on my actual friendships back home… now that I have met these girls and see them more and more frequently, it feels like I could stick it out here for even longer. Stu still wants to just go home, but he sticks it out in favor of not going home and spending all of our savings in lieu of finding jobs.

So basically, I’m having such a weird conflicting feeling about our future since now this does, though oddly, feel like home. What will I do when I can’t just call downstairs for a loaf of bread to be delivered? I can easily get over the crazy drivers, but what about everything being in a five-mile radius? I still miss Wal-Mart, but Lulu’s really is pretty close. What about garlic paste? I seriously doubt there are any dank Lebanese joints in Boise. What about having to go back to work and missing my infinite time with my monkey. I miss him while he naps! What will I do when I see him so infrequently? So I am feeling torn. Don't get me wrong, I am still missing the home comforts that I've always missed, but I can't deny that there are definitely some things here that I will miss.

Anyway, I just wanted to chat it out a bit. We’re still not set in stone as far as when we’ll be coming back… we’ve even flirted with the idea of going to Fort Worth if we can get on there for a few years before ultimately heading back to Boise… I’m thinking being IN the States would make it easier to see family than living across the ocean. So we will see what happens. Really, it would be best if the economy would just start looking up so we wouldn’t have to worry about it as much and we could stick to our original plan. So someone work on that for me please! :)

And here are some pics of Kaden with the breakfast he prepared for me and delivered this morning while he watched his cooking show!