A Tale of Two Countries
Many of you know (and if you don’t, you can read up on it on this website) that I am married to an Australian woman. While I am a VERY happy man having married such a wonderful person, it is not without it’s problems. One of these is the constant issue of her being away from her home country and family and friends.
Unfortunately, I’m not very good at sympathizing, as I’ve never undertaken what she has. And I’m not entirely sure how to “solve” the problem, either. Tonight we found out that U.S. regulations prohibit a green card holder (permanent resident) from leaving the U.S. for more than 2 years at a shot. That’s problematic, as it would prevent us from living here for 2-5 years, moving to Oz for awhile, then moving back here or something.
We’ve talked about doing exactly that just to give each person equal time in each country. So, the only way to get around it is for her to gain U.S. citizenship, something that takes another 3 years past her 2 years to get a green card and more fees, forms, etc. So all in all, 4 to 5 years later she can travel freely.
So what now? The question at hand is and always will be, where will we live? She has on and off days when it comes to missing home and her family. Sometimes she’s fine, sometimes she is horribly depressed about it all. Not that I can really blame her.
In some ways, I think it’d be easier if we just moved to Oz. I think I would handle the homesickness better than she does but I don’t really know. I know I would miss my friends and family a lot and eventually the differences in culture and systems would get to me and drive me crazy. That being said, I think I cope better than she does about such things, so who is better to be in misery? *sigh*
