DREARY DAYS AND UNCERTAINTY TURNED INTO REWARDS AND OPPORTUNITIES

A few nights ago I was having a great night’s sleep and, all of a sudden, I started having a dream about Belgium.  That dream caused me to realize that a lot of you may not know that I lived in Europe for five years. And so I thought it would be great to use this week’s tidbits to talk about my experiences living in Belgium, from the time we stepped off that plane to the time we stepped back on that plane to come back to Texas.  We moved to Belgium in December 2006, when I was 13-years-old. On the day we flew out some friends of ours came to say good-bye to us at our hotel and I remember feeling so jealous when my friend told me that she was going to be meeting up with a mutual friend of ours, later that day, to go to a movie. You all must think I’m crazy. I was the one getting to fly across the country, to go live in Europe, and I was jealous because I wanted to stay in Texas and go to the movies with my friends.  But my family and I got on the plane. Since we were moving due to my dad’s job we got to fly business class.  For my 8-year-old sister and me, this in itself was an adventure. We watched movies, ate ice cream sundaes and then fell asleep on our seats that turned into beds.  Landing in Amsterdam, getting into our taxi and seeing our first glimpse of our new home was a shock, because it was so dreary! It was December when I left Texas and December when I arrived in Amsterdam, but December here and December there is quite different. When I left, the weather was cool (but not cold), with sunshine skies.  When I arrived, it was cold and raining with cloudy grey skies. It was only the afternoon and, yet, it looked as if it was 8:00pm or 9:00pm. I remember my first thought being “where have we come?!” and I’m sure my parents and
sister were thinking the same thing.  When we reached our house it was already furnished with rental furniture (something we had received to hold us over until our furniture arrived from
Texas) and so we threw our bags in one room and then went to sleep.  I mean we didn’t know anyone, the weather was too dreary to go exploring, we couldn’t watch TV or anything
because that hadn’t been set up yet and no one wanted to unpack. So we fell asleep at 1:00pm and didn’t wake up until 7:00pm. It was at this point that we decided to be brave and venture
out to a Greek restaurant called Matiate to have dinner. So we ate, drank, laughed and slowly started settling into our new lives as temporary Europeans.  Things got better when my dad’s sister and her three daughters came to visit us from London. Them being with us made us braver and we ventured out to Antwerp via a short train ride from the Kapellen station (Kapellen is the name of the city, in Belgium, that we lived and Antwerp was the major city located about 20 to 30 minutes away).  We walked around, had Belgian waffles and went home
feeling a lot more comfortable and happier about where we would be living for the next few years.  As the months went on, we started becoming more comfortable in our new location and started to feel more “at home”. Of course, there were a few setbacks and things we had to get used to. The language barrier was the biggest issue and so, as soon as we could, my family and I started taking lessons to learn Dutch. We did stop after a year, because we found ways to get by and because I was already learning French and Spanish in school, but that year of lessons did give us enough vocabulary to make our way around and get everything we needed.  It helped that my schooling was in English, that all of our friends spoke English and—through the words we knew and miming the rest—we were able to manage the rest.  School was interesting. Since I had transferred in the middle of the year, it was harder to make friends. And this wasn’t made easier by the fact that a lot of my classmates had grown up together and had been friends since
their preschool years. And then that got me feeling nostalgic for the friends I had grown up with. And had me missing home.  Missing home is something I did for the first couple of
years of my stay in Europe. I lived in Europe for a total of five years and spent 2 of them wishing I was back in the states. Not only did I miss my friends, but I missed all the small things, which—thinking about it now—are quite silly. I missed shops, restaurants and other places being open on Sundays. I missed free refills on drinks and unlimited sauce packets at fast food places. And I missed being able to go places and having the ability to understand everything (because broken Dutch can only get you so far).  But there were so many perks as well. In fact, the perks outweighed the difficulties. Once I settled into school and started making new friends, I began to enjoy it. Going to an international school was so rewarding as it gave me the opportunity to be exposed to many different cultures and taught me to appreciate people of all backgrounds.  I was able to visit countries and cities all around Europe; places I would have never even dreamed of visiting.  I mean Amsterdam was just a two-hour drive away and it was, oftentimes, a place we would just go on a Saturday.  Birthday trips to Italy, anniversary (my parents’) trips to Germany and school holiday trips to France became
the norm in my life. In fact, when I had lived there for a few years and had gone on so many of these trips, I remember telling my friend (who was here in the states) “oh I’m not doing much for my birthday. We’re just going to Venice.”  At such a young age—between 13 and 18 years old—I was able to experience the dream lifestyle. I was able to try so many new foods and restaurants—from that Greek salad I got from Matiate to the amazing Indian food at a
restaurant called Delhi Delicious to the Belgian waffles and the fries (very different from fries you get here) in Antwerp—the food there was such a treat. And I was able to visit places one would read about in books, such as the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. That one, in
particular, was so thought provoking. To be able to see the place where Anne Frank and her family hid during the Holocaust, immediately after reading her diary in class, was nothing short of incredible. But the biggest benefit of being in Europe was the proximity we had to London and India and the ease it took to visit those places. I was able to spend a lot more time with my grandparents, more than I would have if I hadn’t ever moved there, which was such a blessing since they all passed away within a few years of us moving back to Texas.  Getting adjusted to our new life was a struggle, but we pulled through that initial bump and the rest of the journey was just up from there. When I first arrived, I couldn’t wait to come back here, but now that I am back, I just miss it so much. I’d LOVE if I could go back, even if just for a short time. The first thing I’ll do when I do go back? Have a Belgian waffle 😀