Moving On

Happy Thanksgiving to all my readers in the USA!  It's hard to believe we're back in the holiday season already.  While we are having a typical Thursday here in Lux, our thoughts are with everyone back home and especially with friends and family who we miss.  Sometimes we think that the holiday season is about the traditions, the celebrations, the to do lists, and the inevitable stress.  But, I think I can speak for all those who live far away from their homes when I say that the holidays are really all about spending time with those you love.  So, despite all the hassles that come along with this time of year, treasure those times and make the most of them.

My husband and I had a quiet Thanksgiving dinner just the two of us last Sunday night.  We are just finishing up those leftovers today.  We didn't order a turkey from the UK this year, but decided to just do chicken.  There wasn't pumpkin pie.  I didn't pull out the decorations.  Before you start thinking we've fallen into a holiday depression, let me explain.  We've been a little busy.  While normally we would like to have the usual shindig with all the trimmings, we spent most of the weekend taking pictures off the walls, sorting our belongings, and deconstructing furniture.  It turns out our tour here in Luxembourg is ending sooner than originally planned.  As things stand now, we'll be moving out of the house, out of Ettelbruck, and out of Luxembourg before the end of the year.  Instead of heading back home, however, we're going to be setting up shop a little further to the east, just outside of Frankfurt, Germany.

We're pretty excited to say the least.  While starting the house hunting process and getting the legalities settled once more feels a bit daunting, it's kind of fun to be at square one again.  We'll get to learn about a new place and culture, and new opportunities will present themselves.  I'm pleased to have more time in Europe than we thought we would.  This move means a bonus year.  Now we will have a chance to get to those places on our list we thought we'd miss.  It'll be interesting to try my hand with German too.  I mean, it can't be any worse than my French.  It's a brand new adventure and yet another chance to experience the blank slate of expat life.  My husband is the first American to be assigned to this branch of the company, so we're definitely walking into unknown territory and breaking new trail.  We certainly can't say this will be a dull experience.  This coming weekend we're off to find a new house and town to live in.  No doubt we'll be spending our Christmas break sorting the kitchen and unpacking boxes.  Once again, we're leaping into the unknown.

So, on this day when we think of all the things we're thankful for I know I have a lot to list.  It has been an amazing experience in Luxembourg.  We have learned so much about the world we live in and who we are just in these two years.  We've met and formed relationships with an incredible group of people from all over the globe, relationships that have been at the core of an overall positive experience here.  We have been to beautiful, life changing places.  We've had a lot of epiphanies.  We're so very thankful to have the opportunity to continue the experience from a new locale.  Most of all, we're thankful for the friends and family at home who have supported us on this journey.  It means a great deal to be remembered and to hear from them, especially at this time of year.  We know this chance isn't a common one and there's no way to describe how grateful we are to have been presented with it.  Thanks of course to all of you who keep reading this too.

Happy Thanksgiving and while we're at it, Wir wünschen Ein frohes Fest!

These Two Years

We've passed the two year mark of this wild adventure.  It has felt like two seconds.  It has felt like two decades.  We don't know what is coming; we do know we can never go back.  There have been moments of supreme clarity and beauty.  There have been just as many moments of frustration and regret.  The expat experience isn't something that can be written up and shared in a glossy brochure.  It can't be explained away as one thing or another.  It can't be understood completely by those who haven't been there.  And each experience is so unique, one cannot even completely share it with those who have been there either.  So, we end up not talking about it much.  Sure, you answer the questions from those at home and you commiserate with your fellows about milk prices and inexplicable bureaucratic hurdles in your country of residence.  But, the other stuff, the stuff that no one else would really get ends up being packed away, tucked in a journal, filed in that part of the brain that shapes who you become.

Two years. Two years that haven't been remotely like any two years before.  Two years that are so different from everyone else's.  Two years that you wouldn't trade for any other two on offer.  How do you explain that?  You can't.  I, more often than not, find myself speechless at their immensities.  I don't know if there will ever be a point when I can sum this up in a crisp concise way that can make any sense to anyone.  Maybe I'll just fumble with it for the rest of my life.

The good?  The good stuff goes on and on forever.  You can't list it all, but I'm going to give it a go anyway.  The best part is standing in the middle of somewhere you never thought you'd stand, looking at something so incredible there's a lump in your throat that makes you want to scream, "Look at this!  Look at this, dammit!  This is what it's about!" Or it's a conversation with someone you never would have met any other way, someone who in a huge or small way will influence your life.  It's the conversations you would never have in your hometown, big conversations about life and death; conversations that have you rethinking just about everything.  It's the moments that are absolutely terrifying, those moments where you are on the brink of becoming paralyzed with fear but realize you have to keep moving.  Those moments change you.  You don't go back to who you were before.  Then again, sometimes it's all about the calm, the calm that comes with being completely broken from everything and everyone that used to define you.  But, there's lots of good in trying to share what they're like with those you encounter in the new place.  It's the liberation that comes when you know you never have to see the same place twice, the realization that tomorrow can be completely different and even the mundane is a revelation.  The good comes when you finally can be who you want to be every single day.  It comes with the slow comprehension that this life isn't something you win at.  Each day is a gift to explore, and do, and live a life you always wanted to try.  It's immersing yourself in something you dreamed of being immersed in.  It's not about being the champion expat with the longest "been there" list, the cleanest house, the busiest social schedule, the mastery of the local dialect, the most well-rounded children, the best bizarre food stories.  That's not the good.  The good are things seen, heard, tasted, smelled, and felt that wouldn't be profound to anyone else.  The good isn't in the pages of the guidebook.  It's moments short or endless.   The good is the reason we're here.  The good makes us better.  The good makes us grateful.  The good has the power to tip the scales.

The bad?  The bad is stuff that can't be talked about.  It's not the inspiring things.  It's the stuff that has you screaming, not in joy, but alone in your room so no one hears it.  It's the stuff that you're not proud of.  It's the stuff that breaks you down to the brink of retreating into yourself.  It's the confusion, the endless, always present confusion.  It's being left, ignored, drowning in the confusion as other's walk along the river bank without even looking your way.  It's the sad understanding that you don't belong where you are and you never will no matter how long you remain there.  It's having the experience of being unwelcome all too often no matter how much you smile, apologize, and kowtow.  It's the loneliness.  It's knowing that your loved ones are going through life's ups and downs without you.  It's being unable to offer comfort in tragedy.  It's watching from a distance and being powerless to intervene as someone jumps off a cliff of a mistake.  It's missing the incredible triumphs too.  The bad is being just a cliche, a walking flag.  It's having to explain where you come from, a place that everyone already has an opinion about.  It's trying to balance that with the fact that you love your country and despite everything, you are proud of it.  It's the inner battle to reign in the incredibly angry side of you that can't stand all the things that would be classified as "idiotic/horrible/criminal/totally wrong" back home but are completely normal where you are.  It's bad knowing that no matter how you explain the bad, no one is going to take it seriously.  You're living in Europe, quit whining.  But the bad is there for a reason.  It makes us grateful too.  It teaches us lessons.  It challenges us to take it, mold it, and turn it into good.

These two years are all that and so much more.  It's been way beyond a trip to the sea, cheering at a cycle race in Flanders, delving into the caves of prehistoric civilization, climbing mountain passes in Switzerland, tasting rare cheeses in Paris, laughing with friends in centuries old pubs, visiting long lost homelands, and being moved to tears.

Being an expat is a mishmash of the crazy good, the crazy bad, and the just plain crazy.  It can't be explained in a way that makes any real sense.  But, there is one thing that I can say clearly about these two years.  I know that they have changed my life, they are vital, they are priceless.  I cannot imagine nor would I want a life in which they didn't happen.  Hopping on that plane over two years ago to take that plunge is one of best decisions we ever made.  They are our two, painful, gorgeous, profound years.  And that's that.