A Nether Ending Story

This is part of a series on dealing with the expat doldrums. I’m writing this for myself as much as for others since the last few weeks have left me feeling listless. Being an expat is an incredible experience. Here’s another way to keep that feeling going. Photo by tostadophoto.com.

Step Five: Have a good cry!

I’m serious. Have a good cry now and then. I find this one highly effective.

For some reason, holding back tears just seems to make it worse and makes me feel like crying even more. When I first moved here, I tried my hardest to “be strong” and pretend like I was facing down this giant change without batting an eyelash. Eventually I realized that letting it all out once in a while can give you a new perspective, or at least a release that you need to keep moving.

Think about it - you’ve left your friends, your family, your language, your comfort zone. Of course it’s stressful! And if crying’s not your thing, go for a good pillow punching session with some angry screaming. It helps.

When I contemplated moving to the Netherlands to be with Thomas and start this whole expat life, I was a little nervous about trying to fit into his space. I’ve lived alone for most of my adult years aside from a few where I lived with an ex-boyfriend. My ex moved into my space and he didn’t bring much with him, which meant I didn’t have to cope with figuring out how to make it all fit. Thomas on the other hand has created a wonderful and inspiring space for himself with a large work area, a minimal and relaxing living area and kitchen, and a quiet bedroom. Then I hit the scene and we’ve been trying to make it work ever since.

It wasn’t really my “stuff” that caused a challenge, but rather me. I didn’t realize how much I would want my own workspace to write and think and study and how much I would want to change things in the kitchen to suit my cooking style. However, it has become apparent that I do, thanks to achey necks from trying to type on the couch and frustrating dinner prep experiences.

The kitchen, which I consider my other creative space, is a work in progress. We’re considering turning a catch-all junk closet into a pantry/art supply closet. Thomas painstakingly installed two planks in the concrete wall to make room for my many cooking oils, vinegars, and sauces, but that’s just the beginning. 

We’re also converting the office into a workspace for two. I bought a desk at IKEA yesterday to help with my achey neck and give me a space to study my Dutch, but it’s temporarily crammed into a corner of the bedroom until we finish the office conversion.

I think the biggest challenge through all of this is learning that it’s okay to speak up for myself and try to make this new home feel like my home. I was nervous at the beginning to broach the subject of making a space for me or moving items around in the kitchen, but I quickly realized the nervousness wasn’t necessary. Thomas, like most people, is excited to hear new ideas about how to redecorate and innovate a space. So often we get in a rut created by the spaces where we work and live and it pays to change things up a bit. Very feng shui.

And so we’re tackling it head-on with some small- and large-scale DIY projects, a few trips to IKEA and Praxis, and a lot of patience. I’ll be documenting the changes here on the blog and on my flickr.

Wish us luck!

Oh, and if you have any blogs you’d like to recommend for inspiration, please comment with the links. Right now we’re digging Apartment Therapy’s Unplggd blog.

This is part of a series on dealing with the expat doldrums. I’m writing this for myself as much as for others since the last few weeks have left me feeling listless. Being an expat is an incredible experience, and here’s another way to keep that feeling going. Photo by thewmatt.

Step Four: Network your way into a new career

Being an expat without fluency in the language of your new home can make you feel less than intelligent. Well, that’s at least how it makes me feel. You’re smart, capable, and interesting, but it can drive you insane not being able to demonstrate that now and again with an in-depth conversation. One way to start tackling this is by learning the language, but you need some immediate relief.

If you’re faced with a big waiting period for a residency permit or something else, use it to catch up on professional development opportunities in your field and current research and literature. I’ve decided to create my own professional development program. Most likely you were too busy in your job back home to keep up, but now’s your chance.

I would also recommend dealing with your LinkedIn profile and other virtual networks as tedious as they are. Use these networks to find professional organizations in your industry. These groups often hold events and can be a great place to meet new people. You can’t shake the right hands if you’re at home in your sweatpants.

I am a certified English teacher in America, but my degree and license mean nothing to potential Dutch employers until I have it converted to standards recognized in The Netherlands. While you have the time, get your credentials converted to your new country’s standards and while you’re at it update your resume to the European-style CV. You can find out what agency governs your industry and how to have your degrees and certifications recognized through Nuffic. Get on this ASAP. The agency governing education in The Netherlands advised me that the entire process takes about eight weeks, assuming you’ve completed everything and supplied the necessary, notarized documentation. It could be longer or shorter for your industry - find out.

You may feel like you have all the time in the world right now, but once you’re cleared for work you’ll want to hit the ground running and having to deal with these issues will do nothing but slow you down. Be ready for the doors to open.

I’ve confronted many new things in The Netherlands. Most of the big shocks haven’t really been all that shocking - more inconvenient than anything else. Like where are all the Ziploc bags? And what do you mean they don’t sell bagged ice at the gas stations? Most of these shocks go over with a sigh and a shrug of the shoulders, but depending on my mood they can be the incendiary for an all-out crying bout. It’s not that I need Ziploc bags so badly I’m going to cry without them. It’s just that some days you aren’t feeling up to the adventure, to facing new and different experiences at every turn. Some days you just want to feel comfortable and know what’s coming next.

So that brings me to number 47 on the list of things I didn’t anticipate: The challenge of watching a movie with some or a large portion of the dialogue in a language other than English. Now, think about this for a second. If you’re a native English speaker and you watch, say, an American or English language film in another country, you’ll hear your language and see the language of the country (Dutch, in this case) at the bottom of the screen. No problem. But what if part of the dialogue in that American movie is in Spanish? The subtitles at the bottom of the screen are still in Dutch, but you don’t know Spanish. Awesome!

Thomas and I capped off our weekend with a date to see Machete in Breda. Most of the film is in English and luckily for me I studied Spanish in school and could catch on to most of the bits of Spanish dialogue, but it’s just something I didn’t anticipate on a trip where I planned to zone out and use as little of my brain as possible. This was the second movie I’ve viewed over here where I dealt with the multiple language “problem.” The first was when Thomas and I decided to watch Munich on DVD. Many scenes in the film were in a number of different languages - Hebrew, Arabic, French - and I found myself poking Thomas to remind him that I needed to know what was going on.

The good thing about all of this is that as I learn more Dutch I can understand more of the Dutch subtitles and try to get a grip on the scene at hand. I’ve been watching a lot of TV to soak up some of the immense time I have on my hands and using it as an opportunity to follow the subtitles and learn new words.

We’ll see how much Dutch I really know when I start my Dutch as a Foreign Language course tonight. My excuse for everything right now is “Ik kom uit Amerika!” Wish me luck.

Tuesday was the shit. It was awesome. Amazing. Anything you can think of that’s good? Tuesday kicked its ass.

Okay, well maybe I’m building up this past Tuesday a little too much and now you’re not going to be very impressed. But rest assured, for this expat it was a breakthrough. All it takes is one good day to turn things around. Recently I’d been feeling “blech,” for lack of a better word. Most of the things I’d been doing to keep myself focused and busy weren’t doing it for me anymore. I was like a baby growing out of my toys and looking for something more interesting, but I wasn’t finding it.

Tuesday started out like any other day for me, with a to-do list and a fight with myself to get in the shower and get ready to do those things on the list. The weather was windy and gray, not the usual forecast that gets me going, but I needed to head into the city center to get things done before an appointment in the afternoon. I hopped on the saddle and headed out with a map Thomas drew for me. You see, I was taking a new route to the city center on my own and despite having followed Thomas along this route a few times, I needed some insurance in case I got lost.

I still got lost a few times, taking wrong turns and missing tunnels (the bike paths, or fietspads as they’re called here, are like their own intricate highway system), but eventually I made it. It felt good to have a new way of getting to the city when my other route, Route 1 I call it, gets boring. Plus, forcing yourself to learn the many possible ways of getting around your new home teaches you the lay of the land and affords you shortcut opportunities, which are always good when the rain starts pouring.

I reached my destination - the Volksuniversiteit of Breda where I signed up for my Dutch course. I felt accomplished! And excited about the course. I pooled this enthusiasm and decided to venture further into the city to buy my textbooks. The bookstore didn’t have it, but they told me another one would. The adventure continued. I have an iPod, but it only runs on wireless connections, so I spent some time trying to search for an open wi-fi connection before trying to search for this bookstore. The name contained one of those gutteral, Dutch “Gs,” which made spelling it problematic. Eventually I located the store on a Google map, but I couldn’t quite figure out how to get to that street. And so I wandered.

Wandering is a good way to get to know any city and while I could have let myself get frustrated about not tracking this bookstore down in seconds flat, I embraced the moment and let myself get lost. I found cute cafes and watched bars loading up beer and kegs for the next night’s parties. I also found the library again, so I walked in. Now, this moment could have brought Tuesday’s awesomeness crashing down upon me. You see, in the Netherlands you have to pay for membership to the library. In addition to an annual membership, you pay a small fee (say, 15 cents) for each item you check out. When the kind librarian explained this to me, I was shocked! How elitist! The library is for the people! It should be free! But, I calmed myself and told her I would think about it. I wanted to check out the materials and see if I felt it was worth my money. I’ll write more about this later, but suffice it to say I came to understand why the libraries charge a fee and didn’t let it ruin my day.

I still couldn’t find this damn bookstore, so I broke down and called Thomas. Of course, like most situations, when I got him on the phone I stumbled upon it. They didn’t have the text, but I reserved it and headed back to retrieve my bike. On the way I saw a stand getting ready to close up shop from the day’s market. I checked the menu above the deli case and saw “seitanbroodje, tempehbroodje, tofu rijstballetje.” Vegetarian snacks! At this point I was close to fainting from all of the biking and walking. I picked up a seitanbroodje and felt like a real Dutch person, walking and snacking. People here do more eating on the go than I’ve ever seen.

The rest of the day included various successes, like meeting new neighbors and walking with them to the store, ordering food in Dutch, finding a wallet in the grocery store and turning it in (good Samaritan points), and my first doctor’s appointment.

All of these things seemed…normal. It was a normal day and for once I felt like a regular person, not a fish out of water struggling to breathe. Feels good.

This is part of a series on dealing with the expat doldrums. I’m writing this for myself as much as for others since the last few weeks have left me feeling listless. Being an expat is an incredible experience, and here’s another way to keep that feeling going. Photo by Manni Babar.

Step Three: Explore and Never Stop Learning

I’m afraid I’m guilty of not having done enough of this myself. I’ve got the bike routes to the city center and market and the nearby shopping center down pat, but it’s time to move on and find new things to learn. I’ve got a list going of little things I want to try: biking to the park to read a book (though I seem to have waited too long for this one since it’s getting colder outside), finding my way around the library to take advantage of all those English texts, taking the bus somewhere interesting, connecting with other expats.

If you find yourself up against a wall without ideas for exploring, make a list of activities and explorations that will afford you opportunities to learn a lot of practical aspects of your new home. Then do them.

Like most adults attempting to learn a second language, I’m having trouble figuring out what method(s) work best for me. I scour the Internet in search of tips, tricks, examples of how to organize a vocabulary notebook, helpful forum postings, etc. But in the end it comes down to scheduling time to learn the language and forcing yourself into situations that afford you opportunities to practice, both of which I’m having trouble doing. Discipline and will-power really aren’t my fortes, but the expat experience, more than any other I think, showers you with chances to poke holes in your character and find ways to improve. So…I’m trying.

Currently I have a copy of Rosetta Stone and I’m finding its beginning lessons to be far too simple, even for my basic knowledge of Dutch. However, I’m sticking to it because I worry I’ll miss something if I skip ahead. As frustrating as it is to re-learn the colors, for example, it is a bit satisfying to feel like I know at least a little Dutch. I spent quite a bit of time before the move learning Dutch through the free (and awesome) online community Livemocha. I plan on getting back into Livemocha to get feedback from native speakers on my writing and pronunciation. While there are a few cons to it (for example, poor quality audio recordings submitted from users), it’s an amazing site with a helpful community of language learners and I highly recommend it.

I’ve also created a vocabulary notebook based on the recommendations in this article. I’ve yet to start using it (discipline, discipline, discipline), but it’s there. Maybe today is the day.

But in the end I think a classroom is where I will really cut my teeth on Dutch. As a teacher and a lover of learning, being surrounded by other students is a great motivator for me. Signing up for a class can be expensive, but the Volksuniversiteit system in the Netherlands is a much less costly option. Roughly translated it is the “people’s university” and locations offer much more than language courses. Just a quick skim of the online catalog for the Volksuniversiteit Breda and I found art and gardening workshops, history and meditation classes, and Dutch grammar refresher courses for native speakers, just to name a few. My heart warmed for the Netherlands a bit more when I read the Wikipedia article (in Dutch) for the Volksuniversiteit: Apparently the government developed the university system as a way to promote life-long learning among its people. Thanks, Netherlands!

I decided on a course that starts a week from today and runs weekly through April with 24 sessions of one and a half hours. The cost is 234 euros, which doesn’t include the 50 euro price for the accompanying book and CD. This is much cheaper than most private language schools and obviously cheaper than private tutoring. But again, in the end, learning a language is about being disciplined enough to spend time learning it. It won’t happen via osmosis. Now, I’m off to work on a page in my vocabulary notebook…

This is part of a series on dealing with the expat doldrums. I’m writing this for myself as much as for others since the last few weeks have left me feeling listless. Being an expat is an incredible experience, and here’s another way to keep that feeling going.

Step Two: Get creative

I enjoy fiber arts like knitting and crocheting, as well as cooking and writing. In America I led the typical life of the overworked, exhausted new teacher and I rarely, if ever, had time for these things. If there’s something you enjoy doing but never had the time, pick it up again and see where it takes you. I seem to have revived my love for knitting and crochet and enjoy curling up with my yarn and a good audiobook (currently it’s “God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything” by Christopher Hitchens) to zone out. Not to mention I’m terrified of the approaching winter here in the Netherlands and can’t seem to make enough hats and scarves.

I’m also trying to write more personal narratives and reflections (like this blog) to find that voice I had in college. As a newspaper reporter writing became my profession, but while it invigorated me in many ways, it also seemed to stifle that creativity for a few years. My new expat life has given room for inspiration to bubble to the surface yet again and just in time.

I gain an incredible amount of inspiration from the people around me, so rope others into cultivating creativity with you. Thomas and I have a number of ideas bouncing around our apartment and most involve ways we can collaborate (his art and design, my writing) and get that high from making something new.

A word of advice (more to myself than you, maybe): Schedule your creative time. In fact, schedule everything. When you have too much time on your hands it’s quite easy to let it slip through your fingers while watching a marathon of “16 and Pregnant” in your sweatpants. And if you’re having trouble getting creative in the first place, check out the concept of writing sprints. I found out about writing sprints through @budtheteacher in my Twitter network and believe it could be applied to any activity (painting, dancing, playing guitar, etc.).

Now go make something!