Yesterday afternoon, my in-laws visited and as expected, while having cup of tea our plans to go to the Philippines became one of the topics. One thing that somehow I ended up saying is that sometimes I thought I should finally have a stable place where I can call home not thinking that I will not be leaving after a few years. But even right after that I contradicted myself by saying that maybe moving a lot and exploring is what my heart really wants and it is the story of my life. Although we didn’t talk about it, maybe it is quite true to say that we do have this luxury of choosing where to live and to move around from place to place because we don’t have kids yet. Maybe if we have children our thinking would go a different direction. For some reason, the majority of people’s dreams are just to have a nice house, maybe a kid or two and a nice stable job in a peaceful village.
In some countries, to even obtain your dream house meant signing out your life into a 30 year mortgage which you have to make sure that you can pay. And then, this house determines most of your everyday decisions. In this area, a 3 bedroom townhouse/rowhouse will cost between 250K to 300K Euros and a single detached house costs between 300K to 400K! Paying the mortgage every month and other expenses becomes the deciding factor when taking a job. And yes you do need a job! And you better not lose it! We both have to work hard on a job that we may or may not like day after day looking forward to the weekend where you can catch up with you daily housework, maybe take a rest, see friends, or have a lazy day. There’s nothing wrong with that! But somehow, my husband and I seem to find that what we really want is not here in this country where bureaucracy is extreme and the cultural atmosphere prevent us from realizing our plans. We want a nice spacious castle house and a thriving business venture we can call our own but we also do not want to be slaves of our mortgage and car payments either!
But to answer where is home, to my husband, home means any place where he is. He says he feels at home wherever he is. For me, to be honest I do not feel at home in this country. First of all, I don’t even speak the language nor I have the desire to learn it. But I do realize, I have married myself into a Dutch family and being able to hold a conversation with them is important. But believe me, it is not that easy and somehow my heart is not really there. To be honest, my infatuation with the US is still there, however, I am not sure if the country will be in good shape for the next few months or years but is still one of our options (I am pretty much in favor of coming to back to the US if our plans on going to the Philippines is not going to push through). The Philippines, on the other hand fits naturally within our strategic plans and several surprise opportunities are showing up each week. One software firm expressed interest in having him resell their software in the Philippines. And he also told me that software projects for his current client is something that will go on for quite a while so all the signs are good. But of course, we will find out when we go there if it is what we hoped it would be.
For me, I know I am at home when I don’t feel like moving ever! When that happens I’ll let you know.
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2 responses so far ↓
1 rob // Apr 4, 2008 at 9:06 am
Yes, I always felt I had this psychological mental block preventing me from making a 30-year mortgage commitment. I felt like the house would control me. So maybe I have mortgage commitment issues
I’ve never felt at home in the US too, comfortable maybe, but not at home. It just felt like one long 5-year business trip.
2 mixxy // Apr 5, 2008 at 3:51 pm
For me it’s easy to get settled in the US if one has a job, and it is rather beautiful in general but sometimes I feel lost and isolated in this huge country when you are away from family. And most big companies are huge cubicle farms where no one knows each other. At least for me it was like that.
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