Step Two or Hollywood might have actually had the right answer for once!

David and I have been married for 13+ years. We have spent all of them talking about living overseas “for a bit.” Three weeks ago, I finally had it.

“Are we ever ACTUALLY going to do this? ‘Cuz if not, I’m done talking about it. Seriously. Either we are or we aren’t. It’s either on the table and we start making plans, or it’s off the table and we never give it another thought. Which is it?”

To my shock and awe, David’s reply wasn’t “Let’s forget about it.” Instead he approached the subject like he does all major topics - he identified the biggest obstacle, in this case the same one that has stopped us in our oversea-tracks for the last 10 years.

“What would we do with the house?”

Because David and I have always assumed we would move overseas for a period of 3-5 years (I have no idea where we got that figure), it was a legitimate concern. I have always been in favor of renting out our house, he in selling it outright. Therefore, when this topic has come up in the past, we have immediately found ourselves at an impasse and the subject has been “tabled” (aka totally dropped).

But all those previous conversations had taken place before I saw the movie, “The Holiday” staring Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz. (It’s pretty cute, so if you haven’t seen it, I recommend it – Jude Law is also in it and the risk of developing "a little Jude Law Crush,” as my friend called it, is quite high.) In this movie (I promise I am not spoiling it for you if you haven’t seen it yet) two women exchange homes for the holidays – one lives in England and the other in California. So, for kicks and grins I googled “home exchange” and low and behold up popped a number of websites offering listings of home exchanges throughout the globe!

The site we first visited and later joined was Global Home Exchange (listed under the links to the right). They have a tab for “long term exchanges” where we discovered there are actually people (French people no less!) who want us to live in their home for a year while they live in ours. Et Voila! C’est parfait, n’est pas? With the house problem solved, it was on to step three.