Homesick

We have been in Thailand for over two years now. Our first term is meant to be 4 years but we plan to return to Australia in December 2010 (3 year and 9 months). I haven't really been too homesick in the last two years. Sure, I'd love to be closer to the beach, have a good affordable steak, good friends who I can have fun with without there being significant language barriers etc. etc. but none of that had me longing for home.

But today I read a prayerletter of a friend who is a missionary returning home after 3 years on the field and planning to remain in Australia for 3 years to do further study (and possibly to return to that country in the future) and felt a bit homesick. We get our fair share of prayerletters from friends who are missionaries. In fact about 10 people in my year at college became missionaries and went overseas. All but 1 or 2 of those missionaries have been back to Australia either for home assignment or some other reason (such as having a baby or attending a wedding). So that's been increasing our homesickness as we read of them being at home and enjoying life back home.

It is probably a good thing that our first term is almost 4 years. If we went back to Australia now, we might now come back. It hasn't been easy over the last 2 years, but they say that it gets easier from about this point on (the 2 year mark). I guess we are seeing hints of that recently. Still we do think about home. Don't know whether it is a case of "it's greener on the other side" though.