We haven't escaped unscathed. For instance, I used to have a blog about bicycles, which in the absence of actual bikes, must now be considered nothing more than a therapeutic outlet to maintain sanity whilst between bikes. Of course the irony of it all does seem to be another cruel joke of life, that in order to move to the land of bikes, we had to sell ours. In terms of unforeseeable outcomes, I would never have believed a person who foretold us moving to the Netherlands and I would have laughed in their face had they told me we'd sell our bikes in order to do so, but then honestly, after some pondering, I would have shrugged my shoulders and admitted it does sound like something that might happen to us.
When you move between America and England there is definitely a degree of culture shock, but generally if you pay attention it's easy to get some basic knowledge of either country simply by watching TV. What you don't catch there will be the subtle differences that will either delight or annoy you along the way, so far our stay in England has been one of noticing 99% delights. We've seen some beautiful places and some amazing history, heard a couple from somewhere in the middle-east have an argument in Welsh, tried to buy fish and chips from an ITV movie set and have just recently finally began automatically looking the "other" way when crossing roads....just in time to move to mainland Europe, where they drive on the "other, other" side of the road!
I know moving to the Netherlands will be very different from any other experience we've had. I take delight in considering this blog started because I wanted our son to grow up thinking bicycles were just a normal part of life, I think I will feel quite chuffed in that regards if he ends up growing up in Amsterdam. I'm also excited about us all learning another language, especially for Jack, who will be fluent within a short time. That being said, it's only realistic to be apprehensive about the challenges ahead, but we'll have to just face them as they come.
With that, I leave you with some of our photos from the last 4 months:
