Two of my really great friends (N. and B.)  from Washington DC got married last weekend. Cheers you two!

This was a wedding I was sad to miss it but it wasn't until I stalked Facebook on Monday (and Tuesday) obsessively I might add that I realized how sad I was to have missed it. And as a side note: really, none of my friends who went to the wedding aside from M. could be bothered to post even a few pictures?! What is this world coming to?

Don't get me wrong, living abroad is pretty great but it's not always easy. Duh. Still there are some hard things about living abroad (and not having the time or money to do everything).  One of the hardest things for me has been missing these big moments in my friends lives--namely, weddings and now babies as well.

Sure when I moved to Bulgaria, I knew I was going to miss things <!--more-->but I also knew that much of my life in Washington DC was routine.  It's not as if my friends get married every weekend.

Now two years into my adventure abroad, I've missed at least half a dozen weddings. The first one I thought: oh, that's too bad.  Before the second one I was struck by the <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=snarky">snarky</a> thought: well, at least I don't have to buy a dress, an airplane ticket, rent a hotel room and buy a gift. But the day of the wedding, I was sad to miss it. The same feeling of sadness has struck me on or before every subsequent wedding.

Still it was this most recent wedding that really got me thinking about friends, my life in the States, the value of celebrations, and the choices that you make when you decide to live abroad. It's hard to know that a celebration is going on without you and that you can't be there. (Even though I was soothed by the thought that even if I had tickets I wouldn't have gotten there thanks to a volcano spewing ash over most of Europe.)  But I do know that there will be other moments that I do get to celebrate with these friends and this makes it a little bit easier not to be there now.

So that's that. When you live abroad, you miss things--sometimes you miss things that you desperately wish you weren't missing but there's not a lot you can do about that. And the thing is this is a problem that doesn't really have a solution.  I simply could not be there no matter how much I wanted to be.  I've got commitments here in Sofia.  But isn't not all bad.

Hard? Yes.

But bad? No way.

I mean, this month I was in Mocorro and next month I'm going to Paris. Not that this makes up for missing the wedding. It just makes it a little easier.

Anyhow, no need to cry for me. I am clearly doing okay. I am just rambling about weddings, friends and living abroad.