expat

I don't have a car here. Actually, neither of us have our driver's license for The Netherlands. I honestly don't miss having a car at all. I love public transportation and even when I had a car, I always tried to pawn off driving on someone else. 

Today's topic was almost enough to derail my efforts on the second day of the challenge! You see, I am not a fruit person. I much prefer vegetables and I am more of a savory person then a sweet one. If I do eat a fruit, it has to be something relatively exotic for me to enjoy it. I'm not sure if it is the taste of things like mangoes, star fruit, and dragon fruit that I like or that it is not run of the mill. I may need to examine this further. Anyways, here are some mangoes, taken at my local supermarket. Yes, we have grocery stores here in The Netherlands. 

Sure, today is Valentine’s Day, but it is also my half-birthday so, I will let you judge which one is more important.

Yesterday, I received some rather awesome news in the post! Just 2 weeks, after turning in all required paperwork to apply for my visa, I was granted my wish! That's right, I can now stay here with The Verlo- for at least a year! Words can not describe how elated I feel! I can also now look for a job here, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. 

Forgive me readers for I have sinned, it has been about 3 weeks since my last post. An eternity in internet years, I know. It is just that I have been busy, moving and building Ikea furniture.  Plus, apparently it takes almost a month to transfer you internet here, so I am without until the 11th.

I can hardly believe it, I leave a month from today to go live in Utrecht, The Netherlands. It feels like it took a long time to get to this point, but it also feels like everything is happening so fast. I am sure this month will be a blur. There is so much to do! 

When you are preparing to move some place new, especially abroad, it is important to do your research. Often, the idea of the city in your head is not going to match reality. Loek tried to tell me about Holland in the Summer. He told me all about how our home would not have AC and neither does his office. In my Southern mind, I could not imagine. I was convinced that I was going to die of heat exhaustion. I knew it was bound to be colder there than here. But no air, the Dutch must be insane.

I think I have mentioned a few times that I am a worrier. I am almost always in a panic about something. I don't want to be this way, I just am. So you can imagine what my blood pressure was like in the weeks leading up to the Debt Ceiling Deadline. That's right, full on panic tizzies about what Congress was going to do and how that would effect the exchange rate when I was ready to move. 

A few weeks ago, I posted about how I was planning on taking my sweet cat Atticus with me to Holland. I wrote about how I was planning on being courteous to the other passengers by storing my baby below. After some intense research and reading countless horror stories, I have decided to hell with the people on the plane I will only see for 9 hours of my life, my baby is coming with me.

I have been remiss at my duties dear readers. I haven't been keeping you all as up to date in everything that is going on with my preparations of becoming an expat. I am sincerely sorry for this. Things have just been pretty hectic lately and work has been really stressing me out. You see, last week I changed positions and have been slowly transitioning my clients over to other people in preparation for my departure. It is absolutely necessary, but has really been taking its toll on me, because I allow myself to get too emotionally involved.