It’s after midnight, which means it’s January 11th, and officially the anniversary of the day I moved to Sweden 7 years ago. My sister-in-law and I talked a bit about it tonight when we were over there for her son’s 7th birthday (I went straight from the airport to the hospital to see the new baby). She asked me if I regretted the move at all or if I felt like this was home now. No and yes, which it felt nice to be able to answer her. I miss the States sometimes, especially Chicago, but missing it and wanting to move back there are two completely different feelings. I don’t feel any real or compelling desire to move back to the U.S. at this point, although when the kids were born, I remember thinking that I wanted them to have some American childhood as well as the Swedish one. Then I realized that I was giving them one, so it didn’t matter quite so much.
Things I’ve accomplished in these 7 years:
- mastered a foreign language
- helped start a club that now has over 100 members
- survived 2 pregnancies, given birth twice, and began learning the process of becoming a good parent
- bought my first house
- gotten a Swedish driver’s license in the era when it was a nightmare from hell to do so
- gotten the first job I applied for in Sweden
- built a house (well, not ME personally, but you know what I mean)
- mastered HTML and learned web design
- been the editor/writer/designer of a monthly print & web newsletter for 5 years
- began keeping a reading list, FINALLY
- joined a choir again, FINALLY
- began a journal
- started work on an art project, my collage book
- made some life-long friends