We raised our daughter in China and Cambodia. Now she's not sure she wants to leave Los Angeles.

The author's family moved to China and Cambodia for four years.Courtesy of the authorI still think about the years my family spent living in China and Cambodia.My daughter remembers very little of our life abroad because she was so young.

Her attachment to home has made me rethink my own ideas about adventure and belonging.I showed my daughter a video of her gnawing on a chicken claw, back when we lived in China. "Eww," she says, annoyed that I'm asking her to look away from Roblox."

Do you remember this?" I ask. She shakes her head.

Another memory lost.My daughter doesn't remember much about the years we lived abroad. She was just 3 when my husband and I decided to leave Los Angeles for China, then Cambodia.

Now she's almost 10. We've been back in Los Angeles since she was 5, when the pandemic changed our plans.She has been forgetting the things she lovedWhen we first got back, she hated her car seat.

"I want a tuk-tuk!" she'd yell from the backseat.The author's daughter is starting to forget the things she loved when she was little.

Courtesy of the authorBut now I'm not sure she'd be able to tell me what a tuk-tuk is, let alone remember riding in one. She's forgotten the temples, the ruins, and the bat caves. There's more pressing stuff filling her mind: a friend's birthday party, getting to the next level in gymnastics, and acing her next math quiz.

She doesn't think about our life abroad, even though my husband and I can't stop thinking about it.We hadn't planned on moving to China, but it was the first job offer that came in after my husband, a music teacher, sent résumés to schools around the world. We were so eager to leave that we didn't care where we landed, just that it was far away.

Moving abroad was nothing new for us. We'd met at a jungly yoga class in Bali and spent our first years together living out of cheap hotel rooms across Asia. Living this way felt like we'd found a cheat code on life.

While everyone back home dealt with mortgages and credit card deb