Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Five Years....FIVE YEARS!!!

Five years ago today, I boarded a Swissair flight at O'Hare Airport with Dominique (our now-deceased dog) and King (our now full-o-piss-and-vinegar-seventeen-year-old-cat) in the cargo hold (I was in business class, and I still have the slightest bit of guilt over that one) to meet up with Mrs. TBF who had already been here for nearly three months.
Originally, the plan was that we would be in Switzerland for maybe "two to three years". I was going to take about six months off of work to get us settled in, and then I was going to look for a job. Well, somehow the job search never began, and here we are five years later.
What does the future hold? Who knows? When people back in the U.S. ask us how much longer we'll be here, I now say "I have no idea!" I've been saying "...a couple more years" for a couple of years now, and I think that family and friends are tired of hearing it. I don't know if we'll live in Switzerland forever, if we'll move back to the U.S., or we'll move to another country next. Ich habe keine ahnung!...aucune idée!!!
A lot has changed in the past five years: Mrs. TBF's job switched from Basel-to Nyon-and back to Basel; we moved from Reinach to Binningen; Dominique is no longer with us (sob!), several ex-pat friends have moved back to the U.S., England, etc.; I now speak passable German and I'm working (believe me...it's going to take a lot of work) on learning French; we've traveled to many European countries (with many still to see), we eat cheese for dessert, we prefer using a duvét to tucked-in sheets, we don't speak loudly in public, etc., etc. And, this doesn't included all the changes that have taken place back at home with family and friends which are too numerous to mention.
So...where will we be five years from now? Stay tuned!

2 comments:

Michael Lehet said...

Congrats.....Last Friday was my 5 year anniversary of moving to Chicago - we just missed each other.

Anonymous said...

I'm in my 21st year here, so don't give up!