One Foot In

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Life as an expat has a funny sort of feeling.  Knowing that you'll be moving back to the next place or for us back home in X amount of time, really makes it hard to go all in.  We're constantly talking about the next time we will go HOME, the next visitors we will have from HOME, our family and friends from HOME, the things we miss about HOME.  While all the while this is our home, or at least home for now.   Something I think would different if the move was a permanent one. You invest more and in a different way. 

Thankfully we have met great people that we're lucky enough to call friends, and we're hoping they will be here as long as we are.  So we're not investing time and putting our hearts out there just to have them leave quickly. I know the kids feel it too.  They're enjoying their time and the friends they have made here, while all the while longing to go home and see their friends back home.  The grass is always greener... 

But as we round out our first school year here and we hear of all the people we have met that are leaving, it makes the reality of the expat life all the more clear.  We're so blessed to get this time here in Italy, a dream to many, but a reality for us.  We don't take that for granted, but we long for the ones we love back home, and we will long for the ones we have met when we leave this home.  

A lot of Italy closes down for the summer, it's too hot.  People go to their beach houses or travel.  So we're doing the same.  We will fly home to Iowa for the summer, while we're super excited for this, I fear how hard it will be to leave once again.  

We will always have one foot in Iowa, and the other in Italy. For now I pray we can just go all in for limited amount of time we have here. Give it our all, and then remember this "how lucky I am to have something, that makes saying goodbye so hard" -Winnie the Pooh 

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