American immersion

No more of the European Vacation Life for me.  Instead of struggling though Spanish language barriers, munching on Spanish olives and planning exciting trips around Europe and Africa, I find myself being much more domestic and "normal."  I'm trying to settle into the all-American dream of being a happy wife, with a hard-working husband, two sons, two daughters, new house in the suburbs, furniture shopping and scheming up new landscaping plans.  Welcoming myself back into the American way, has been refreshing and fun but it's certainly very different from the life we created for ourselves in Spain.  I miss so many aspects of living abroad. Some of the things that made it difficult (aka: interesting) to live in Spain don't seem as bad now that I'm not in the thick of it all.  It's hard to start over from scratch and have to find new friends, new places, new churches, new activities, new doctors, new home school groups, etc.  At times it's very exciting and fun but other times, it's exhausting and I'd almost rather stay inside my house and pretend we never moved away from our Spanish lifestyle. 

My new house is fabulous!  It's the biggest and newest house we've ever lived in and and guess what?  We have room for all of our "stuff!"  I might even say we have too much room.  For example, my kitchen cupboards and drawers are only 80% used.  I've been used to cramming everything into every possible space with the excess in a hall closet or boxed up in the garage.  Spanish kitchens are pitifully small and difficult to work around.  And OH!, my kitchen sink here is like a dream!  I have a big deep side AND a smaller side.  In Spain, I only had one little round sink that was smaller than even our bathroom sinks.  My smaller side sink here is still bigger than the single little round Spanish one.  In fact, I'm surprised I that I never took a picture of it.  Now I wish I had one so I could compare it and laugh at how silly and small it was.  My fridge/freezer is so much bigger here too.  Another big kitchen difference is the size of my oven!  This one is probably a normal American size but it's a giant size compared to the little oven I had in Spain that would barely allow for a 9x13 pan to scrape along the inside walls.   I'm really looking forward to all the baking and cooking that will be happening over the coming holidays.  I can actually see myself enjoying the cooking and cleaning process of being in the kitchen while we live here!  I've already started baking my own bread again.  There's nothing that says "welcome home" as well as fresh bread baking in the oven.  In fact, I think I'll spend some more time in there this weekend and make a batch of chocolate chip cookies as well.  My kids are going to love that we have this modern American kitchen too. :-)