Netherlands

The Hoopers are gearing up for another big move. This one won’t be quite as far as the last one, but an international move nonetheless. We are terribly saddened to be leaving Holland. We ended up absolutely loving it here. There is so much to love. In honor of my friend Stacy I., I was going to do a top ten list, but I have a hard time trying to narrow down my loves to ten. The easiest way to describe why we like it so much is several -er words. Compared to where we came from, Holland is cleaner, healthier, safer, family friendly-er, and more moderate. Throw in that it is a quick 2 hour drive to Belgium, Germany, or less than 2 hours by plane to virtually anywhere in the European Union, and you have a winner!

Of course there are a few things we are eager to get rid of and quite frankly took for granted while living in the US. For example, when we went house hunting in London, it was almost a strange feeling to be able to read the store front and know what the store was selling. I had become quite used to peering in windows and completely avoiding reading the long, too many consonants, unpronounceable Dutch words, all of which ended in winkel, to determine what kind of “winkel” it was.

Also, it will be nice to be able to read our mail, without taking it to work and asking my Dutch friends to tell me if it is a bill or an announcement, if it is direct debited, or if we need to pay it. I haven’t bothered to add up late fees here on bills because I am afraid of what we might calculate. The good news is that the tv, water, internet, and electricity never were shut off. Not even once…

The last thing I believe will see an improvement on is customer service. For my American friends, to truly understand what the customer service here is like, the best example I can give you is this. Imagine that you have Comcast service which is always dreadful, throw in that you have to pay to call customer service (per minute), sit on hold for several minutes (10-15), get someone who doesn’t care and may or may not speak moderately good English, and is pretty sure that whatever you are calling about is your fault and not his concern, and try calling back tomorrow. Seriously.

While I am excited a great deal about our new adventure in London and even more excited about my new job, I know that we will miss Amsterdam…

Moving on, London has so much to offer! English (albeit the “Queen’s English”) and proper “American sized” grocery stores and refrigerators are two of the many things I am looking forward to. Caden will quickly tell you he is looking forward to Legoland in London, and Keali is excited about going to an all girls school. Scott is happy to go somewhere new and is thankful to reduce his commute and time difference by an hour.

We will be living near Heathrow Airport in western London. In fact Kew Botanical Gardens are about a block from our new home. We will have a bit more space in the new house and even a back yard with a patch of grass in it. The house is in a great location by restaurants, Kew high street, and the underground stop. One stop away is Richmond Upon Thames, and just a few stops away is Waterloo.

Pending our NYC trip and our visas being approved, we will be moving July 14. If we like London half as much as we like Amsterdam, we will be happy ex-pats in the UK!

We had a great Thanksgiving here in Amsterdam. Scott made some deee-licious food. One of our American friends came over with her family and brought pecan pie and mashed potatoes. It was in fact a proper American Thanksgiving, right in the middle of Holland.

While we were eating, the question was posed, “What do you like about living here?” I have been giving it thought over the last several days. Because the real answer is EVERYTHING, I had to narrow it down to a few favorites. Here’s a short list.

1. The food. Without doubt. The food is fantastic here! Everything is fresh and mostly small farm grown. No corporate farming over here and Sysco does not take all the food to all the restaurants. The results in food tasting different everywhere you go. Yummy. Of course the down side is that not too many items have preservatives in them, so it requires frequent trips to the grocery store. I’ll take that deal every time.

2. The weather. It is really great weather. It is colder than Houston, but Houston is too hot. Since I had become acclimated to the weather in Houston, I had no idea how bad our weather was. Having been here, I appreciate how awfully hot it was in Houston. I may be fussing about the weather on month 6 of winter in the near future, but for now I am LOVING it!

3. The travel. Almost everything is within a 2 hour plane ride or a 3 hour high speed train ride. In a short three months, I have already been to Spain, Italy, France, England, Scotland, Finland, Sweden, Belgium, etc… What a great experience! KLM is my new found friend…

4. My job. What a cool job I have! Some travel is certainly required, but it has been a good trade for the experience for our entire family.

5. Let’s not forget about the vino! We are slowly learning our European wines and branching away from the Californian wines. Delicious!

6. The pedestrian lifestyle. We walk or bike or take the tram (which is great and cheap!) almost everywhere. I think there are more bikes here than people. It’s healthier and there seems to be much less pollution. That’s pretty surprising since this is one of the most populated areas of Europe.

7. My fantastic fam! Scott is finally home from the extensive travels back and forth to the US. The kids are loving it here. They tell us all the time that they never want to go back to Houston (mostly because they say it is too hot). This has already been a wonderful experience and we still have 75% more to go! (This pic is one of them sitting by the river running through Paris by the Louvre.)

We are so lucky to have this opportunity. We appreciate it every day.