Home

We’re home.  Everything feels familiar…but strange.  When we drove up John Nolen Drive towards downtown Madison on our way home from the airport, I couldn’t help feeling nostalgic and sad at the same time.  I was happy to see our beautiful city but sad to think that our days in Amersfoort were behind us.  These are a few of the thoughts that ran around in my head during our first few days home.

We have so much space.

• The Netherlands is one of the most densely populated countries in Europe.  On the flip side, the United States is huge with seemingly endless space.  You can have a big house, buy an empty lot in a subdivision, live in the country and park your car pretty much wherever you want.  There’s open green space in places we don’t even notice on a daily basis.  We have grass terraces between the sidewalk and the curb, we have open fields at parks, we have front yards and back yards at most houses.
• Our exchange family playfully referred to our house as a mansion.  The funny part about that comment is, by American standards, our house is far from a mansion.  It’s 1,800 square feet in an era when the average new home in the Midwest is 2,300 square feet.  We don’t have walk-in closets, our bedrooms are tiny and you can’t fit more than 8 people in any one room at the same time.  To them, it was more than enough.  As I sit here on our front porch on a beautiful fall day looking around the neighborhood, I can’t help but feel kind of guilty…and thankful.
• I really appreciate having outdoor space for the boys to play in.  There was a small back yard at our Netherlands house, but nothing compared to the space we have for the boys in Madison.  Jack and Ben played outside almost the entire day following our flight home and I could tell they were really excited to have more space to play in.  I have no idea how parents with rowdy kids keep them entertained in small apartments with no outdoor areas.  For many people in other countries, and major cities in the U.S., that is the norm.

We are huge consumers.

• When you have a small home, you can’t have that much stuff because there is literally no place to put it.  Imagine if you had to empty your entire basement and garage.  You’d probably end up getting rid of a lot of stuff because you wouldn’t have room to store it anywhere.  When we got home, the kids started pulling out their toys and pretty soon our living room and basement looked like a tornado zone.  So the next day when Brian took the kids along on an errand, I walked around the house with trash bags and filled up two big bags with toys I don’t think they will miss.  We lived for two months with half as many toys and the kids were fine.  In fact, it was better because there was less to clean up!
• When you go grocery shopping in the Netherlands, you’re expected to bring your own bags.  Before our trip, I did this sometimes, but not regularly.  I usually keep one or two in my purse (get some of these Envirosax bags – they are awesome and last forever). For our first trip to the grocery store after returning to Madison, I forgot them.  When I stared at the stack of paper bags I was about to recycle after unpacking my groceries at home, I felt sad.  Sad that this is completely normal in the U.S. and that most people don’t think there is anything wrong with it.  Fast forward to a month later and we’ve been doing a great job bringing our own bags every time we go shopping.
• Composting is mandatory in Amersfoort.  Each household has three small trash cans outside – one for waste, one for compost, and one for paper.  They are picked up on alternating weeks.  Glass, plastic and aluminum are also recycled, but must be taken to neighborhood recycling collection points.  I’ve always been intrigued by composting, but had never tried it.  At first, I was turned off because the little bin by the kitchen sink to temporarily hold your food scraps until you take them outside was instantly swarming with fruit flies any time we put something in it.  So instead, we used a plastic bin with a lid and that worked much better to keep the flies away. I heard recently that Madison had a trial program for composting and decided to suspend it because it was too costly.  That’s a shame.  I feel really bad throwing away food scraps here, but I’m not about to start a backyard compost pile any time soon.

Humidity and bugs suck.

• We were super spoiled this summer with regard to the weather.  We visited the Netherlands during a major drought and one of the hottest summers they’ve ever had.  So what was terrible for the grass and bushes (everything was dead), meant the weather was great for our vacation.  The average temperature in July and August in the Netherlands was supposed to be in the low 70’s.  Instead, we were consistently treated to days in the upper 70’s and 80’s and even had a week in the mid 90’s.  That week was HOT, but the Netherlands doesn’t have the humidity we have here, so even the really high temperatures didn’t seem that bad.
• There were also no mosquitoes – at least not any that we noticed.  This wasn’t the case when we visited Belgium, we were eaten alive there, but at our house in Amersfoort we sat outside at dusk and slept with our windows open without screens and were fine.  We’ve been back home for only a few days and the humidity here is super high and there are 5,000 mosquitoes living on our front porch and in our back yard.

There are cars everywhere.

• Cities in the U.S. really were built around the car.  We biked everywhere in the Netherlands…and I’m not exaggerating.  Over the course of 2 months, we used the car maybe 8 times – and it was either raining or we were traveling a long distance. We biked to the grocery store, the park, out to eat, shopping – even to surrounding cities.  It was awesome.  The roads there are built for pedestrians, bicyclists and vehicles.  Here we build roads for cars and then throw on a bike lane and sidewalk as a last thought.  I always felt safe biking in the Netherlands (even though no one wears a helmet…that part baffles me) because there were usually dedicated lanes and if we were biking in mixed traffic, the cars were traveling slowly.  In addition, it was easy to get places.  Everything we needed was within a 5 minute bike ride.  I loved this lifestyle and I’m sad that it’s not as feasible in the U.S.  Our cities just aren’t designed the same.

Our food is expensive.

• Eating healthy in the U.S. is prohibitively expensive.  I was shocked at how inexpensive the produce was in the Netherlands.  It was cheaper to eat bananas and apples than it was macaroni and cheese.  It should be like this everywhere.  It’s ridiculous that the cheapest foods in the U.S. are typically the ones that are the most unhealthy.  My grocery bills here are so much higher than they were in Amersfoort.

I’m grateful to live in the United States

• The weekend after we returned from Europe, Brian and I went to see the Green Bay Packers play at Lambeau Field.  Before the game, the National Anthem played and a couple fighter jets did a fly-by of the stadium.  I got the chills and tears welled up in my eyes.  We are so lucky to live here.  We have choices and opportunities people in other parts of the world can only dream of.  Don’t ever take this for granted.