Fietsen (Biking)

It looks like I will have a lot more time to soak up the Dutch culture and experience the beauty of this land that is so far from the place I call home.

Pieter’s visa paperwork may take as long as fourteen months to complete. It seems as if this is where God wants me to be right now. I just have no idea why.

In the autumn of 2012 there were nights where I spent hours talking to a person on the other side of the world, just wishing I could be with him. Several times I looked into airplane tickets to be able to get to where he was. I was falling in love with Pieter and the ocean kept us apart. He and I would skype as he biked around the village. I would follow along on Google Map as if I were there with him, biking through the beautiful streets of Arnemuiden. 

Today, two years later, I biked on that same street with him, this time, in person.

My childhood was full of hours spent biking around the lawn. My sister and I would build ramps and obstacle courses and spend entire summer days playing outside. I biked for fun back then and I was really good at it. It has been ten years since my biking adventures and now I have no choice but to bike everywhere.
I am slowly getting used to this. After biking to Middelburg, about ten miles, the super market does not seem so far away. I recognize street names now and I have started knowing my way around the village. What I cannot seem to grasp is how to stop on a bike. That can be pretty dangerous in traffic.

I am convinced that this is just one of the many adaptations I will have to make as I transition into this new lifestyle in the Netherlands.

 

Where We Are

It has been a week since our unexpected return to the Netherlands. Pieter and I spent the first few days in disbelief that we were back here after saying good bye and adjusting our minds to returning to real life at home. 

We scrambled to do everything we could to return to America and then came to realize that there is very little we can do for the process. My parents have been incredibly helpful and supportive as we work together from across the ocean. Progress has been made in the process of Pieter receiving access into America, but this process will take anywhere from six to twelve months to complete. This is a discouraging reality. Now, we wait to hear from an immigration attorney to hopefully give us more encouraging answers after he hears details about our situation. 

Of course, I miss home. Everything I have ever known is there. It is strange to have the thought looming in the back of my mind that I may not be able to return to America for quite a while.

I find times when I get overwhelmed by the situation and have to distract myself with watching Netflix or listening to music. The language barrier continues to be my biggest challenge. I do not like feeling misunderstood or not understood at all. It is difficult to sit in a room and have conversation going on all around you and not be able to join in with any of them. For a person that is used to making people laugh, giving people compliments, and sharing her opinion, it is difficult to sit back and be quiet all the time.

I also find it to be strange to have so much idle time. I want badly to fix the issues preventing us from getting back in the U.S. and I want to be able to look into the future and see when we will be able to return to America. It is difficult for the future to be so uncertain.

As a wife, it is strange not to have to wake up and make Pieter breakfast, pack his lunch, go back to sleep, get ready for work, work all afternoon, come home and clean and make dinner, and then enjoy the evening with my husband. In order to spend my free time wisely, I have been practicing my Dutch with Rosetta Stone every afternoon and I just recently started watching an Anatomy lecture on Youtube. After two years of not taking nursing classes, it has been great to review. There is a great difference in taking a college class for credit and voluntarily taking a college class to improve your knowledge. I like it. Pieter and I have also been taking advantage of the sunny weather the past few days. He enjoys running and I bike with him every afternoon. It is a good mood booster and stress reducer.

As a planner, I had an idea of how I wanted the year of 2015 to go. God has a unique way of testing His children’s faith. I do not believe that God put Pieter and I in this situation intentionally, He is not a God of spite. I do believe that Pieter and I have the choice to take this opportunity to grow in our faith. Do we trust that we are where God wants us to be at this time? Yes. Is it easy? No. Does it make it a little easier knowing that God is in control of the situation? Yes. I find that when I cling to words of Scripture and lyrics of encouraging songs, I feel stronger.

There and Back Again

The flight back across the ocean was long and tiring. Everything seemed foggy and my excitement and anxiety to make my grand arrival in the U.S. got closer with every mile we flew. The plane was so familiar. It was no longer exciting at takeoff, we could time out when the meals would be served, and when certain stewardesses would come out with certain drinks. It was just mundane and usual. Flying had lost its mystery and spark to me.

Our descent into Dulles airport was painful. Both Pieter and I got nauseous and our ears were full from the drop in pressure. It took a good 30 minutes for the pilot to find the runway and once we finally landed, my heart was so glad to be back in a place I was familiar with.

Our experience at Dulles airport was unlike any experience we had had at the previous airports we had visited. After waiting in numerous lines and going through countless security checks, Pieter and I were separated. I went through the gates into America to be with my dad, while Pieter was told to stay behind. His visa was not accepted and he would be sent back to Europe the next day. I was not allowed to say good bye to him and he could not contact anyone. He stayed the night in an airport cell. I reluctantly went home for the longest night of my life, without my husband.

Morning came, and my parents and I had searched frantically for a solution to this issue. In the end, we decided that I would fly back with Pieter to Europe. They worked very hard to get me on the same flight as Pieter. Our drive to the airport was miserable. I had no idea what was going to happen. When pulling up to the airport, Third Day’s “I Need a Miracle” played on the radio. I thought to myself “How appropriate” and I made that my prayer. I said “God, I need a miracle, bring me back to my husband”. God knew I was scared, he knew I needed to be with Pieter. My faith was weak, and yet I prayed over and over again in the back of the car.

Time was running out as we scrambled to get me on the plane. My hope went up and down as I waited for the hour to come where Pieter’s plane would take off. Eventually, my dad got me on the waiting list for the flight.

I left my support system behind, my parents said goodbye to me, not knowing when they would see their baby girl again. They made promises about helping us out and reassurances that if I didn’t make it on this flight, they would get me another one after his to get to Copenhagen to be with him. We exchanged hugs and “I love you’s” and they told me to be strong and brave. With my “temporary ticket” in hand, I journeyed through the airport, alone this time. My guide, Pieter, who was so good at traveling, was not with me. I went through the steps of what to do and where to go in my head. I looked at signs and tried to remain confident.

As I waited alone at the gate, hoping my name would be called to fill a cancellation on the flight, minutes felt like hours as they passed so slowly. The time for boarding approached and after multiple calls over the intercom for other individuals, my name was called. I had a ticket on the flight and I would be on the plane with Pieter back to Europe!

Swedish Experience

Our journey back to America began and we were on our way to Stockholm, Sweden for an overnight layover. Pieter had made reservations for a lounge at the airport and both of us were eager to lie down and rest after emotional goodbyes and a long trip ahead of us. Upon arrival to the Stockholm airport, we searched for the lounge and waited in a line to ask for directions to the lounge. Everyone around us looked exhausted too, so I felt like I fit in. The kind lady at the desk informed us that the lounge was closed for the day and we shuffled off to try and find a quiet place to rest for the next six hours.

“Sky City” would have been cool in the day, but it was just creepy at night. This was the shopping part of the airport with fancy restaurants and bars. We stopped at a round couch first, thinking we could settle in there. People were cuddled under blankets on every other couch. We moved on from there to a room upstairs where it looked like a quarantine from the prairie days, people in chairs under blankets, sort of just ‘done’ for the day. At this point, I was still sick from earlier that week. My stomach hurt and I was hungry. Pieter took good care of me and got me a sprite and some dinner. I could not get settled. The person beside us looked like she was dressed to visit the Arctic and when she started snoring loudly, I knew we had to find another spot to spend the night. Pieter went to scout the place out and eventually we found an empty booth at a small restaurant in the center of everything, but closer to bathrooms and further away from snoring eskimos. This turned out to be one of the longest and most miserable nights of my life. I sat cross legged on the bench while Pieter laid down to sleep. I got maybe a total of 40 minutes of sleep that night.

The next morning, everything was blurry. We searched for breakfast and ended up with a dry blueberry muffin and some water. Our flight from Stockholm to Copenhagen was very short. For the hour that we were in the air we both slept like babies. The plane rocked us both to sleep and when we landed, both of us wished the plane had just kept going all the way to America. We would have slept the entire way over the ocean.

We have become far too familiar with the Copenhagen airport by now. We found our usual spot to relax there and I curled up in an uncomfortable airport chair with an armrest poking me in the back while Pieter slept on the hard, cold floor. If it hadn’t been for two obnoxiously loud guys coming into this quiet room, I would have slept all the way until our next flight.

Tired of airport food and not wanting some fancy wafer sandwich at a European deli that was trying to hard to impress tourists, we went by a convenience store and got a sandwich and some cheese curls. Finding a bench near our next gate, we sat down to eat the sandwich that had red peppers on it and not tomatoes, so very misleading and gross.

By the time we reached the gate where the plane that would take us to America resided, I was exhausted, cranky, and so very anxious to be at home. I imagined hugging my family again, cuddling up in my own bed, making dinner for my husband when he arrived home from work, having popcorn movie nights together again, and settling back into the work routine. I was ready to get back to my life and responsibilities in America. I was tired of airports, pilots, and being in the air. I wanted normal back.

The End

Our last day in Arnemuiden and it is raining. That seems appropriate considering Pieter told me before we left that it rained alot here, and also appropriate because this is not a very happy day. I wish I could take parts of this lovely land and mesh them together with parts of the town I grew up in. To make a perfect little village with everyone I love there and lots of gouda cheese, as well as tacos. No offense to my family, but tacos are what I have missed the most from America. When we come back to the Netherlands, tacos will be the first thing I pack. I hope to return to this lovely village once things in life start to settle down. After I get a college degree, after we save up more money, and after we both have steady jobs. I'll miss the simplicity and the less rushed pace of the village. I feel blessed to have been able to experience a part of the world that many Americans only dream of.