I am currently at the airport, getting ready to board my flight back to Belgium in a couple minutes. I can’t believe that in a few hours I’ll be back in Belgium with J, falling back into our regular routine, student life and soon resuming into the hustle and bustle of the school year. There is something so bittersweet about living abroad. My time spent in Canada and Belgium is full of cheerful hellos and tearful goodbyes – I am so lucky to be able to go home as often as I do. I am sure that anybody who has lived far from home can relate to the feeling of having your heart continually in two places at once.
When I started learning French as a child I remember trying to translate the concept of “home” into French. It is funny how a word so easily accepted in English can be so difficult to translate into another language – the translation of “maison” or “chez moi” always seemed to fall short in evoking the strong emotional attachment of home in English. Since moving to Belgium over a year ago now, I’ve quickly learned that home is wherever your heart is. Being the vagabond that I am, I seem to have homes in a more than one part of the world, feeling immediately at ease whenever I walk in the door. And I am sooo excited to get back home into my routine with J, getting out onto my regular running routes and even starting school again!
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| This little fur ball wanted to tag along with me 😉 |
One thing I have gotten better about is packing light on my way to Canada but somehow my suitcases always seem to double on the way back to Belgium. I may or may not be bringing a second bag full of over-sized goodies from Costco with me – this girl can’t live without her giant bag of chia seeds!
I have to go and board now! I am excited to launch Ceara’s Kitchen 2.0 next week and share some new tasty eats I have been cooking up lately!
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I totally agree with you about the French “home”! Even when we travel, we call the hotel “home”, you know? It’s more like “where we return” or “where we both go”.. right? And I have my house–our home–and then my parents’ house, another home.. It just can’t be easily translated. Unless you’ve found a solution?! My French never got to Fluency.. only one semester abroad! Jealous 🙂
I guess it all ends up making sense in the context like (Je vais aller chez moi – I’m going home”). I need a brush up on my French as well! I used to work in a bilingual environment (French, English) which did wonders in improving my French! Now I am living in a Dutch-speaking city so I am afraid to lose all the hard work I spent learning French! I am hoping to join a French conversational group this year to keep it up! 😀
Interesting. There just doesn’t seem to be a real collective sense, does there? ‘Chez moi’ is so.. self-centered; not in a negative way, but in a, well, pronoun way! I never heard anything differently out of my boyfriend when he went “home” to his parents, though–chez parents, etc. Alas! 🙂
You new site looks great, Ceara!! You must be so happy to be home! Good luck to the start of a new school year 🙂
Thanks Isadora for the kind words! It feels great to be back 🙂
Good point. I hadn’t thhogut about it quite that way. 🙂
COULD YOUR BAG BE OF COSTCO BE ANY BIGGER!?!? Love it
Haha, “where is your bag from?” Me: “It’s a Costco”. 😀