Change. Part of life. And a healthy part of life at that. Flitting through my draft posts I found the post below, written in the summer of 2016. Since writing it we have moved from the west of the Netherlands to the east. Our life now couldn’t look more different to the life then. Sometimes you leap, not quite knowing what will happen but doing it anyway and it turns out to be the best jump of your life. Something to bear in mind as the expat moving season creeps nearer.
You know the saying ‘A change is as good as a rest’? Well, I think I can get on board with that at the moment. My family is potentially facing a crossroads and at this moment in time we have no idea where that road will take us, but the thought of it alone has brought me to a few realisations. The biggest one is that I welcome a change. I hope the decisions we make over the coming months do bring about a big change in our lives. It’s due.
Expat life is usually all about change. My expat life, however, hasn’t seen much change in a long time. I moved to the Netherlands in 2000 from England. We bought the house we currently live in in 2002. Yep, we’ve lived in the same house for nearly 14 years and that is not something you normally associate with being an expat. However, I am the only expat in our house, so it’s a whole different type of ‘expat life’ to many others living overseas.
But right now, I hear murmurs and whispers around me from expats who have new countries on the horizon. I see photos of new homes popping up in my Facebook timeline.
We just watched the series Marseille on Netflix and I was reminded of how much I love the French language. I am reminded of a world out there.
I like the Dutch language too. Life is not terrible where we are, far from it. But it is becoming stagnant. A broken record. And little things are becoming bigger. The drips that are filling the bucket.
Some days I’m fed up of living life in a second language. I’m done with it. I want to talk without having to think about what I am going to say beforehand.
My kids go to a school with class sizes that are seemingly growing faster than the budgets or resources can keep up with. There’s much talk at the moment about the state of Dutch public schooling. It worries me.
My husband called the police again today because of teenagers hanging about where they shouldn’t be, spray painting walls and rolling joints. He was verbally threatened. As usual.
And don’t get me started on the neighbours – that is a story for a rainy day in the future. One day I’m sure I’ll laugh about it. But not right now.
There’s a police helicopter flying around the skies above our heads more times than you ever want to see a police helicopter flying above your head. Two gun incidents within a ten minute walk from us within a few weeks. And ours is a safe neighbourhood. We certainly don’t live in a ‘probleemwijk‘ and yet there are problems everywhere – and no money from public funds to sort them out.
I know this is probably a phase. The ‘just more than fifteen years in one place’ itch maybe? Maybe tomorrow I will feel differently again. Is this another phase of culture shock that no one warned me for? I don’t feel homesick, I feel like I’m standing still.
I know that things can be a lot worse. I know it. But I am sure they can be a lot better too, that we can give our children something better. External factors will determine what’s next for us, but we of course have a say in planning the route ahead.
Many of the huge towering trees that line my neighbourhood streets are slowly being felled around us. They were planted in the seventies and eighties when the neighbourhood was created and they have grown too big; they are pushing up the paving slabs, blocking the light from many houses and causing humps and bobbles in the roads. They have outgrown the streets they have grown on. I know how they feel.
It’s time for a change. My feet are restless. And it’s the first time in nearly sixteen years that I have truly seriously contemplated leaving the Netherlands.
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