Deciding to come home

Many people have been surprised that we only stayed one year in France. Why come home from such an idyllic existence in a magnificent city, with wonderful food, culture, and things to see and do. Why not be like the many expats we met who came for a year and stayed for three, five, twenty, or a lifetime.

Our original plan was to just come over for a year. Shortly after arriving, though, I quickly fell in love with Paris and the lifestyle and had a strong desire to stay longer. Erin wasn’t on board initially but after a couple of months, she was thinking the same thing. The kids, however, had no interest in that. They always, the whole year through, wanted to return after just a year.

Our time to decide came in late winter when we needed to notify the kids’ school in Paris whether we would re-enroll them for the next school year. This was a difficult decision and we had very mixed emotions. On one hand we had everything we loved about living in Paris and on the other hand were all of the things that made that life uncomfortable – the loud neighbors that would party above us until 5am, the cranky man next door that posted notes on our door, the tiny apartment, the things we missed from the States, the daily challenges of living in a foreign country and language. Erin was sick of the apartment and Paige really missed our cats. And we were all cold.

The winter of 2012-13 was long and cold in Europe. In mid-October we visited Disneyland Paris and were so cold we couldn’t really enjoy it. In December we made trips to the Christmas markets in Strasbourg and Munich and again were so cold we couldn’t enjoy them as much as we had hoped. At the end of March, we went to Prague for Easter and it was freezing cold with snow flurries.

Between October and April, the temperature hovered right around freezing the entire time – sometimes a little above, other times a little below – and we saw snow on numerous occasions. Living without a car and walking everywhere – to school, to shop, to explore – the cold had a real impact. It didn’t help that our apartment had ancient single pane windows with gaps to the outside that let the cold air easily flow right in.

So, ultimately, it became a pretty easy decision to return to the “warmth” and ease of our lives in the States. As much as we loved Paris, we really looked forward to returning home.

I’ve wondered if we would have chosen differently had the decision come in June or July, instead of March. I think probably not because I’m confident that if we would have stayed a second year our roots would have grown that much deeper and returning home would have been that much more difficult. That’s how people end up staying a lifetime in Paris and that is something that we really couldn’t do.