Lessons Learned in 1 Year

As we start our second year here in the Netherlands, I find myself reflecting on what I have learned since moving. So I bring you...

Noel's Top Ten Big Learnings:

10. My students are smarter and better than a lot of adults. My students are Third Culture Kids. TCKs are children who have spent more time living outside their birth country than living in it. They are exposed to and adapt to an ever-changing student body, different cultures and many view points. They are some of the most  versatile, resilient, open-minded, caring, welcoming (of new children, cultures and languages) people I have ever met. I am constantly in awe at their ability to accept people not of their faith, gender, skin color and traditions into their world. Adults need to look at these kids, and learn from them. I am encouraged that TCKs will someday run the world. They get it.

9. Though my own children, by definition, are not TCKs, I am thrilled they are influenced by TCKs everyday in school.

8. In the eyes of my children, the world has grown exponentially. As one of them told me last year about his first day of school, "I didn't know that Israel, Japan, China and Korea existed until my first day of school."

7. In my eyes, I have found how truly small the world is. Within this last year, we have experienced the following:

• Almost every time we have been at Schiphol International Airport (Amsterdam's airport), we have run into someone we work with, someone we teach, or one of the boys' friends.
• We ran into a colleague over the summer in Galway, Ireland.
• Brett ran into a student he taught last year in the Dublin, Ireland airport.
• When we went glacial skiing in Zermatt over the summer, the Italian side was open. So we skied over to Italy. Upon entering the cable car, Brett ran into a student he taught at Vail Mountain School 2 years ago.
• In a circa 1960's VW Van, in the middle of Morocco, on the way to a Camel Ranch, we ran into an American family, with children the same age as ours. They live in Amsterdam, about 30 minutes away from where we live. We have since become friends.
• Our Moroccan / American / Amsterdam friends introduced us to an Irish family that moved to Amsterdam the same time we did. Their surname is the same surname of my Great-Grandmother. We have since become friends. 

6. I never need to ride a camel again. 

5. You can put me in any city, and as long as I have a map of public transportation, Google Maps on my iPhone, and Brett, we can get anywhere.

4. I enjoy my bike. Now, I consider myself quite lazy. I don't like to work out. And I don't work out unless it is a hidden work-out. For example, I don't hike to work out. I hike to be outside and I know that when I do hike, I usually find clarity. I don't ski because it's a good work out. I ski because it gives me pure unadulterated happiness. I bike because I don't have a car. But I really enjoy the pace, the solitude (unless the boys are fighting) and being outside (unless it is bad weather). This was a surprise to me.

3. I don't care how much solitude biking gives me, I don't enjoy biking in the rain, sleet or snow. It is the opposite of "I heart it". I mean face it.

2. I don't fit into clothes here in the Netherlands...or shoes.

1. I can do it. Whatever it is. I can do it.



 

Throwback

Recently, I was in an American/British import grocery store and I noticed a case of Pepsi Throwback with "retro packaging"...but I remember it as being just normal Pepsi packaging in the 70's and 80's. Yesterday we came home from a trip in the Swiss Alps - this too was a throwback, as I found myself staring in some of the famous ski movies of yesteryear...and remembering why I truly love being a mountain girl.

Cool, fresh, mountain air welcomed us as we stepped off the train in Zermatt. And so did the rain. Zermatt is car-less, so you either walk everywhere, or take little electric run, golf-carts-on-steroids taxis. We figured, hey, we are mountain people, it's only a 15 minute walk to our place, let's walk. So walk we did - with our luggage and our 2 boys that morphed into complaining beings almost instantaneously. We walked up, and then we walked up, and then we walked up, and then it started to rain, and then we walked up. Biking to work and back every day this year did not help prepare us for mountain hills with 2 complaining boys and luggage in tote. The Matterhorn, or rather part of the Matterhorn, as it was partially enshrouded in clouds, rewarded us as we peaked the final hill to our apartment. It was striking. And I thought, I am home.

We spent the following days playing in the alps. Muscles that had been asleep for the past year were rudely awoken from their slumbers. Each night we collapsed in fits of exhaustion that only mountain living can give you. Yet, we woke up the next day asking for more.

Beautiful Zermatt 

Where we stayed

The cog rail train: Gornergrat Bahn 

At 10,134 feet

On our hike up the Matterhorn Trail.

We went skiing, for the first time in a year. We were all giddy with anticipation. We rented gear the day before, got up early, ate a skiers breakfast - egg, bacon and cheese sandwich, and marched to the lift with the rest of the skiers- mostly ski racers in summer training. We didn't make it far before I found myself staring in several of Warren Miller ski bloopers. One forgets the awkwardness of ski gear, and having to carry it. One also forgets that even though in the summer, it is cold at 12,000 feet, so that is what you dress for, it is summer at the base of the mountain. So one gets very hot.

We didn't have a foot out of the rental shop's door before my children accosted me, accusing me of dressing them too warmly. There is nothing more picturesque and endearing than watching a family waltz off to the ski runs in summer while the children complain. There is nothing funnier than watching said family scramble their way into a gondola, and having one child trip and fall into the gondola - skis, poles and all coming down into a perfect face plant. Nothing funnier, that is, unless it is you this is happening to. We finally settled into a beautiful 35 minute ride up steep slopes.

Now I am no fan of heights. I get awful vertigo, and as we reached the top of the gondola, it dawned on me, slowly and painfully, that we were not at the top. To my absolute horror, I discovered that to get to the ski area, we needed to take the cable car up the Klein Matterhorn (small Matterhorn). Unfortunately for me, and according to Zermatt, it is the highest cable car in the world. It passes over a massive glacier before scaling a ridiculously steep peak. The terminal at the top is a concrete opening built directly into the mountain's face.

Klein Matterhorn, in all it's horrific beauty and steepness. 

The glacier we rode over.

It was real hard not to think how an evacuation would take place in one of these things. Because, of course, my mind always goes to worse case scenario. 

I tried to be as cool as Glen Plake in the "Blizard of Aahhh's" while going up. Imagining his thumbs up after his magnificent backhand spring over the crevasse - but to no avail. I am just not Plake material when it comes to heights.  

The tunnel in which we had to walk after the cable car ride... the literal and figurative light at the end.  

I made it, despite my almost paralyzing fear. And at the other end of the tunnel, we were met with a cloudless sky, sunshine and amazing terrain.

Please notice the lifts - you will need that visual in a moment. 

I'd like to say that our Warren Miller blooper moments ended with the crash into the gondola, and the breakdown we (i.e. one of the boys, OK and my internal breakdown on the cable car - but I kept that to myself) had in the tunnel - alas, it did not. The lifts that were open on the Swiss side were T-bars. And those moments on the T-bar seriously could have been lifted out of the movies. It took Henry and I several failed attempts to grab and successfully hold on to the T-bar, and then Henry fell on his face part way up the lift. We stayed on the Italian side after that, and rode the easier to get on/off cable car.  

Skiing was an absolute soul lifting, unadulterated happy experience and I smiled and giggled the entire time we were up there - and it wasn't because we were above 12,000 feet and the air was thinner. 

Despite our blooper moments, and my inability to channel Plake coolness, it was a good day. A throwback day to spring skiing in Vail - with a Swiss/Italian twist. 

Apres Skiing - Zermatt style

Cheers, 

Noel

Some more pictures from our trip to Switzerland: 

The town of Thun

The town where Brett's mom's family is from.

Amsoldingen 

Out our hotel window in Thun.

Prison in Thun Castle

Thun

Thun

Significance in a Napkin

I'm reading a book now, The Expats, by Chris Pavone. The book was released soon after Brett and I made the decision to move to the Netherlands. I wanted to read it, hot off the shelves, but I was concerned it would taint my own ideas of the experiences of expat life. So I waited. I'm glad I did. Within the first couple of pages, with the exception of this being a spy novel about a women running away from a past CIA life, which I'm not doing, I felt this novel could be my story.

The main character, Kate, at one point reminisces about how she used to be able to distinguish immigrants immigrating to the US in airports by looking at their faces of worry and bewilderment, "clutching handfuls of red or green passports that set them apart from the blue-passported Americans." She is struck with this memory, as she herself, finds her family in the middle of a foreign airport "clutching her family's blue passports, distinct from the German's burgundy..." It is at this moment, that she realizes she is an immigrant, immigrating. This scene struck me speechless (if you can be struck speechless while doing something singular like reading a book) - because I distinctly remember the feeling that Kate had when realizing that she was an island of blue among an ocean of burgundy passports.

I am an immigrant.

I've never really given napkins a second thought. I've used them, and then tossed them away. I may have admired a cute design on a napkin, but I never looked twice at one and noticed what it symbolized. Never, until yesterday.

As I walked into my staff lounge yesterday afternoon, ready to enjoy the festive atmosphere that rang throughout the building all day celebrating the upcoming Queen's Day and her abdication of the thrown, my eyes caught sight of an orange napkin with the names "Beatrix" and 'Willem Alexander" and the date "30-04-13" written on it. At that moment, I was hit with this awesome wave of clarity - I was here to witness the passing of a monarch - a long standing, deeply routed and loved establishment within this nation. I was struck with this immense sense of pride and respect toward my adopted country, and it was at that moment, I didn't feel like an immigrant anymore.

My thoughts then shifted to the countless Fourth of July celebrations I've been a part of; the number of American Flag napkins I've used and thrown away without a second thought. And I was almost left breathless. I wondered how immigrants in the US experienced their first Fourth of July. Did they, like me, look on with astonishment at how people celebrate their history and hopefully feel part of the party?

Part of my school's mission is to instill international mindedness into our students. However, I think it is me, that has had a lesson in international mindedness this week.

I may never never look at a napkin the same again.

Cheers,

Noel


Queen's Day Pictures:

The napkin of reflection