Wednesday we took a quick day trip down to Simsbury. It was like traveling through some weird time warp. I know we've been gone - I've made over 300 posts to this blog, after all - but it's as though no time passed by in Simsbury while we've been away. It's kind of humbling to know that the world doesn't change just because you have. I guess that can be comforting in a way too.

It was such a beautiful day - sunny and dry, flowers blooming everywhere - it was hard to imagine why we left in the first place. Then I remember the few days we were here in December when it was about zero degrees and I think about the awful winter that you all had in New England and it reminds me that June is a really short month.

Weather, of course, is not really why we left. But it is one of the many factors that comes into play when I think about The Next Step. It seems like we talk about TNS every day. You'd think once you've made a decision you just live with that decision for awhile. But not this one, apparently. We spent about two years discussing options before we headed off to Taiwan and the plane had barely landed before we started talking about how long we wanted to stay and where to go next. Two years or three? Go to another international school or back to Simsbury? There are about a gazillion considerations, weather being one of them, that we keep weighing in on. On a good day in Taiwan my opinion swings one way, then something will happen that makes me want to leave the next day.

Since we've arrived in the US we've had many people ask if we're glad we went to Taiwan. The answer is absolutely yes. But we never intended to stay there forever so the question of what to do next is always looming.