Yesterday when my mom and I were heading back to Edmonton we took a detour and visited the subdivision in Cooking Lake where we used to live. I hadn't been there is quite some time but I do dream about it occasionally. I found that visiting an old home has a surreal quality about it. For the amount of time I'd been away it hadn't changed as much as I'd expected it to.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to see my old house because it is hidden away in the bush. I think it's better that way anyway because it would just make me sad to see it not as I remembered. My fathers ashes are planted there underneath an evergreen tree and I'd be really sad to find someone had cut it down for a christmas tree or something. If the house is gone it will just remind me that it was not as important to whoever knocked it down is it was to me.

I would enjoy hearing other peoples thoughts on the house/place/town that they grew up in and how they feel about it now.

We often drive past my old neighbourhood and it is really weird to see other people living in houses of our friends and the new buildings etc.

Mum still owns the house I grew up in, though she doesn't live there and it is on the market. Yes, both it and my secondary school (and friends from it) still pervade my dreams fairly regularly. Probably less so than my Gran's old house which was sold when I was 11. That single building has probably had more of an impact on the whole family than anything else.

It was sold again recently for some exhorbitant price.

I'm now living about 10 miles from my old high school, and maybe 20 from the house I grew up in. Every now and then I drive past it, and it looks basically the same - a bit different in the landscaping, but not much else. The stunner is that the property my parents bought for $25k in 1961 is now going for $350+. :eek: :jawdrop:

It was kinda neat, coming back after about 15 years elsewhere. I still know my way around all my old shortcuts. The overall area has changed, but not drastically.

I live in the apartment I grew up in (parents moved out and I kept it), and I work in the hospital I was born in. Freaky, ain't it?

I used to live in a small mountain village, one of a few places in Ireland where Gaelic was exclusively spoken, but sadly this has now become a holiday home to people that refuse to speak anything other than English. The beautiful landscape is still there but now features horror's such as McDonalds, KFC ect to please the new residents that can afford the land there.

We moved around to several places from the time I was born up until I was six so I don't really feel strongly connected to any of them.

After that we lived in one house for 18 years until I bought my own home (in the same subburb) - at which time my parents decided that it just wouldn't do for me to have a nicer home than them (although they won't admit that is the reason why they moved) so they finally took advantage of the fact that they have moved considerably up the wealth/class scale over the years and went and bought a beauty of a house in the most prestigeous area of our subburb.

Our home for that 18 year period was a nearly 100 year old converted farmhouse that had the city grew outwards and enveloped. It was old and creaky, the basement was rough and unfinished and leaked huge pools of water whenever it rained, there was only one bathroom, and it was on one of the main streets of town so pulling out of the driveway was a major pain.

It was in pretty bad shape when my parents bought it but they managed to fix it up quite nicely and given their being relatively poor when they bought it I would have to say that it served us quite well.

Given that we only moved about four years ago it really isn't enough time for us to feel particularly nostalgic, proximity and the fact that both of our houses are considerably nicer probably helps in that regard. We do drive by it occassionally and it looks pretty much unchanged although it is obvious that the new owners are not keeping the place up to my mother's standards.

Well let's see here. I was born at the big Kiser Hospital in Anihem Hills (sp), CA...and was raised at our old house in Buena Park, CA for 15 years.

After we moved to UT, I was stuck at the house my parents currently live at for about 4 years wich is when I moved out of thier house and in to my apartment.

I wish I had over $400,000.00 (which is around how much my dad sold our old house in CA for) so I could buy our old house back and raise my kids in it. It was a good house in a pretty good neighborhood. :rolling:

I live about 200 meters from the place I used to live in. It's actually a house that was built by my grandfather. We sold it and moved away when my parents got divorce. The house was pretty problematic anyway and in need of a big renovation. It was a nice place to grow up in though. It has not even changed all that much, they've moved a few big stones from the yard and taken down the raspberry bushes out in the back but other than that it's pretty much as it used to be from the outside. I've never seen it from the inside since I moved away though but I assume it has changed a lot from the inside.

I grew up in a few places, but most from when I was 6 to about 16, was in Ireland, in the middle of nowhere, it was a crap place, with sh*tty people, sh*tty weather, and nothing to do. I can't believe how backward the place was, but most of Ireland is backward anyway. Total hole, same with the capital city, it is a dive, full of crime, aids, filth, racism, beggars, thieves, unpleasant people, etc, okay, so everywhere is like that I hear you say, but I live in a bigger city in England now, and it doesn't even compare. I always hear people go on about how beautiful the 'Emerald Isle' is, but the reality of it, is that it's a dump, in my opinion of course.

Always here. Just across the street until I was 9 years old.