Ameland, The Netherlands

I can count the number of times I've been away from home since June on the fingers of one hand. You might be thinking: so what? Well, to you this might be normal, but to me it is pretty much the epitome of sucky.

Since we came back from our world trip we've spent 3 days with my Spanish relatives in Cambrils on the Mediterranean coast of Spain. We've also spent 3 days at Jochem's father's holiday home in northern France. And we visited Jochem's mother, who lives in Germany, three times. That's it. Now, call me spoiled (and, for the record, I do know that when it comes to traveling, I am the very definition of spoiled), but visiting one's family abroad does not a trip make. I need a backpack, a flight that's at least 6 hours long and a sifnificant change in weather patterns to fulfill my travel needs. But for the last 8 months there's been none of that.

Of course this all has to do with THE WEDDING. In case you didn't know this yet, weddings are expensive. You should all save yourselves the trouble and just go down to city hall. Perhaps you're wondering why I'm not following my own advice? Well, let me explain. Despite considering myself to be quite the bitter cynic, I actually am one of those women who's always dreamed about their wedding day. I used to read wedding magazines for fun for years (of course now I can't stand them). And although I'm certainly not the kind of bride who worries about things like center pieces and color combinations, there are certain things that I want to have a certain way. Once we decided to have a wedding, we wanted the wedding to feel like ours. We thought it might be nice to enjoy ourselves on our own wedding day. While you can always cut costs and budget money well, certain things were non-negotiable for us, like the date (Saturday), the season (summer) and the food (worthy of only the most critical foodies). And this costs money. Money which I am happy to provide, were it not that with a wedding there is very real deadline that is fastly approaching (less than 5 months as we speak!) and this means that one no longer has the possibility to travel wherever one feels like whenever one wants to.

This has been on my mind lately. I always feel spoiled talking about it but I'm not sure people understand how much I need to travel. That's right - I NEED it.

Anyway, this is why Jochem and I decided to plan a little trip to Ameland. Although not abroad, Ameland is certainly a world away from where we come from. Ameland is one of the 4 Frisian Islands in the Wadden Sea at the very northern tip of The Netherlands. I had never been there, even though my grandfather was from Terschelling. We rented a little holiday home at the most western town on the island called Hollum. For 4 days we walked on the beach and rode horses through the countryside. It was nice - quiet, tranquil and dark (no lights other than the lighthouse). I look forward to visiting the other islands some day, but with the rest of the world calling out to me as well, who knows when I'll get to it?

Epilogue

Last July a good friend of mine came to vist me at our new home. She told me how much she had enjoyed our travel stories on my blog while we were away, but that what was missing, was a kind of epilogue, in which I elaborated on life post-world trip. Looks like I'm finally getting to it.

I haven't written anything on here since June. 8 months have passed since we came back from South America via Great Britain. So much has happened since then, yet so little. On the one hand, writing about life back home seemed dull and pointless after having written about Inca trails, Polynesian sculpture and Cambodian contemporary history for 9 months. Mostly, though, I've been busy. Very busy. Extremely busy if you take into account that for the better part of last year I did very little and had close to no responsibilities. Being this busy simply made it impossible for me to sit down long enough to write a blog about what I was doing.

I've basically been working non-stop since we got back. We flew back to The Netherlands on Saturday and I was back at work at my part-time job on Tuesday. In between invigilating English exams, I was applying for teaching jobs in the Utrecht area. Having failed to find 'my passion in life' while backpacking around the world, I decided to put the whole search for my dream job on hold for now and try to get a job as an English teacher, since I have a degree for that and all. For a little while I thought about going back to grad school to pursue another Master's degree (in Translation Theory, no less!), but eventually decided that I didn't feel like saving up for another one of my long-term mega projects. Finally making some money, as opposed to piling on more debt, seemed like the more sensible thing to do.

I thought that, considering the shortage of teachers, my MA in English Linguistics and my teaching degree, it shouldn't be too hard to find a job. But while Jochem was back at his old job after just a week, I was still looking. Despite the shortage of teachers and my credentials, I was only invited to 2 job interviews. One job I lost to a more experienced teacher - the other I was offered on the spot. I took it.

I now teach Business English to first-year Business School students at a university of applied sciences in Utrecht. I love my job. It requires a lot of hard work, but I find that I actually like doing it. So, I am not so much stressed out about my job - I just have very little time left for other things. This is what a typical work day of mine looks like:

I wake up at 5.30 AM. I do yoga, get ready and sit down for breakfast with Jochem at 6.30. I leave the house at 7. I get to work at 8 and check my e-mail before grabbing my material to head for my first class at 8.30. The fall and winter term are the busiest here at school, so in between classes I prepare lessons, grade presentations and correct exercises. I usually don't leave the premises until 6 PM. I get home at 7 PM, have dinner with Jochem and get ready for bed at 8.30. I do some more yoga and am fast asleep by 9.30. The next day I do it all again. In this madness only the precious moments with Jochem and the yoga appear to keep me sane.

It wasn't until the Christmas break that I felt like I could finally slow down. The spring and summer term will be easier, with fewer classes and fewer students. I teach the same course every time, which may seem boring, but I really enjoy being able to keep improving the same lessons over and over again. Since I've spent 6 months preparing these lessons twice already, the rest of the academic year comes down to fine-tuning.

I work part-time, so I have some time for myself to finish up on work and to keep the house. I try to go swimming once a week. I look forward to being able to spend more time just reading, watching TV and listening to podcasts.

Another thing that has added to my overall sense of being busy is my social calendar. To be honest, this was almost as much of a shock to the system as being busy at work. Don't get me wrong - I love being able to see family and friends again on a regular basis, but it sure takes up a lot of my already-very-limited free time. I also had to get re-used to planning my calendar weeks, sometimes months, in advance - understandable, yet strange and surprisingly annoying after doing whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted, for 9 months. I fully participate in this method, yet condemn it at the same time. Sometimes I reminisce about the times where I didn't have to plan at all, other than making sure to be on time for the next plane to the next amazing destination.

I've also had to get used to only seeing Jochem during breakfast and dinner. For 9 months we were joined at the hip - being apart for 12 hours every day has been quite the adjustment.

After we both secured jobs, we quickly found an apartment in Amersfoort because a friend knew a colleague who knew a friend who was moving out. We live in suburbia now, and it's not even the pretty white picket fence kind of suburbia, but the high-rise apartment building kind. Luckily, Amersfoort is much smaller than Utrecht, so it only takes us a few minutes to get to the city center by bike. It has medieval architecture, canals and an amazing dining scene, minus the mega construction projects that Utrecht has been, and will be, enduring. Still, Wittevrouwen beats Liendert in a heart beat. Yet, we're not thinking about moving - I hate moving and we live in a spaceous, light and airy apartment on the top floor with a view over the city. Buying a house is even farther from the brain - mortgages are for grown-up people ready to settle down, not for us. Although we did go to one actual viewing of a house for sale, we quickly decided against it when we realized how much it would affect our ability to spend all of our money on eating out and traveling. Our apartment is close to the bus stop from which a bus takes me straight to work in 30 minutes while I watch the news on my iPhone. Our home is perfect for now.

One final thing that's been on my mind lately is our wedding. Now, I have come to find that planning your actual wedding is a lot less fun than daydreaming about your potential wedding. Since we want a small and simple wedding, there isn't even that much real planning involved. And then I think that maybe I'm forgetting about a bunch of things. And then I think that maybe I just don't have that bridezilla gene in me after all (who knew?!). Either way, most of the planning is done and I'm sure it'll all be just fine. We're getting married at a historic vegetable garden on July 13. By that time, I will have survived my first year at my first real teaching job with 5 weeks of freedom in sight. All my family and friends will be there, surrounded by beautiful vegetarian food, and afterwards we're going on a little culinary adventure in Italy for 2 weeks. To be honest, I might be more excited about the honeymoon than I am about the wedding. We're making a big sacrifice in order to make our wedding happen our way - no travel abroad for a whole year. It's for a good cause, of course. But it also sucks a little bit. It puts one in the awkward position of kind of resenting one's own wedding for being the cause of something that really isn't the wedding's fault - weddings are thought up by 2 incredibly naive people in love and then they take on a life of their own. So call me spoiled, but despite our beautiful wedding plans, I miss the backpackers' lifestyle. Because although many things have changed, one thing hasn't: my unquenchable thirst to travel. As one of my students put it: I have the opposite of being homesick - I am sick for the world.