i was just driving along today thinking ive be in florida for
4 months now and it still feels like im on holiday (never vacation)
even though have an apartment, our furniture is here.
i go to work (if you call being a business owner work)
i dont feel homesick, apart from missing family sometimes.
i was just wondering when did the oh shite im here for good hit ya all !!! so i can put it in my dairy

like everything, think it depends where you are and what you're doing. We dream of Florida, job security, not being in the post 9/11 bulls eye (metro DC), etc. in fact anywhere with water would do.

probably when you go back to visit your family and realize how much time has passed

I've been here 16 years and am still afraid I'll want to go home... It's a melancholy feeling that sometimes hits me at Christmas.

Christmas day..when you sit outside to eat...and Boxing day when your back to work.

Don't they do Kwanzaa down your way on 12/26 ?

Yep, never heard of it till I came over here. Hanukkah too for that matter.

I've been here for 20 months now and there are 3 reasons why I 've just got a bit homesick in the last month.
1. My English friend has gone back for a holiday and she hasn't even been here a year yet. That's not allowed, she can't go back before me!
2. Booked tickets to go back for Xmas this year, so it can't come soon enough now.
3. Joined this forum! I was doing fine until you guys got me hooked on this place.

You gotta be kidding... still 1850 down here..

That really does suck, I always try and save a extra day of vacation just so I can have the 26th off, purely because I cannot celebrate xmas day knowing I have to go to bed early for work the next day.

The fact that you're living in Florida and not holidaying there will be "driven home" when your home get hits by a hurricane or by some other natural phenomenon that Floridians have to deal with.


NC Penguin (I like to land 'feet first')

You run a dairy? Do you make your own cheese?

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Joking apart, I still get occasional "moments", not as often as I did when I first arrived (two years ago). They often happen when I am either out somewhere, maybe driving, or waiting at traffic lights, wandering around Walmart, or recently I was outside working in our yard, and everything seems to to stop and the thought pops into my head, .... "What the **** am I doing here, and how the **** did it happen?

This is never in a bad way, more kind of bemused surprise that I am here. I'd never have guessed six years ago that in 2003 I'd be happily married to an American and living in here in NC.

LOL ...actually snowbirds are more of a hazzard here than hurricanes- now they are really dangerous. I live in FL and the only hurricane I've been in was in Essex, UK Remember that ...in the 80's? worse than anything I've been through here in FL.
We were here when hurricane Andrew hit (which flattened the INS in Miami), but we saw nothing of it up here on the gulf coast.

You are not kidding! 1987??? My Mum & Dad live about 10 miles out side Colchester and they didn't have electric for 3 weeks! Luckily I was living away from home in London at the time...

Helen

We were living Westcliff on Sea then- hubby was abroad on business so he missed all the excitement but I woke up very early morning thinking there were burglars trying to get in - couldn't make out what the 'ell was going on LOL Typical UK - we'd had no warning and it wasn't until morning that we knew what had happened. Luckily we had no damage to our house but outside it looked like a warzone- chimneys down, trees uprooted, shop fronts blown in, goods and debris all over the streets. Luckily our power was okay and the kids were delighted cos they got a day off school. It's amazing that there weren't more fatalities and even more damage, but houses are far more sturdy in UK. I wouldn't rate many of the houses here in FL standing up to a storm like that.

I have been here since the summer of 2000 and I still feel like I am on holiday almost all the time. Every so often it dawns on me, usually early in the morning when I am opening the bedroom curtains...am I really here?...have I been imagining all of this?

Like most people, I do of course miss family, but I also wonder when this will seem like the hum drum, getting up and going to work day back in the UK, but it never seems to happen. Maybe it will never happen for you either.