Home Is Where The Heart Is

Well...It's been exactly 2 years, 4 months, and 17 days since my last blog post on here.

In my last post I announced that I got a job as an assistant registrar and then I promptly fell off the face of the planet and let my blog collect dust. Oops. I admit, it's not the first time I've done that.

So, what has been going on 2 years, 4 months, and 17 days since my last post? Well...the husband and I are no longer Florida transplants living in Chicago. We're now Chicago transplants, formerly transplanted from Florida, living in the Susquehanna Valley! Yes, that's right. We live in the mountains. I truly never thought I'd ever be saying that. And it's definitely an adjustment from our previous residences as we've only ever lived in more urban settings. This is very much more rural than I am used to.

But let's take a step back for a second and I'll give you a brief run down on what has happened in the past 2.5 years.

1. Started my new job at the university and got to carpool with my husband to work.
2. Husband scored a paid internship working for the Kellogg's company a month into my working at the university, which is right about the time I started eating lunch at my desk.
3. Husband finished his MBA program with honors.
4. Started making some friends at work (yay! Only took me 4 years...)
5. Husband lands a full-time marketing job for a local nut company.
6. Started to picture our lives in suburban Chicagoland and became eager to settle down.
7. Husband took an unplanned interview for a globally-recognized food company.
8. Husband accepted offer from globally-recognized food company.
9. We said goodbye to our friends and the first place that started to feel like "home."
10. Moved to south central Pennsylvania and now reside in The Sweetest Place on Earth.

It has certainly been a whirlwind of events. While we are happy for this new adventure it doesn't come without some sadness for the people, food, and places we miss in Chicago.

I have to admit, it's going to take some time to feel fully settled in this new place. In fact, the #1 question I am asked by people (whether it's friends from Florida, Chicago, or people we meet in PA for the first time) is "How are you liking Pennsylvania so far?" and most of the time I don't really know how to respond. "It's different, but I like it," is my usual response, but I think it's going to take me a while to not totally feel guilty that I don't 100% know when I'm asked that question. It'll probably be right around the time people stop asking the question because the novelty of us being new to the area will have worn off by then.

As funny as this might sound to some people, when we left Florida to move to Chicago I didn't much miss it. I know a lot of people who leave their hometown ultimately yearn to move back, but even though we were both born and raised in Florida we never felt like it was where we were supposed to be. We were both ready to get out. And after 5 years of living in Chicagoland, we talked about buying a house and we invested in park memberships and purchased a CSA (which we had wanted to do for a long time), so we thought we were going to be there for the long haul. And then this opportunity came up out of the blue and it was too good to pass up.

Essentially, we're starting from scratch now and we just have to build new dreams for our life here. But, hopefully that explains why my answer might seem sort of ambivalent if you ask me how I like things here. I may be living in Pennsylvania, but my heart still thinks it's in Chicagoland.