FAQ: Why am I staying?
FAQ: Why are you staying? Over the past months I’ve been asked that question frequently. By friends and family, here and at home, locals and strangers. “ What have you found here?” “Was it love or work?” Those were my two options. It was neither to begin with. It was never so clear-cut at all, and I suppose I still don’t know why I’m here. But this place knows something about me that I don’t, and I want to be around when it’s ready to tell me. Becoming a wanderer I always envied those globetrotting cosmopolitans before I became one. I studied in Utrecht with adventurers and expat kids carrying dual citizenship and finding homes in faraway places. I dreamed of taking wing myself. Five years ago I did, and landed on the other side of the globe, where I learnt the scent of fig trees, let the furry arms of redwoods support my clambering bare feet, lost my heart to scores of scruffy people and for the first time, to a different land. California turned me into...