Posted in Adventures Big & Small, Albert Heijn, Change, Culture, Crosscultural, Intercultural & Multicultural, Expat Life, Expat Transitions & Change, Family & Friends, First Year Blur, Light Bulb Moments, New to Nederland, The Animals, tagged Albert Heijn, balancing act, bravery, cat, change, Charley, courage, expat life, expat transition, isolation, limbo, loneliness, Netherlands, new expat, tightrope, walk the ledge on April 28, 2012 | 20 Comments »
It was a chance encounter yesterday on a crowded street that sent me back in time. As I turned the corner onto our nearby shopping street affectionately known as ‘the Fred,’ I caught a snippet of conversation. The young woman was seated at one of the outside tables of a local restaurant, twirling her forefinger along [...]
Posted in Adventures Big & Small, Culture, Crosscultural, Intercultural & Multicultural, Expat Life, Family & Friends, Netherlands, New to Nederland, Travel, United States, tagged adventure, California, expat, ICTY, living overseas, Netherlands, The Hague, US on December 28, 2011 | 10 Comments »
Earlier this week we had a wonderful celebration of sorts. Despite being late December, we weren’t celebrating the Dutch Second Christmas (Tweede Kerstdaag) or the British Boxing Day. Instead, we were celebrating the end of Bryan and Danielle’s (current) adventure in Nederland. I first heard from Danielle back in the summer when she contacted me [...]
Posted in Emotional Resilience, Expat Life, Expat Transitions & Change, Expats in Motion, Family & Friends, Netherlands, New to Nederland, Writing, tagged 4 Kids 20 Suitcases and a Beagle, blogging, Gidday from the UK, Isolated Internationals, Note from Lapland, Perking the Pansies, Seven Links Project, wordgeyser on July 18, 2011 | 12 Comments »
I’d been away from Twitter for a few days and was over there checking things out. Suddenly I saw a hot new tweet from my fun friend Jack over at Perking the Pansies. Jack (who retired early and lives in Bodrum, Turkey with life partner and talented new pop music composer Liam) had just tweeted and [...]
Posted in Adventures Big & Small, Culture, Crosscultural, Intercultural & Multicultural, Dutch Life, Expat Life, Expat Transitions & Change, Family & Friends, First Year Blur, New to Nederland, Writing, tagged discipline, distractions, expat life, manuscript, perspective, point of view, settling in, writing on July 14, 2011 | 8 Comments »
I changed my point of view recently, and it’s changed my perspective. Literally. You see, I’ve finally moved back to my desk in our guest room. I’d set up my desk and writing area when we moved into this house two years ago (two years!), but didn’t make good use of it. At first it [...]
Posted in Adventures Big & Small, Family & Friends, Netherlands, New to Nederland, Travel, tagged Amsterdam, big city, tourists on June 17, 2011 | 6 Comments »
A couple weeks ago I spent the day in Amsterdam, showing my elderly parents some of the sights of this vibrant, busy city. Two distinctly unrelated things struck me. Today I’m going to share the first with you. Simply put, we were all amazed at exactly how bustling A’dam was. Now I fully understand why two [...]
Posted in Adventures Big & Small, Change, Dutch Life, Expat Life, Expat Transitions & Change, Expats in Motion, Netherlands, New to Nederland, United States, tagged emotional resilience, expats-to-be, five phases of expat transition, moving to the Netherlands on June 2, 2011 | 2 Comments »
Since this blog began a little over 7 months ago, I’ve been contacted by three different Americans who were planning to move here to Nederland this year. These women (and their families) are not aspiring expats; they are expats-to-be, in that the commitments are made, jobs accepted (and wrapped up back in the US), movers [...]
Posted in Adventures Big & Small, Change, Culture, Crosscultural, Intercultural & Multicultural, Dutch Life, Exercise & Sports, Expat Life, Expat Transitions & Change, Expats in Motion, Life Balance, Netherlands, New to Nederland, Travel, United States, tagged expat community, expat culture shock, explore, Netherlands, settling in on March 5, 2011 | 2 Comments »
Okay, welcome back to sharing with an inbound expat info and experience gleaned while living in Nederland. If you happened to miss it, here’s the first installment of sharing the expat wealth from two days ago. Just a quick reminder that these are my views, based on my research, experiences, and conversations with many others. People choose to live outside [...]
Posted in Adventures Big & Small, Change, Culture, Crosscultural, Intercultural & Multicultural, Dutch Life, Expat Life, Expat Transitions & Change, Expats in Motion, Life Balance, Netherlands, New to Nederland, United States, tagged Amsterdam, Dutch life, expat, expat advice, moving to the Netherlands on March 3, 2011 | 10 Comments »
of info and experience, that is. Today I’m going to do something a little different. I was contacted by a reader who is an inbound ’expat-to-be’. (Yay!) She’s a young mom of a one-year old, relocating to Amsterdam soon due to her husband’s work, and asked for any advice. Briefly I told her the following: As she [...]
Posted in Culture, Crosscultural, Intercultural & Multicultural, Dutch Life, Expat Life, Holidays, Light Bulb Moments, Netherlands, New to Nederland, tagged Christmas lights, Christmas tree, decorations, economies of scale, supply and demand, wreath on December 16, 2010 | 9 Comments »
Last year was our first Christmas in Nederland. As such, it was important to me to try to instill some normalcy in what had essentially been an unremitting onslaught of change in the six months since we’d arrived. And the six months prior to our arrival as well. We’d almost become ‘changed-0ut’. Now we can [...]
Posted in Adventures Big & Small, Change, Dutch Life, Netherlands, New to Nederland, Travel, tagged change, Den Haag, Dutch, expat, Holland, Netherlands, travel on November 22, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
The first time you arrive somewhere, anywhere, you’re seeing it through fresh eyes. Sometimes when I’m driving around Den Haag, through the Dutch countryside, or close to Amsterdam, I’m transported back to the first time I saw it all. It was not quite two years ago, when Son, Daughter and I came to visit Husband. [...]
Posted in Adventures Big & Small, Change, Expat Life, Light Bulb Moments, Netherlands, New to Nederland, Travel, tagged change, expat, live abroad, move overseas, Netherlands, travel on November 22, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
I am frequently asked by other expats, Dutch acquaintances and even strangers how we came to be living here in Nederland. Why did we decide to move from our home country to live abroad? Why did we choose to become expats? In an earlier post, I explained briefly that we moved here from the East Coast [...]
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