In 8 months, I will be celebrating the ten year anniversary of living abroad. And when I say celebrating, I don’t think of it as an achievement or something that I have been planning. Just as an anniversary that simply came by. Ten years, literally a decade, since I have packed my bags in 2009, got on that one way flight to Edinburgh in my Vans hoodie. Four years of university in Scotland, a year of travels, mostly Latin America, but also Africa, little bit of Scandinavia and a lot of Italy. Another 2 years in Scotland, a very brief period in Italy, few months back at home before I have settled the furthest away from home possible – the Land Down Under. The fact that it’s so far away and that it takes at least 24 hours to get home, not to mention costs a small fortune, was the reason why it’s taken me a whole year and a half before I made it back for a visit. Maybe because it’s been so long since I have been at home, maybe because the culture here is just so different to what I have been used to, maybe because of the freaking blissful happiness of living with a partner that just sees life the same way I do, this visit was much harder than I thought it would be.
I do realise that I live in a bubble that extends to all of my friends, who are smart, educated, well-traveled humans with healthy positive opinions about life. That’s why I am often surprised with certain political outcomes and it always baffles me WHO votes for these idiots? And then I realise, it’s my whole extended family. Take away a few good cousins and maybe my dad’s siblings. It only took a few weeks before I was completely tired of the negative energy, comments, complaints and reasons why this and that is simply never going to work. It puts you off sharing any ideas really. I have to say that dramas in my extended family and negativity of general public is partly the reason that has kept me away from home for so long. Not that I agree that’s right. Instead I should be at home, trying to change things, be better. But whenever they ask me when I “intend” to finally come back home and I know that question is asked and meant in reproach, I just want to spit back – never! Forget it! Why don’t you ever want to talk about my experiences rather? Why don’t you want to hear about my job? Why aren’t you interested in life in different parts of the world instead of small town gossip?
Moving on. I love my parents and my brother, I still love my closest friends, ones that I have known for years and years, our amazing nature and ironic sense of humour. I also enjoy Czech beer, I wish it was more often accompanied by good quality food, but Czechs in their passivity (yes, that’s a great way to describe the Czech Nation in one word “passivity” it’s been true throughout the World Wars too) just get on with the fact that if you want to eat healthy, you just have to pay a small fortune for it. Thanks to all of this, I feel like a foreigner abroad and like a foreigner at home. But it’s still home. It’s my country and it has a lot of beauty and I do want to live there some day. I don’t know when “some day” will be, but I have been pondering about that some day for the last few years.
So the five week holiday back home, living at my parents house was definitely not smooth sailing, especially being pregnant, sick or sleeping in the last two weeks at least. Despite all of this, it was so nice to be with my mom, dad and my little brother and especially Mary, our beautiful dog. We went for a run whenever we could. I was so looking forward to going back to our minimalistic apartment back on Nobby’s though. The flight was hell though, followed by a horrible jet lag, accompanied by pregnancy nausea, total tiredness and sadness. I spent the days sleeping, crying, eating and that took almost a week before Lukas finally arrived on the Gold Coast too. And that’s us in August 2018. What happened next?
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