What made you go home?

Hello,

Has anyone here ever lived in another country thousands of miles away from home? What made you go home? Was it because you have reached your targeted goals or achievements and decided to give back and serve your country? Or was it because there was no other choice but to go back because you have served the term and there was no other alternative? Or maybe you thought you have missed so much of your family and decided that whatever achievements you’ve achieved were meaningless because there was no one around to share it with you? Or was it something else? Please feel free to share.

Nina

I went home for these reasons:

  1. I planned to finish grad school and then return to the other country. (I finished grad school but never moved back abroad.)
  2. I had a feeling that Russia was going to become a dictatorship again and someday seize control of the country where I was. Even though the country where I was had become part of NATO, I had no confidence that NATO would defend such a small country against Russia, if push came to shove. (Russia has, in fact, become a dictatorship again, but it hasn’t demanded all of its empire back – yet.)
  3. If the country came back under Russian control again, there was a good chance I might have to move home, and money would have been a problem due to the vastly lower salaries in the country where I was living. (The economy is changing, and this would not be such a concern if I were living there today.)
  4. I was getting tired of the culture and the way I was treated. People there were less honest in business, and many things often went wrong there just because people were lazy.
  5. It was almost impossible to have any privacy in that country.
  6. The country where I lived had only about four different textures of food. This may sound minor and stupid, but it started to drive me crazy after a while.
  7. You couldn’t get away from cigarette smoke in that country.

Things that weren’t reasons for me:

  1. I wasn’t homesick.
  2. I didn’t miss my family. I don’t know why.

Nina, about your sig, often terrible things come to good people, and those terrible things to them frequently come specifically because they’re good.

If you have something to return to ,you would be always underway back since first day abroad.
I have started to work outside Poland when I was 20 years old and everytime when it was close to settle down the red light was flashing in my head whatfore you would do this.
It is a bit like with Scots and English firsts they move for jobs where ever possible but under one condition they like to be with time home in Scotland, seconds are eager to move and stay for ever.If you are borne that way , you are borne that way nothing what you could do about this.
Jan

I think it’s more of how you were raised.

I’m living abroad at the moment but I don’t totally miss my home country. I have to move on and build my life up here. Best alternatives for me :).

Totally? I take it you are from the opposite gender? 8)

Hi Jamie,

How do you define “good people” and what are “terrible things”? I’m asking because I think nothing happens without a reason. If somebody thinks that something terrible has happened to them, that person usually did something that triggered that terrible event. If you can control your thoughts, you have almost total control over what happens to you.[YSaerTTEW443543]

TOEIC listening, photographs: Boarding the ferry[YSaerTTEW443543]

Tell that to the Jews who got dragged to the concentration camps, or to the Cambodian genocide victims, or to the gassing victims in the south of Iraq. I was controlling my thoughts very well when a drunk driver smashed into my car. A teenager I know was quite well in control of his thoughts, but his father still died from decades of heavy drinking. Do you think that if the kid had had just a tiny bit more control of his thoughts his father’s liver wouldn’t have failed?

There is a really good personal finance writer in the US named Dave Ramsey. By age 18, he’d been to every positive-thinking seminar there was, and by 23 he’d put together a massive real estate empire, mostly leveraged. He was completely in control, was servicing his debts perfectly, and the whole thing made him quite rich. Then his small-town bank was acquired by a big city bank that examined all the loans, didn’t think it was prudent for the bank to have millions in outstanding loans to a kid, and called in his note. He had six months to pay back all those millions, and no other bank would lend that much to a kid. He tried everything, but his conclusion, mentioned in his books, is that there’s a reality that exists outside of your ability to think positively.