Count your blessings

This post is for my lovely colleague, Aileen, who thinks that I might have something interesting to say. Come on Aileen!

My love/hate relationship with Holland is not a well-kept secret. In the early days, after the excitement wore off and there was no backing out, I made lists of things I liked about Holland to psyche myself out of scraping the whole experiment.

Here are a few of those things:

1. Flowers
2. Bikes & biking everywhere
3. Convenient shopping with cheap, high-quality wine!
4. Safe, clean public environment (spittle, dog poop and graffiti not withstanding)
5. Public transportation (four years without a car)
6. Inexpensive health insurance and care ( a double-edged sword)
7. Flex-time
8. Direct/No-nonsense communication (also a double-edged sword)
9. The sacredness of vacation
10. The sharing of domestic duties (A Dutch partner worth his weight in gold)

These things, here in black and white, make a pretty good argument for sticking around.

Thanks, Dear Aileen, for getting me back on track.