Okay, first of all I have to say this: I don’t wanna seem cranky or unthankful with this post. So first thing I have to say is that I am so so thankful that this whole dream came true for us and that we are still living in the US, have a pretty nice life and not that much left to ask for. But I want to be honest with you and therefore I have to say from time to time that life far away from home can suck big time! From time to time it hits you a little harder and this week I had one of those weeks.

It all started when our really good friends from Germany got married the other weekend and for sure we couldn’t go to their wedding. It sometimes just rips your heart out that you miss nearly everything. Then my little nice turned 6 – again without me. And it was mine and my brother’s birthday this week. I don’t care much about birthdays, but it is hard to be away from all your loved ones when you have a day that should be all about love, family and close friends.

After two years here I feel like we settled in pretty good and found some great friends – but still it isn’t the same! The funny thing is though that noone really seems to realize that. People always tell me stuff like “Oh, you totally live the dream”, “I would give so much to be in your shoes” or “You are so lucky!”. Yeah, I actually did make my dream come true by moving here and making life work for me. But pretty much everyone keeps to forget what I gave up for that and what I still have to keep up with to make this last. It seriously can suck so much to live 10.000 miles away from all the people you trust, it can be awful to work with people who have a completely different mentaliy than you do and it can be painful as shit to still have to learn new things every day.

I am proud of what I achieved and sometimes I can’t believe that I didn’t just give up and go back to Germany! But please don’t mistake living the dream with making a dream come true! I still have a lot of things to accomplish and get out of the way, to live the dream! And even if they will be very painful sometimes, I am looking forward to meet those new roadblocks.

I always told you that I won’t spoil you by only telling you about the good things of living far away from home. So today I will talk about one of the big downsides. Our good friends got married this weekend, my little niece will celebrate her 6th birthday next week and my best friend will become a father any day now. And guess what: I will miss all of it. A lot of our friends celebrated weddings this year, the arrivals of their firstborn or important birthdays. All of those are moments where it is really hard for me to live here.

I am very lucky to have good friends that won’t ever let me down or come anything between or friendship even if I live a few thousand miles away. But I can’t hust hop on the next flight to live through big moments with them and that will always stand between us. It just really hurts me sometimes how I just can’t be there and even more that this will never change. Being away from the dear people in your life probably is the biggest downside of moving away. And also the most hurtful one.

On days like these it takes a lot of energy to just pull through and don’t let yourself drown in sadness. Even if your friend’s lifes happen in another timezone and far far away, you have to keep building your own life in your new home. And that can’t be filled with sadness. In moments like these I always remind myself of why we moved here in the first place. Which is to pursue or dreams and life the dream we always had. And the easiest thing to do that is by enjoying the beauty of our home – which for the most part for me means go to the beach and visit places I love.

It took me a little time to get these sad feelings under control and not mistake them for thoughts of moving back to Germany. Now I more try to cherish them, because they show me how lucky I am to still have those really close people in Germany. People who love me for actually making my dream come true and will always be there when I come back – even if it’s just to visit.

This weekend was our last before the whole moving stress will begin. So we decided to take it slow (relatively) and do some relaxing things including a trip to Magic Mountain. Not everyone might consider our Saturday activity relaxing, but it was our way of not spending one thought on a stressful move. On Saturday morning our friends picked us up and we headed north to the Six Flags Rollercoaster Park Magic Mountain. In Germany me and my brother had always dreamed about visiting this park. We always loved rollercoasters and compared to the European ones, this park is insane. The price is actually pretty okay- we only paid 40 dollars per ticket, because we bought them early. What was not so nice though was that the park was extremely packed. In the eight hours we spent there we only went on four rides. The rest of the time we spent standing in line or walking around. But still, it was worth the trip and a nice way to escape our everyday life in Los Angeles for a little bit.

Today Flo and I sepereately went to lunch with co-workers, shopped for a little bit and spent the evening relaxing on the couch. It was nice to dedicate a whole weekend to just breath and mentally get ready for what lies ahead. We still have a long list of To Dos for the move including packing all our stuff up, buying a fridge etc. In my next post I will include some first news from our new place, since we will be getting the key on Friday. It’s really getting time to say goodbye to Los Angeles and hello to the OC.