Five Years Later - Expat Life
We’ve lived in the Netherlands for five and a half years now. It’s amazing how time flies. Not to mention the two plus years where the world pretty much came to a halt just two years into our stay. Time is weird and it’s funny that the pandemic almost feels just like a bad memory now. Life seems, for the most part, pretty much back to normal.
When are you going/coming back?
This question is almost a cliché at this point. You’ll often get asked it by people you meet in your new home city/province/country. Your friends and family back home always want to know as well. How long do you think you’ll stay? Don’t you miss the US? Are you happy???? To be honest it’s a pretty uncomfortable question; for several reasons.
Mostly, there’s this implied guilt. That we don’t care enough about the people we moved away from. The implication that we abandoned them or that they are no longer important. How it’s our fault they don’t get to see us as much as we all would like. This is especially difficult as we both have parents that are getting older and dealing with health issues. From what I gather from other expats, this is almost a universal dilemma.
And then there’s the quality of life, which to be honest, is much better. And people DO NOT like to hear that the USA isn’t the best thing in the world. Obviously the US is a massive country and you can’t paint it all with the same broad strokes, but in general the infrastructure, access to health care, cost of living, access to education, and so much more is better here. For instance, I had a root canal and it only cost me 600€ out of pocket. That and fact that you don’t constantly worry about mass shootings on the regular here.
But really what it all boils down to is that I’m happy with the life we’ve built here. By nature, I’m a restless sort of person. I think that’s part of why I enjoy travel so much. So it’s a bit of a miracle that I’ve found a place to live where I feel so content and where I am not constantly on the lookout for something new. This feeling is new to me. Thinking back over the places I’ve lived before I don’t think I’ve ever had this feeling. I guess it just suits me or maybe I’ve changed over the past five years.
So what’s one to do? Keep living the life that makes you happy and live with the guilt? Do the best you can to make time to travel to see those you left behind? Hope that they will want to see you enough to come visit? This is one of the toughest parts of expat life.
How is expat life going?
Expat life is often funny and frequently challenging. Living in a city like Amsterdam where there is such a large population of expats helps. You’re in a community of people who are going through a lot of the same struggles adapting to a new culture and learning (even the Dutch will admit this) a shitty language.
One of the requirements for getting a permanent (not sponsored) visa to stay here is what they call an inburgeringsdiploma. It’s a diploma stating that you have demonstrated basic language proficiency and cultural knowledge by way of five or six tests. It took me five years and a bunch of work with a tutor, but this year I passed those tests and recently applied to get a permanent visa. Dani is working on hers as well and hopefully she’ll be set before the end of the year. I believe the government is raising the language level difficulty next year from A2 to B1.
We bought a house here in 2020. Yes, during the pandemic. It was an interesting process to say the least. We used a company that specialized in helping expats arrange a mortgage. We used a real-estate agent who specializes in helping expats arrange housing. And despite the fact that everyone at the signing spoke perfectly fine english, we had to hire a translator (UK guy) to be present and officially translate the paperwork we were signing.
I wish we could have had that translator guy present when we bought the new windows for our house though. That process did not go as smoothly. The sales guy wasn’t completely clear and honest about what we were getting and it caused a lot of issues during the process. Mistakes and miscommunications were made and it wound up being a very stressful and unsatisfactory process. Some quite expensive lessons learned there.
Something that has been fairly consistent in my life has been ice hockey. Aside from a few extended absences due to injuries, I’ve been playing hockey consistently for most of my life. The first year we lived in Amsterdam, I found a team to play on. The team has had it’s downs, getting relegated to fifth division, and ups, making the championship game and going back up to fourth division. But the Amsterdam Mustangs are a really good group of people, many who are expats from all over the world. I feel very fortunate to have found a good team.
The future…
As we grow closer to wrapping up on year six, I’m very excited for what’s on the horizon. For now we have no plans to move or leave the Netherlands. We’ve put in a TON of work to get to where we are with our life here. And we’re happy in our home in Amsterdam and plan to stay here for a while.
We’re also really looking forward to more travel and adventures. We’ve barely scratched the surface of exploring Europe. While we’ve always really enjoyed traveling, our new YouTube Vlog venture has really lit a spark for us. We’ve got a bunch of fun trips and adventures, in various stages of planning, mapped out for the next couple of years.
On a professional note, I’m about to make a career shift that I have been dreaming about for years now. I’ll share more about it in a couple weeks, but suffice to say I am beyond excited. And for the first time in twenty some-odd years, I won’t be doing web development.
So yeah, I just wanted to write a bit about how life is going living abroad. It’s almost incomprehensible that it’s already been nearly six year. It’s a fun journey and I’m continuously grateful that the fates set up on this path. Tot volgende keer!
