I've just been thinking (I know, I know calm down ) that when we move back to England, after a while will our 6 years in Canada just feel like a dream or a long holiday?
Our whole life has been here. We both have jobs, the kids are at school, we have friends and go out, etc, but then we just go home and carry on like we never left.
Do you look back fondly at the Country you emigrated to and tried to make a new life for yourselves, but it didn't work out for whatever reason?
Do you get the rose tinted glasses and wonder what it would be like to try again as it wasn't so bad after all?
Or do you think it was good for a holiday but you couldn't live there?
hmmm ponder ponder

TBH I havent really given Australia a second thought - only to wonder what my grandkids are getting up to and whether the house their dad is building is likely to go up in a bushfire. I am too busy getting on with things here.

Hi Lorry
Are you having doubts about moving back?
I'm sure you will look back fondly however just exactly how you are going feel is unknown until you do it. Same as moving to Canada, you can cross all the t's dot all the i's but until you live there you can never know how you are going to feel.
I am returning to the UK at the end of the month after being here a very short time. Some would say an extended holiday, I would say its felt like a lifetime!
I knew very early on that it didn't feel right for us as a family. The kids have had meltdown after meltdown, which has taken its toll on me. We made the decision after Christmas that we would see the year out and move back in the summer. However we applied to our daughters high school for a place (its a highly oversubscribed school) and she was offered one on the proviso she started after the half term in February!?!?! So we are splitting the family for a while, OH is staying on to complete work commitments and son is staying also to help pack up the house. They will return at the start of the summer. Son will start 6th form in September.
Will we look back fondly? Don't know until I get back. Ours is a different situation to yours, we are only renting so don't have 'roots' as such plus we've not stuck it out like you have.
You've made a life there for yourselves. Just as you will do back in the UK. It all depends what is important in your life, what makes you happy.
Sure we will miss the blue skies, the space, and I suppose the difference that is Canada in a funny kind of way. Ultimately we prefer the UK, what it offers our kids and us as a family. We love the outdoors life style, which is one of the reasons for moving, but we can get just as much (even more variety) in the UK. All on your doorstep without travelling great distances to do so.
People have been the stumbling block living here, we left the most amazing set of people in the UK both friends and family which would take forever (if at all) to replicate. In the meantime you live this empty life wishing you could be with them at Christmas (it was the worst time ever here), for weddings, when they are ill or just need support. Sure Skype helps but in someways it can make the feelings worse, you just need to be with them.
Us women think too deeply sometimes, but thats the way we are.
If you can shut off from the country you left then it makes it so much easier.
I suspect from reading some of your posts and threads that you, like me, can't. So I would say that you may not be able to shut off from Canada when you leave.
You will have fond memories I'm sure. Again how you will feel about it when you return, you will only find out when you're there. The advantage being that your nearest and dearest will be with you in the UK to support you.
I am just going with flow at the moment, taking one day at a time, if I think too far ahead it scares the living daylights out of me.
Best of luck
Gill

I know exactly what you mean, Lorry. I`ve been in the USA 5 years and wonder if I`ve actually become more Americanised than I realise. My friend said when I came here "You`ll like it, everythings so easy!" and in some ways thats true. I have to say a lot of major life events have happened here and in some ways its been not so much a dream as a nightmare! My family`s also had meltdowns. This has had big repercussions for us all.
I`ve also had a barrelful of heartache, having to justify why I want to go home and why now`s the time rather than some unspecified time down the road.
I think that when I get home I`ll be dealing with the problems of setting up again in the UK and dont expect to pick up where I left off.
I could be heading back to gloom and doom, I dont know, but am willing to take the risk!

Hi all and thanks. It's good to hear these stories.

No, I am definitely not changing my mind I've just been thinking if Canada will just feel like a dream in a few years time.

I am the one who has had severel meltdowns over the past 4 and a half years so I know for sure that I want to return.

Yes, it may be the wrong choice, but we won't know until we do it, just like emigrating in the first place.

I think my husband would kill me if I said in a couple of years that I want to come back to Canada I can't see that happening anyway. If I'm not settled now, I never will be.

Sometimes I wish we would have left here years ago but in a way I'm glad we didn't because I know for sure I want to leave and it's not just a phase.

A bit different for me, as I was only in Australia for 2 years, but when I think back to my time there, it's more like a flaming nightmare than a dream!

Like you Lorry, I was very sure I wanted to come back to the UK for good, we've been back 5 years now, and I have never had one moment of regret about coming back, and Australia is just a distant memory.....

Nightmare, I couldnt have put it better! I cant see myself looking back with either regret or fondness. It can just get filed in the compartment of "Well, that happened!"
It`s been both a blessing and a curse. I will probably, though, edit my views and what I say to people because not everyone gets the chance to live somewhere else and it would be ungrateful to say it was awful!

that's great that people move back and have no regrets.

The only thing I like here is my job and it's the one thing that keeps me going. If I didn't work or work somewhere I hated I would be in a much worse position.
I will miss my job but that's about it.

I suppose I could say its been a nightmare for us too but its happened and its part of our life. We've done it (albeit a short exit from the UK) and its not worked out but I can't deny that there have been the odd good bits along the way which we will remember (have to salvage something from the wreckage
Meant to say: I'll keep you informed of how things go as I fly out on the 26th Feb.

OOH yes please do

We have not left US (yet!) but we did move back to NJ after spending 7yrs in AZ, and to me each state seems like a mini country in a country!. I was desperate to leave AZ and thought NJ would help in me feeling settled in the US (It did'nt!). But since being in NJ, those years in AZ do feel like a dream, (more like a nightmare though!) like it never really happened. Although I did not like the place, I do have fond memories of the people we met, some of the places we got a chance to visit and the fact that the rest of my family liked it there..so it was not all of a waste of time/effort/money!

When I wonder about what it will feel like moving from the US. I think I will be over the moon and not look back....but at the same time it's the friends we made and good experiences I will remember the most and the fact that the children have abit of an international upbringing which not many people get the opportunity to enjoy....

Hubby wanted us to try somewhere else in Canada or the US and I was up for it for a while, but then I thought what if I hate it there after a couple of years too and then I'm stuck again!?
Best just to cut your losses and go home. Better the devil you know.

I`ve thought a lot about homesickness and it`s very hard to describe as I expect all our experiences of it are different.
To me it`s like sensory deprivation. All the things that were familiar to me, and I grew up with are suddenly not there. If someone asks me what I miss I think "Everything". The noises, foods, general background chatter of tv and radio, newspapers, humour,music, the list goes on. I feel myself growing away from family and friends because we dont share a common culture any more. I even order up some of my clothes from the UK because I prefer the styles.
I could not go on for years feeling like a fish out of water. I feel like I`m living half a life which I never felt before I came to the States, even though I`ve met some really great people and am very busy. I think people may think because we share a language that the cultural divide is not so great, but I find it enormous.

The US is definitely a bunch of little countries within a big one! We moved from NY to Georgia and I thought I'd feel the same way: more settled, happy, and finally at peace with the way things were. It didn't really work, but there have been some lovely things about living here- the great weather, the kind people, the fun I've had with the better friends that I eventually made, and how happy and settled my parents are. Those things are all really worth remembering, no matter what. I wonder though if getting back to the UK really will make this feel like a dream sequence... just moving to Georgia made all the time before feel like it happened to someone else a lifetime ago!

Other than my kids and grandkids who I miss terribly I cannot even believe I lived in Australia for almost 30 years as I barely think about the place.......