The Great Escape


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?

In June 2017, I gave notice that I was leaving my job, packed all of our stuff, sent the hubby off to a new job in the D.C. area, and moved to the Netherlands in time for classes in August. I'm not saying it's been easy. It has, in lots of ways, been very trying emotionally, but it has also been liberating and fulfilling and exciting. There are definitely things I didn't fully appreciate about living abroad (government paperwork for one) and the Dutch weather (which sucks most days) and their passion for bikes (which I suck at most days), but over all, as my year in Wageningen comes to a close (2018), I am happy I came, and glad that this year has allowed me to travel, learn, and grow.


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