Home is where your heart lives

-For my husband, with love.
Hopefully, love will make him overlook my poor command of his language.

Working for a Hispanic company certainly has its benefits, such as flexibility and that sense of familiarity that you only get from the third world. This flexibility has allowed me to travel a lot more than I expected when I first came to the United States. My dream has always been to see the world, every part of it that I can manage to get to, no matter how exotic or underrated the destination, there is nothing like experiencing places live.

But before being able to take on the hobby of wandering around the world, there was the trip that started it all, the move to New Jersey...a state that I barely visited once in 1999 , and that cold day was the most productive and effective trip I ever took, it got me right in front of the love of my life. The soap opera romance that ensued is a story that could fill several weeks of posts but I would risk losing my loyal readers (all three of them), so I'll spare them the suffering.

I knew it wasn't going to be easy. Although it wasn't the first time I switched countries or continents, it was the first time the relocation wasn't entirely about me, but about compromising the things I dreamed about the place where I would settle more permanently than anywhere else. I gave up the heat, the beach, the rollerblading, the catalonian, the good food, all the things I melancholicaly write about on this blog. Why on earth would I choose the United States, let alone New Jersey to live after spending magical years in Barcelona, and crying my eyes out as the plane took off? Well, If you've read this far, you know the answer: love. And love alone is the reason I endure miserable winters, pollution, religious fanatics, standardized options for everything, bad fattening food, shitty roads, annoying people and giant SUV's hitting my car in parking lots.
So I make the most of the scam they call summer until it gets too cold to wear sandals and I'm forced to bind my beach-friendly feet inside painful boots for about 200 days a year. All this, waiting for the time to come home, roll in my covers with the only reason I have to be here and let him erase the winter with a kiss and melt away the snow of my coat with a hug.
That's why it's so hard for me to call this region home, once the door of my house opens it's like I'm still a stranger. I've been here for 3 years already and I still get lost going to the mall, and I still hate the mall and refuse to set foot inside a McDonald's. So much for my "Americanization". Not to mention that I speak more Spanish than English, with the consequence of my English accent vanishing into a bad Mexican portrait out of a B movie and my Spanish becoming more like lousy undefined accent you'd hear in a bad Telemundo's novela.

We came back from our last vacations just 3 weeks ago. And also came back to our nights in New York. I found myself again complaining about driving into the city through that dreadful tunnel (damn you Stallone and your stupid movie), bitching about parking, refusing to walk in high heels, avoiding potholes and cabs, and waiting for shows to start while we scrutinize the crowd and decide who will win the redneck award of the night. There I was, back in some club with sticky floor, lousy opening DJ, $8.00 coke and no place to sit, holding my love's hand and letting the regularity of the situation fill me with that warm cozy feeling of relief you only get when you are...home.