A message I truly needed

I have been a little bummed out lately. As much as I love the travel, I seem to dislike the daily living in England. Most of my blog postings in the last week have been about my irritations and annoyances. When we first moved here, I had culture shock and was feeling lost and confused. Now that we are more settled, I have had enough time to start figuring out how I really feel about certain things. Overall, this whole experience has been worth it and I am so glad we came. We are making the most of our time here, but I do get homesick which makes some of these little things harder to deal with. However, I got an email last night that really helped me put some of this in perspective. I have to give you some background first: shortly after we moved into our house in England, a lot of the moms at Bean's school were asking which house we were living in (it is a really small community). When I told them, they would get all excited and say -"that's Michigan's house". Now, clearly, her name is not really "Michigan", but for blog privacy purposes, Michigan is what I am going to call her because that is where she is from. Anyway, having never met this woman or her family, I didn't think much of it...until recently. We received some rather important mail for someone I had never heard of, but who was clearly American (it was from the US Government). I was really thrown for a loop because the last name on the envelope was my maiden name. Thinking about identify theft, I opened it and then I realized that the first name was a variation of what the other Mom's had called Michigan. I asked one of the mom's at school pick up what Michigan's last name was and low and behold, it was my maiden name. What are the chances? I am living in the same house that another American had lived in (from a neighboring state no less) and we had the same last name? So one of the mom's gave me her email address and I sent her a message to let her know about this mail that we had received. We have emailed back and forth quite a bit since then and I really like this woman. We have so much in common. Her kids were 5 and 2 when they moved here. She has sent me emails about what she misses (and I sit here reading it and thinking - YES - those are the things I will miss). And the things she hated (and again - YES - those are the things I hate). She even has made comments about the house, such as how strange it is that when you take a shower that you run out of COLD water before you run out of hot water. I laughed when I read this one- you have no idea how many showers I have ended by scalding myself when the cold water runs out. I just think that I connected with this woman for a specific reason at a time when I needed it. And the email that I got from her last night said that as much as she hated some of these daily things and as many cars as she wrecked by side swiping parked cars (I have not done this yet, but feel like I am going to every day as I weave in and out of cars parked in the streets!), she truly looks back at her time in England as a wonderful time in their life. She said her older child still wistfully talks about his time in England and that they have seen more places than most people get to in a lifetime. Once they got back home, they forgot the bad things, and only really remember the good times. I truly needed to hear all that right now and it really helps me put all of this in perspective. I am also really excited about our trip to Edinburgh next weekend which is starting to cheer me up. I have wanted to see Scotland since I adopted my little Scottie dog 12 years ago - you can't read about a Scottish Terrier without reading a lot about Scotland. I am hoping we look back at our time in England in the same way that Michigan and her family do - remembering the great times.