saying goodbye

One last look from the windows of our apartment

The road from Kuala Lumpur to Charleston, South Carolina was a long one.  On our last night, I stood in our now empty sunroom-bar-nursery-reading room-packing central (it evolved many times while we lived there).  I watched the lights glow from Petronas Towers and thought of how confusing and chaotic it felt to move across the world, and how lost I’d felt in the beginning having left a career, friends and family behind.  I chuckled a little to myself at how at first I’d introduced myself as an American attorney, and how over time I learned to let go of my former job as a way of identifying myself.

I’m still processing what moving overseas has meant to me.  Most immediately, I can say that it feels good to have done nothing on paper but feel so enriched.  I left the US as a newlywed and a person who so valued my career that I really couldn’t see who I was beyond that, which honestly surprised me at the time, because while I was in DC, I don’t think I would’ve ever thought my career was the only interesting thing about me.  Once I was in Kuala Lumpur, my former job was the only way I knew how to identify myself.

Top: one last laugh with some friends of ours at the bakery ’round the corner; bottom: our barebones living room and sunroom

Over time, through the interesting friends I made, the cooking classes, the photography lessons, and the incredibly vast amounts of food I stuffed myself with, I’ve learned how to focus less on accomplishing and more on doing.  I still want to have a career, but now I know there’s a lot of good living out there without one.  And being a mom — I know it’s been said a million times before, but it’s the most fun, interesting job I’ve ever had.  I can’t wait until the Gravy Baby gets old enough to ask about his birthplace, because boy, I’ll have some stories for him about our wacky adventures in Malaysia.

And as for the Gravy Train — well, as the hubby said to me as we were taking off from Kuala Lumpur en route to our first stop in Taiwan, just because we’re not living overseas anymore doesn’t mean there aren’t adventures to be had.  We’re looking forward to creating a new life in Charleston and we can’t wait to catch up with the people and the places we’ve been away from.  So I’ll keep writing and photographing and eating, if you’ll keep following along with me.  (Actually — it doesn’t really matter if you read.  Blogging is fun).

We’re back now.  It took us 5 flights, 9 days (with stops in between to see family), 178 boxes and 5 suitcases.   I’m still laying face down whenever I can and trying to recover.  As soon as I do, I’ll show you what we’ve eaten so far.  It’s been AMAZING.