Not all who wander are lost...

Once I managed getting in and settled in Wageningen (which, btw, is where the surrender of German General Johannes Blaskowitz to Canadian General Charles Foulkes on May 5, 1945, officially ended the WW2 in the Netherlands) I immediately signed up for a Wanderlost Student Travel  Tour to Belgium. The tour consisted of going by bus from Utrecht (which would have been fine if I had realized how early we had to be there and the problems with Dutch rail not operating 24/7) to Bruges, then a quick stop off at the Atomium (15 minutes only because people took too long at Bruges), and then into Brussels. Honestly, we spent too long in Brussels. We ended up sitting on the sidewalk for over an hour waiting for the bus driver to let us onboard at around 10pm. When I travel, I prefer to focus on history, religion, and nature. Kinda in that order. So museums, churches, and parks are on my to-do list. I also prefer not to spend a lot, but that is in deference to having a strict monthly ...

My first (outside the U.S.) country I ever went to was the Netherlands when I co-opted my husband's work trip and turned it into a mini-vacation. It was that trip to Amsterdam that made me look at the Netherlands as a possible grad. school location. We had a few days to explore the city and the surrounding area and highlights include Zaanse Schans , Muiderslot Castle , and the Red Light District, all places I highly recommend. But that short trip to Amsterdam (of which I was sick for 1 day), was just the tip of my "I want to see the world" iceberg. When I was accepted to Wageningen, I decided I was going to experience as much as possible of the rest of the world (and especially Europe) as I could in those two years. My husband's response was "Explore now, because it may not be there in a few more years." Not exactly Bon Voyage, but a decent sentiment nonetheless. Which is why, even when booking my initial flight, I was looking at possible way...

No, I'm not speaking of the movie, but my life this past year. At 35 I did something I never thought I would...I moved to Europe to go to graduate school. A bit of background...I'm married to a wonderfully supportive, if somewhat pessimistic, man whose comment on my going back to school was: "Dear God, please, don't be a teacher for the rest of your life!" Now, to put that into context, I was only a full-time high school teacher for two years and I had (mostly) great students, but the stress and pay of being a teacher is not great and I wanted to do something else. So I applied to graduate schools and was accepted into two international programs- one in Australia and one in the Netherlands. Now, we lived in Florida. Australia would have been more of the same with very little oportunities for travel. The Netherlands though offered me a unique opportunity to live in two different countries for my program (The Netherlands and France). Guess which one I took? ...