Overseas Livin'

I would be silly to say that moving overseas is an easy transition. By no means is it just awful either, but it does get easier every time. When Brad and I had just barely been engaged for 3 weeks we moved to Spain. Let me tell you, we weren't too thrilled the first go around. We were given 4 days notice to pack our lives up into 2 50 lb. bags each and say goodbye to everything that was comfortable. We moved to a small city, Huesca, with very few english speaking people.

View of Huesca from a Castle 

I was blessed with ONE fellow fiancé and her precious little girl. Shamerica and Zoe got me through my good and bad days. I was beyond thankful for them and I don't know if Sham knows how much I truly appreciated her. We did a whole lot of exploring and shopping together. We also met three native english speakers, one from the UK, one from Canada and one whose dad was American and mom Spanish. It was refreshing to finally speak English with some more people. We even held get togethers at one of their houses. They were all so helpful and each of them landed me my first set of free lance English teaching jobs. While I was still doing some college courses through Texas Tech online, the jobs helped keep me busy. It really did help me not think of everything I was missing at home.

People always tell us how lucky we are and how they wish they could travel the world too. Yes, we know that we are blessed beyond, but living in a country for 8 months at a time without seeing your family is a little different than visiting places and then getting to go back home. Life without Target a 5 minute drive from your house, your parents just a walk away, fast food when you don't feel like cooking at 11 o'clock at night, any food/ingredient you can think of being in the grocery store and did I mention the 8 hour time difference that makes it hard to always keep in touch isn't always easy. Though it makes us appreciate the easiness and spoiled American way. Every Summer that we head home I have such an anxious spirit to just live an easy life for 4 months.

We have grown so much from being in Spain, Czech Republic and now Finland as a newlywed couple.  I personally think living overseas as newlyweds of a month and now a year was just what we needed. We learned to count solely on each other. We've become even closer than we were, who knew that was possible. If there was an argument or misunderstanding we had to deal with it instead of walking away. Shoot, we had no other friends at times and we didn't even know how to get around all that great. We worked through any problems and were able to figure out every in and out of our new life together. Being married and living overseas with my soul mate is my favorite thing now. Of course I still miss my family, friends and most of all our pup 24/7, but I rather miss all of that then miss my precious husband. I thank God daily for placing these tough, but awesome journeys in our path and allowing us to get through them and become stronger than ever. I'm blown away by Gods creations every day.

Our city in Czech Republic, Usti Nad Labem

Plus you get to do things like walk to the store that's a mile away in 20 degree weather at 11 o'clock at night for candy!

So maybe I need a picture of this in the day light, way prettier. 

First time having to wear the parka and bundling up. 

The yummiest, creamiest chocolate

P.S. We are currently getting our first little snow! It's gonna be a longgg winter :)