Last Saturday the time had finally come to bid farewell to friends, family and Flanders :-(. When my brother dropped me off at Lille train station I finished rereading Almost French, a book I bought in Sydney three years ago and wanted to pass on to my American friend Hannah, who I was on my way to visit in Paris. In this book the Australian journalist Sarah Turnbull recounts with great candor and wit her first few years in her newly adopted homeland France, complete with hilarious tales of cultural misunderstandings and moments of sheer despair. One paragraph in particular struck me as fitting my own situation, namely the split personality you develop when living abroad. She writes: "For an expatriate, the whole matter of 'home' is an emotional conundrum, riddled with ambiguity and caprice. Paris is my actual home: it's where I live. But Australia is the home of homesickness and my history - a powerful whirlpool of family and friends, memories and daily trivia that I used to take for granted and now seem somehow remarkable." While these words aren't flowing from my own pen, they might as well be because I feel exactly the same way. Returning to Belgium now for six weeks has made me realise all the more how much I'm tied to this country, both emotionally & culturally. So my youthful bravado of believing I could settle down in New Zealand for ever is all of a sudden replaced with nagging doubt, combined with a sense of what I would lose in the process. Luckily we still have some time to make a decision and Japan seems as good place as any to mill over the best options... Friday, September 22, 2006
On the move again
Last Saturday the time had finally come to bid farewell to friends, family and Flanders :-(. When my brother dropped me off at Lille train station I finished rereading Almost French, a book I bought in Sydney three years ago and wanted to pass on to my American friend Hannah, who I was on my way to visit in Paris. In this book the Australian journalist Sarah Turnbull recounts with great candor and wit her first few years in her newly adopted homeland France, complete with hilarious tales of cultural misunderstandings and moments of sheer despair. One paragraph in particular struck me as fitting my own situation, namely the split personality you develop when living abroad. She writes: "For an expatriate, the whole matter of 'home' is an emotional conundrum, riddled with ambiguity and caprice. Paris is my actual home: it's where I live. But Australia is the home of homesickness and my history - a powerful whirlpool of family and friends, memories and daily trivia that I used to take for granted and now seem somehow remarkable." While these words aren't flowing from my own pen, they might as well be because I feel exactly the same way. Returning to Belgium now for six weeks has made me realise all the more how much I'm tied to this country, both emotionally & culturally. So my youthful bravado of believing I could settle down in New Zealand for ever is all of a sudden replaced with nagging doubt, combined with a sense of what I would lose in the process. Luckily we still have some time to make a decision and Japan seems as good place as any to mill over the best options... 
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I understand but all I'd say is think of the murky, dull, drear days of the Belgium winter. Do you really love fog & drizzle and Belgium beaches that much?
As always Brett you add a note of realism to the picture... Not sure whether to thank you or to smack you for this ;-)! An e-mail will arrive soon now that I have a computer at my disposal regularly.
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