Home is where the heart is, right? I recently watched a TED Talk video called How to Feel At Home Anywhere. Laura Gallaher, a psychologist, speaks about her travels and how she made each new city around the globe her home. Through her experiences, she breaks down what she believes makes a home. It's a short 10 minutes, and you should watch it.👆🏻Spoiler Alert: Of the three contributing factors that Laura mentions to provide a sense of "home", I relate most to "the sense of familiarity."
Over the last week, we moved into our new apartment and nested a little bit. It's only been five days, and each of us in the family have already been drawn back to a way of life that is familiar to our old life in the US. If you know me at all, then you know I LOVE TO BAKE. Monday morning, I found myself in the kitchen preheating the oven for a batch of Snickerdoodles. (In fact, I've already made two batches.😛 One for us, and some for Matt and Christopher's acquaintances.) I'm eye-ballin' the ripe bananas on the microwave, but I thought I'd wait long enough for Matt to make his banana joke before I baked a nice bread.
Christopher jumped at the sight of his new piano to warm up his fingers that had almost rusted and fallen off by the sound of his urgency to fulfill our promise of buying him a piano upon our arrival in Sofia.He's entered the teens years, and everything is dramatic. And Matt, well...he was found on the couch, drinking a beer, and trying to find the Man City game on TV - with no luck. Side Note: Any streaming advice on this would be greatly appreciated. 😁
Our apartment is even familiar to our home in Phoenix. It's not nearly as large - just under half the size actually. BUT it's newly renovated. Looking around at the fresh fixtures, paint, and kitchen makes me reminisce of our forever renovation project we called home in Arizona. I can find appreciation in all the work that was completed before we moved in because we've done it too for our renter to enjoy.
Another familiarity that really made us love this new home are the surrounding fruit trees. We have YUGE Fig & Apple trees hanging over our back terrace. The figs have just exited their harvesting season, but the apples are just ripening! AND, we have plum trees throughout the neighborhood. We used to grow Figs and Plums in Florida, so we immediately recognized the trees and fell in love.
But there are still quite a few things that seem unfamiliar and create learning experiences every day. Such as the oven - not only is the temperature gauge in Celsius, but it's also a dial rather than a standard digital oven. I recently learned to pay close attention to that dial and what temperature I set it too. A difference of ten degrees Celsius is not the same in Fahrenheit. So cookies that are supposed to be baking at 190C (375F) could burn if baked at 200C (392F). And they did.😬 If you're doing the math, then you figured out I made three batches rather than the two I mentioned before. 😕 Matt still ate them and liked it. He's perfect, and you can't have him.😜LOL.
In the living room, we have a single air-conditioning unit which will be frequently used during the summer months when the temps rise up to the 80s and 90s. Fahrenheit, that is. Throughout the apartment, you'll find radiators in each room that will keep us warm when the city decides to start running the hot water through them. *scratching head* I'm still trying to figure that one out. Sunday morning was our first morning after sleeping in our new beds, and I snuck out of bed like a ninja (right Matt? 😉) to go make some coffee and take care of the dogs. It's FREEZING in the apartment because our heating source has not been activated yet by the city of Sofia, so I'm wrapped up in blanket on the couch watching some TV. About an hour later, Matt gets up (which is incredibly unusual for him). He is rarely seen sleeping in later than me. He sees me on the couch freezing and asks me why I haven't turned on the heater. *points to the A/C* In my dumbfounded voice, "Ummmmm...because that's the A/C......" He says, "No, it's a heater too." And I'll be damned if he was right! SO, now I make coffee AND turn on the heater in the morning. Lessons learned.
For now, we are settling in by exploring the new neighborhood around us and making what's unfamiliar to us now become familiar. Right now, we are making our home. 👪❤️