Maybe you had to leave in order to really miss a place; maybe you had to travel to figure out how beloved your starting point was.” ― Jodi Picoult, Handle With Care
This week the homesick feeling finally hit me. Its hard to explain it, its more than just missing Chicago since I have been trying to move out there for as long as I can remember. Its missing my family, friends and The Boy like so much it makes my heart hurt a little everytime I think of them. I love Thailand, don’t get me wrong and I have a feeling I will love China just as much once I am there but its the fact that there is no immediate end date. You know when you go on vacation or away for a short time and you get to enjoy yourself immensely because you know the time is limited and you have to make the most of it. Here the time is not limited. A year or more is a long time. When I leave for China I am signing an 11 month contract. That means that on top of the 3 months I will have been in Thailand I will add another 11 months. That makes me happy and very sad at the same time. I am sure it will only get harder the longer I am away and when I have to miss holidays and birthdays I will probably cry but I know that I am going to keep having some insanely amazing experiences to look back at too.
This past weekend my parents ran the Rock & Roll Chicago half marathon and I wasn’t there…I am ALWAYS there as many of my previous posts have shown. I saw the pictures and immediately cried, on the 4th of July I skyped with my family in all their fourth gear…afterwards I cried. Haha I am kind of a sissy, incase you weren’t sure!
Its hard though…Being in another country doing what you would do at home getting up and going to work everyday and coming home and grading papers and lesson planning. BUT I am 12 hours ahead of Chicago so I can only really talk to friends/family early in the morning or in the evening. Only having about 17 English speaking people in town and 10 of them work with you and the rest are much older and just not interested in making friends. Things take forever to get done because of the language barrier. I have been here over a month we just finally got internet at our house last week.
OOk I think this post turned into a bitch fest…sorry! The whole point of this really was to say how much I miss my family and how I definitely didn’t think it would be as hard as it is!
Hopefully tomorrow will be a happier post…..
It's okay to be homesick! Esp. since you are so far from family or many people to communicarte with you! Be strong and know that you have a great family and friends who love you!
We miss you too, but time will fly and you will have such great memories and stories to tell you children or your siblings children. You will be wonderful aunt Monica the adventurous. We love you and are making plans on meeting up to give you some of the warm and fuzzies. Bessitos corazon.