As we live abroad and come back to Canada for a good chunk of time over the summer, inevitably there comes a time when we have to say goodbye, and head back to real life. For us, we have the added pain of needing to travel for over 20 hours in order to do that, and suffering jet lag on the other end.
It’s always hard to say goodbye at the end of a fun-filled six week summer holiday. We saw lots of our friends and families, ate mountains of fresh Ontario produce (I am salivating thinking about Ontario peaches and corn on the cob right now!), did every summer & water sport imaginable, and inhaled the fresh air, full of the smell of lucious green plants and fresh lake water. All this is a starck contrast to the barren desert where we live, where it is too hot to go outside for a good chunk of the year.
My boys were crying for about an hour before we got in the car to go the airport. As our flight left at midnight, fatigue was definitely suspect, but when my youngest wailed: “we’re never going to move back to Canada again”, I understood where his anguish was coming from. He was missing Canada already. It’s hard to leave “home” – especially when that home involves a Canadian summer, mountains of cousins, and lots of special attention (including toys and candies) from relatives who have not seen us all year. Real life can not compete with that!
We finally arrived back to our house in the Middle East at 1 am local time, and managed to get everyone to bed by 2. Despite having only slept about 5 hours over the previous 36 hours, it was still difficult to get to sleep, and 5 days later, we are getting closer to being back on local time after many late and broken nights of sleep. One friend here, on hearing about our jet lag woes, commented that it must not be “worth it” to go home, if we were having so much trouble adjusting to the time. “Of course it is!” I cried. I could never give up our wonderful summers in Canada.
