I grew up in Maryland and married there, and then my husband joined the military. That necessitated a move to New England for a while, then to the Midwest, and we're moving back to the East Coast this spring. It was really hard leaving family and friends, and I haven't been great about meeting new friends in person since then (the longest we've lived in one place has been our current place that we've been in a little over a year, other than that we've been averaging 10 months), but I think part of that was *knowing* that they'd be temporary, so I didn't make a lot of effort to meet people. Our next station will be longer and I'll probably try to get more involved there.
The climate was a bit colder in New England than the mid-Atlantic, and here it's somewhere in-between, but I didn't find it a big deal. We did do a 6-week training in the deep South in November, and that was really interesting because it was so much warmer. A few things that I *did* find very weird for a long time were how *white* that parts of New England and the Midwest I lived in were, at least compared to the area where I grew up and where I had been living. It felt a little like living in Pleasantville or something for a while and was kind of creepy. Also, they call soda/Coke "pop," which either makes me think of lollipops or 50s greasers in leather jackets and slicked-back hair ("sodapop"). But in general, I love my current locale and I'll miss it a lot when we leave. I wasn't as happy with New England, but some of that was due to a landlord we were having issues with, etc., rather than anything being wrong with the locale. And we did have an awesome church there that I still miss.
Leaving family was hard. Our parents *adore* our children, and they're my parents' only grandchildren. At the same time, my parents have a tendency to spoil them and sometimes try to override our attempts to keep things in check, so in some ways it's helped a bit with that (in some ways, it's made it worse, because "this is the last time we'll get to <whatever> during this visit! We don't get to see them much, can't we just treat them to <whatever>?"). I also really miss having freely available babysitters whenever necessary. Since we left home, we've had babysitters twice, I think. The girls did go to a family daycare for about 10-15 hours when we were moving from one base and when we moved onto another, because the base offered it as a benefit when you were arriving or leaving base. They didn't like it, though, and beg not to go back (not because anything was wrong, they're just Mommy's girls and I think felt a little abandoned that I wanted to pack/unpack without them around).
At the same time, there's something exciting and freeing about starting over. You get to start in a new, fresh house. There's the novelty of deciding where to keep everything and how you want stuff set up. Everything seems so brand new. It's fun looking for a new playgroup, library, and church, at least as long as you don't find them and discover they aren't at all what you wanted. Chores are more fun for a while because they're different, as you get used to a new place. It's a great time to purge things you don't want or to make a fresh start with your relationships, yourself, the name you go by, precedents you set with your kids, etc.
