Culture Clash - the torture of the brit/aussie relationship

I miss home. I don't miss the steering wheel being too hot to touch in Summer, or the need to wear sunglasses during every waking hour (even indoors sometimes!), or the hayfever attacks that left me weeping all through the Spring. I don't miss the bushfires, or the ugly "new" suburbs, or waiting 45 minutes for a bus. What I mean is, I miss my home - my family.

It has been hard, harder than I have let myself realise, to stay in this country when my family and most of my friends are on the opposite side of the globe. If I was blessed with the gift of foresight I may have reconsidered getting involved with a British man... but who thinks about these things? All I knew was, he was damn cute and I had come to London to experience a different way of life. Part of me suspected that I would end up with a British bloke - after all, the aussie blokes never seemed to work out, and everyone predicted it would happen when I left for London. I remember rolling my eyes and assuring them all it would never happen.

There is no getting away from the fact that this situation has created pressures in our relationship - pressures which most couples never have to deal with. The question of "your country or mine?" is still waiting to be answered, dumped in the too-hard basket for now. The sad truth is that one of us is going to have to leave their life behind and build a new one in a different country, without the comforting background noise of family and life-long friends. I am still resisting this, hoping that we will return to Oz sometime soonish to try it out.

I am going home for a short visit in November though, by which time it will have been 2 whole years since I have seen/hugged my parents and youngest brother, and a year since I saw/hugged my middle brother. I can't wait. Seriously, I am twitching just thinking about it.

I just don't know how I am going to cram 2 years worth of catching up into 2 jet-lagged weeks in Melbourne.