Home is Where My Husband Is

I honestly think moving to China was the best thing for us as a married couple, never mind that it is so good for Adam’s career and for my new career as a lifelong learner/homemaker.  Before we left I loved being married and we had such a great time together on our Wine Styles/P.F. Changs date nights.  As much as we miss our family and friends it has really pulled us together not having so many other people involved in our lives.  Before we left we were each stuck in our old lives and marriage wasn’t much different then dating, but now our lives have changed together and we are forced to depend on each other in ways we never had to in our settled lives in NC.  I no longer can call a friend or family member at 3:30 in the afternoon to vent or to celebrate or even just to talk…I mean unless you want me to call you at 3:30 in the morning your time.  I call Adam.  I have my new friends here and they are wonderful and I feel like I have known them forever. Having good friends is important, but not as important as building a relationship with my husband. 

The role of an ex-pat wife is to support her husband through thick and thin.  Adam has had to work late this week to make up for the week and a half off spent in the US and in airports.  This week my job was to not put pressure on him from the home front to be here for dinner, since he was getting pressure on the Cree side to get his work done (which if any of you are familiar with Cree they are a great company but I really don’t think anyone’s work will EVER be finished).  The Independent woman in me doesn’t like to admit that my role here is a supporter, but on the other hand I love that I have grown personally enough to not be leader of my own life. 

This entry is stemmed from my mom asking what it was like coming back to China after being in the US (the land of Target, clean streets, English speaking people, mattresses made with fiber and foam rather than plywood).  I hadn’t thought about it until she asked, but it was really nice to come home (to China).  It was wonderful to see people and to vacation in New York but I missed our little apartment with no hot water in the kitchen and no dryer for our clothes and no English channels on the TV.  Home is no longer defined as familiar it is defined by where Adam and I are living life together.  Even though we were married almost a year before we moved to Huizhou, Huizhou will always be the place where we began