Dear America,

last time I told you, what I love about you. Today I tell you, what I would love to change about you!

1. I hate that you are so far away and that flying to Germany from you not only takes loooooooooong, but that it gives me hell!

2. I hate that you will seperate me from my friends and family and that you are in another time zone.

3. I hate that your food will make me fat sooner or later and that I will have to begin doing sports very soon, because of that!

4. I hate that your language sometimes gives me a hard time and will make the job hunt harder than it already is!

5. I hate that your people can’t spell my name when they just hear it. I am not called Jenin, Jamie, Jennie or Jemin!

6. I hate that you gave me a chance, that I can not reject!

7. I hate that you have so nice beaches and landscapes, because I will not see much of them when I am not still coming to you for vacation.

8. I hate that you are my dream, because me moving will hurt a lot people including myself!

9. I hate that you are my biggest challenge in life so far and maybe will be the challenge of my lifetime! You are supposed to be my dream and dreams are nice!

10. I hate that I love you so much and can’t resist you!

XOXO
Janina

Dear America,

there are some things I always wanted to tell you! To tighten our relationship in the first place I will tell you what I like about you:

1. I love how your people make me smile with their politeness every day. They ask me how I am and even if my answer is a lie, it makes me smile. And sometimes even makes my day!

2. Your landscapes amaze me every single day. You have beaches, you have snow. You have the hottest summers and also the coldest winters. You have all I want and everything I will never miss!

3. You bring so much joy to my life. Your people speak the language that I chose as my favourite, your people write the music that amazes me, produce the movies and series that make me laugh and cry, you provide the nicest gossip and entertain me like noone else can.

4. You let me be who I am! You don’t make me hide my sweatpants in my bedroom, hide my tattoos under long sleeves or make politeness feel like an illness.

5. Your food gives me comfort whenever I need it! Oreos, frozen yogurt, Burgers, Latte with Vanilla soy milk – who would want to let go of this forever?

6. Thinking about you and our future life together makes my heart bounce!

7. You brought me and my husband closer than we already were, because you are our dream, our challenge, our future!

8. Through giving my husband a greencard you made my oldest and biggest dream come true!

9. You are my biggest challenge in life so far and maybe will be the challenge of my lifetime!

10. You will be my home very soon!

Tomorrow I will tell you why you still make me struggle to accept my own decision to live with you…

XOXO, Janina

PS: Dear reader, why don’t you write that list for yourself?

We are back home in Germany since Sunday morning and today was my first day at work. I kind of felt like time has been turned back. Like if the last two weeks didn’t happen at all. Reality hit me so hard again this morning, that all the good feelings I had till yesterday are somehow gone. Somehow I am just functioning again and not living like I’ve been in the last weeks.

The good thing is that after our trip to our future home I feel more confident than ever that our emigration plans are the right thing to do. When we first arrived in Huntington I was kind of depressed, because it was not exactly what I had imagined it to be. But with time going by, I realized that this is where I want to live. While spending time with our friends over there, I realized that this is how I want my life to be. And that thought and that feeling is what I will hang on to in the next months.

On the one hand this trip helped me a lot, because it grew more confidence in me for that whole US dream, I have been dreaming about like forever. But on the other hand this visit we paid our future hometown broke my heart. I already feel so homesick for Huntington, for our friends and for the feeling I had when being there, that it kills me. I so want to book the next flight over and just stay there.

My dream will stay a dream for at least another eight months. But in this eight months I will do everything I can and work as hard as I can to finally turn that dream into my own wonderful reality!