Make it Grow! - Part 3
Karen Tests Stuff - June 2024 - International Relocation to the Netherlands
This is the third part of a series of blogs about my recent move from the United States to the Netherlands. If you haven't checked out Part 1 and 2 of this series, you can find them here:
You can also access the video here ?? https://youtu.be/Gl_91K_iB00
I reached out on social media to collect questions from friends and colleagues about this process. I'd like to take some time to answer a few of those below.
Was there something you worried about a lot before moving that turned out to be unnecessary in the end? - Richard
Language was one of the reasons that I chose the Netherlands. A lot of people do speak English here, and very well, especially because I live in a university city with quite a lot of immigrants. I knew that when I was trying to relay my emotions, communicate my feelings and my ambitions, that I would likely be well understood, even in a completely different culture in a new country.
I did start learning Dutch fairly early on, but with all of the stress that came from other external factors, I kind of fell out of it a little bit. I'm getting back into it now, but that was something that I was really worried about - being able to communicate with the people around me in my community.
Turns out, everybody is very patient with me. (Ik leer Nederlands, het is belangrijk. Maar het is langzaam.) I'm taking my time to do things right now, to go through the proper steps, and it's something that it turns out I didn't have to worry about, because I've got that time. And I have the resources to make sure that I'm successful. I wouldn't have put so much stress on myself to do that before, if I would have known that it would be easier to acclimate to once I got here.
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Are there any communication struggles you've been having? - Meg
I feel like I pretty much answered that question - but something that I've been very mindful of is that my roommate has been communicating to me in English the entire time that we've been contacting each other. I want to be able to communicate in their native language eventually, on a daily basis. I want to be able to take some of that cognitive load off of them and put it on me so that I can share that burden of communication between us.
As I've discussed with a few of you, empathy in your first language is very different than empathy in your second or third or fourth language. Since communication is so important to me, I want to be sure that my empathy for others is understood no matter what language I'm speaking. So that's something that's been kind of a struggle for me when I don't know the nuances, I don't know the idioms, I don't know the speech patterns. But I will learn!
What's it like making friends as a foreigner, especially an American one? - Jordan
The US has a certain stigma surrounding the people there that is portrayed on TV shows, movies, whatever kind of entertainment the rest of the world is watching. Also the news that comes out of America plays a big role in that view. It's been very strange to be the one who has these stereotypes kind of as an overlay over me, not as a projected mask from within, but something that I get to remove with my personal interactions with Dutch people or people from other countries.
But I truly believe that the level of authenticity that I'm able to give now plays a very big role in making people feel comfortable with me and building those connections with other people. Having the strength to form those bonds is so important. And there's a ton of different ways I can do this, either at that little game shop that I mentioned in another blog, or social media or networking at conferences.
I've gained so much perspective about the world that it has been impossible to go back. You can't turn that switch off in your brain. Once you've been open to new ideas, there's no going back from there. I feel like that's a good, positive change.
There are a few more questions that came in from y'all, but I'm going to split those into another post to keep this blog from being a million pages long. Stay tuned!