Very nice, Sas. And look at you, with your site so face-lifted!

Oh I get that all the time. I’d've quoted Dave Dobbyn’s Welcome Home but it could be a dozen songs, poems or otherwise. Lovely site Sas. Oh and it looks like we have a friend in common, Marianne and I were at law school together.

sas Replied:

i love that you know marianne! what a teensy world it is. thanks for dropping by :)

Oh yes.

I remember when I lived in Australia and I was talking to mum (who was in England) on the phone. She was complaining that it had been raining solidly for days. And I have never felt so homesick in the my life. I am the only girl in the world who gets homesick for grey rain.

Of course now I get homesick for Aus. I think once you live somewhere else, home is never the same again.

I’m crying. I hear you. Today I am more homesick than ever. It comes and goes but I sometimes physically ache for the sea. I’m from Auckland and I used to live in St Heliers by the sea and holiday at Whangapoua. Now I live in Hampshire two hours from the sea. I can’t remember what the hot Southern sun feels like any longer. I haven’t had summer – a real summer – for two years. I feel I am a hothouse flower wilting in the cold.

I love your site. Kia Kaha my friend. x

sas Replied:

oh honey i know that feeling. time for some kiwi wine and the ‘harry homesick’ itunes playlist :)

Oh yes I hear you soundly, dear Sas! It’s amazing how this homesickness can feel like a body ache and a heartache all in one. This winter was my 9th I think since I left Melb and possibly the hardest ever although I can’t explain why properly. Maybe it’s cos I haven’t been back in 3 years and have been married in that time too. Anyway, thank you for expressing it so beautifully as always! I hear you xSkeeter

Ohh, that poem is so nice.

I am homesick all the time, especially in winter which is much colder here than in Oz.

Sas do you have Maori ancestry or do all NZers know a lot of Maori language?

sas Replied:

My parents were both English (hence my ability to live here on a passport) so I have no Maori ancestry.

I learnt some Maori in school, more about the heritage and meaning at Uni and still more from NZ literature. NZ/Aotearoa is bi-cultural in all intents and purposes (though the population is quite diverse). All street signs and government buildings have Maori names, there is now a Maori television channel and Maori language week. Some of this is tokenism but mostly there is a healthy respect for the culture.

The language is beautiful, utterly unique. And its the gateway into Maoritanga.

I miss hearing it!

Soda and Candy Replied:

Thanks Sas, that is interesting to know about the street names & stuff! It makes me wish more Australian Aboriginal languages had survived and were respected in the same way.

I know exactly how you feel Sas. I’ve been especially homesick over the winter when I heard tales of what my friends and family were up to back home! It doesn’t hit me all that often but when it does it is very sobering and sad, when I realise all that I have given up to be here. 99% of the time I can cope with the expat life and all that comes with it – but every now and then I just want to sit on my Mum and Dad’s verandah, a glass of Jansz sparkling wine in one hand, smelling the gum trees and listening to the kookaburras.

It makes it all the more sweeter when we can, and DO, go back and take so much pleasure and delight in all the little things that we took for granted when we lived there. I covet Carman’s Muesli and Dusk scented tealights like never before.

When is your next trip home? Hope it’s soon – so we can hear about that pizza, sounds amazing! My favourite thing to eat in NZ was Burger Fuel. And green lipped mussels :) xx

Even though my heart is on the other side of the world, I totally get it. In fact, today I posted about being homesick too – must be something in the air.

I’m glad our journeys have brought us here together, even if we do end up on the opposite side of the world.

xo

As an AF brat, we grew up all over and had no roots really. I do know after four years in England as a teenager, I was homesick for it after I came back to America. I cried every day and told my mom “I wanted to go home”. She replied “you are home, silly. You’re an American.”

I’ve been here in Illinois for so long, I don’t get homesick. But I am ready to move!!

♥Spot

Some days I feel a homesickness for my homes in Gaza and Afghanistan, mostly for the people I left behind but also for the stark but beautiful desert. But nowhere calls, nowhere has ever called, to me like Aotearoa/New Zealand calls when I am far away.

I’m looking forward to that date too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNDiFxY6n-k

i used to listen to a cd of Te Wairere kapa haka champions all the time in my dingey Ladbroke grove basement flat – the neighbours must have wondered… but i think connecting to those threads that are stitched through our hearts and back in the whenua maybe painful but it is the kind of pain that reminds us of all that is good in the world
arohanui Sas

I don’t have any place to be homesick from. I love it that I grew up all over the place, and when I think of my four decades in Colorado you’d think I would be homesick, but it’s just so nice here… But when homesickness can create poetry like that, maybe I should try to cultivate it. Can you feel the hug I just sent you?

sas Replied:

the hug is welcome. and lovely :)

This post was so, so beautiful — as are all the comments.

I went on exchange to Canada when I was fifteen. I arrived in the middle of their winter, and when I stepped off the plane, it was -25ºC and it got dark at 4PM. At home, it was over 35ºC and blazingly hot until well after sunset. I’d never experienced the true depth of winter until then, and every day I was overcome with an ache of the most profound kind to be walking beside the river in my hometown, to hear the cicadas humming at dusk, to feel the sea breeze on my face. It was like a phantom limb pain of the heart. At one point it was so acute, I actually cried in the middle of my English class when reading a (very clichéd) poem by Dorothea Mackellar about homesickness for Australia aloud.

Of course, the irony is that now I sometimes have horrible bouts of longing to be back in Canada amongst the snow and the ancient firs and pines. I think it’s an ache that all expats will carry with them for the rest of their lives.

Bea Replied:

PS — Sending BIG, BIG LOVE to my Aussie compatriots. If you ever need a homesickness first aid kit sent to you, I’m ready with the Tim Tams…

love the new look.
My husband is a Kiwi and his parents live in the UK so there is a lot of home-missing going on.

I’ve lived away too and the downside is that you’re always missing somewhere (nice to get home – dull to stay!0

But I hear you girl!
xxx

Uffff … I’ll try again in the morning. The poem makes me a little too fragile at this time of night. Beautiful tho, thank you.

Rachel said “Of course now I get homesick for Aus. I think once you live somewhere else, home is never the same again.”

Please tell me this isn’t true. :(
I’ve moved away from Australia, been gone 6 months, am desperately homesick right now and am due back for quite a while.

Does it get easier or harder?

I am a friend of the lovely and clever Carol Neilson… and she told me about you. I went to England this time last year and I so need to go back… it hurts.

Hearing you Sas, and we miss you too ;o( but the wine and the cheese and the easy laughter will be waiting for you whenever you’re back and Welly will be just the same (ie different!).

And you’ll only be here for a few days before you’re missing London again – and that, really, is the beauty of it. That we can find those little things that call to our hearts and mean home – and they can be quite, quite different for different places.

I think they add to the beauty in our lives and they’re like love – there’s room for more than one in our hearts – my home in the bay, my home in Welly and my home in Spain (where I’ve only spent a month but it just embraced me and said “Welcome home, we missed you”…

sas Replied:

you said better than me honey xxx

Oh honey, thank you for the raps with my poem. It was written at a time of my own homesickness, and all I could hear was the land calling, it was visceral.. so, when you get back into aotearoa the milky bars are on me! x

sas Replied:

your words touched everyone honey – just beautiful!

milky bars and perky nanas? mallowpuffs. tim tams. PINEAPPLE LUMPS! :)

I had no idea you were from NZ! Wow, it must be gorgeous there.

I know, no matter hos seasoned an expat you are, sometimes you miss the little things. I would NEVER go back to live in Sardinia, but I do miss the warm weather, the crashing of the waves on the rocks, the seafood the noise. Everyone is too damn quiet here. Except me, of course.

sas Replied:

yes it is gorgeous! but after living in london, it felt really really quiet. especially after the shine of being home wore off.

i love nz but i am starting to realise that i have two passports for a reason :)

i love that you know marianne! what a teensy world it is. thanks for dropping by :)

I’ve been lurking and following tweets… just a little less able to contribute than in past with family responsibilities. t’is a small world and I’m mindful I owe Marianne an email.

I’m sorry you are so homesick.
Love that poem.

Kia ora, I hope maybe to see you when you pop in at Marianne’s. Or come by ours as well. Haere mai.