I am so grateful that I was able to take my 2-week vacation (the first one in 15 years) at the beginning of August, thanks to much planning, an awesome staff, accessible technology (email and FB), and many, many gracious clients. I wanted to take a minute to share with you the backstory on my recent trip…
About 20 years ago, my husband took me to Germany (where he was raised) to introduce me to his family & celebrate his father’s 60th birthday. When you visit family oversea, you don’t have much time to be a “tourist”; so I didn’t end up seeing much of Germany, other than his hometown, before coming back to Canada. As we sat down for our returning flight, my husband said “Jennifer, don’t worry; I will bring you back to Europe in the next year or so and we can just travel together.”
Oh, well…You know how you can’t plan your life… Fast forward 20 years – 20 awesome years of raising children, building my practice & having a lot of fun, mind you – alas, we totally forgot about this promise of returning to Europe.
At the beginning of this year, my husband said to me “my father is celebrating his 80th birthday”. Then, it clicked to both of us – oh, boy! It’s been 20 years! So my spouse and I planned this trip.
After 12 days of traveling to London (England), Paris (France) and Munich (Germany), one thing was very clear to me – I love Canada! Every tour guide told me “every young European man (and woman)’s dream is to go to America (or Canada – they always quickly change it when they discover I am from Canada) to experience the American dream.”
On a regular day like today, I tend to forget that I am living someone else’s dream life, just by the act of living in Canada. I am so grateful that I am not only living someone’s dream life, but also regularly making people’s dream lives reality for them, through my work as an immigration lawyer.
I would like to use this opportunity to thank all my family, friends, staff, and clients for allowing me to take an awesome trip to Europe (20 years in the making!), which has allowed me to realize how lucky I was to wake up in Canada this morning! I hope you share my good fortune of being in Canada today, as well.
– Jennifer Roggemann