Expat Jon takes on the world (well... Sweden)

I can't believe it.  Today marks nine years since that fateful night that Swedie and I met.  It wasn't supposed to happen.  It never is.  That was especially true in our case.  There is this thing called the Atlantic Ocean that sits between our countries.  How could it work?  How could we even meet? I was stationed in Turkey in 2005.  With my job at the control tower, I was unable to take the normal holiday trips that everyone went on when long weekends came up (Memorial Day, Independence Day, etc.).  We would end up taking trips together whenever the runway got it's annual work done on it.  Not as fun as going three buses deep to a party city in Turkey.  I would hear the crazy stories of the parties and European girls.  That's right.  EUROPEAN girls!  I got deployed to Iraq at the beginning of 2005.  I came back just before Memorial Day weekend.  When you come back you get two weeks of R&R.  This...

I did it!  I made it!  Yes!  One year.  One year in Sweden.  One year permanently away from my country.  I want to thank my mom, my stylist, the creative director… But wait.  This shouldn't be that big of a deal.  I mean; it is a milestone, but this is permanent.  I am an "Expat".  I will live here for the rest of my life.  Yikes.  That sentence was hard to type.  Full disclosure: I deleted it twice and considered putting a "(likely)" in there between will and live.  But the word "likely" only softens the blow.  The truth is, this is home.  We're fully settled in.  Home, car, dog and now baby.  The roots are in.  It's official.  The fat lady is "...in the club high singing off key ' And I wish I never met her '…" I'm still wrapping my head around the permanence of our move here.  I think about Swedie when she made that trek across the pond to the US.  That was a big deal, bu...

    Everybody has something to say.  Each person feels that what they have to say is important.  Those facts are what made me rationalize starting a blog.  I plan to talk about a variety of things.  I like sports, food, parties, relationships, traveling, politics etc.  So this blog should be pretty diverse.  It'll be more about opening myself up to you, than hearing about a specific topic.  I welcome all to voice their opinions as I learn how to navigate this thing and I guess we're off. A bit about me:     As I write this (June of 2013), I'm 30, married with no kids.  I'm from Miami, Florida, but I've lived in Texas, Chicago, Maryland and some other places throughout my childhood.  At 18 I joined the military and got to make the best friends ever and travel a bit.  I also got to meet my beautiful wife, so thanks Air Force!  My wife and I lived on the east coast for six years (Jersey and Maryland) and we rece...