Step by step

It's 2.33 am and I am still awake. Life has been eventful, these past couple of months and as apparently my mind is reeling, I figured it might be a good idea to jot some things down. Just so I can keep track of what has been going on. With the added bonus of keeping all those people that I am desperate to stay in touch with, but lack the time to do so, just a little more up to date.

So, let's start at the beginning. As you know, our family moved to Vancouver a little over 5 years ago. That was the start of one of the most amazing, and contradictory phases in my life so far. Vancouver had everything to offer, but only so much we could afford.

Vancouver was, without a doubt, the most expensive place both Menno and I had ever lived. But despite the penny pinching, I have never felt richer in my entire life. I did not have a job during our stay in Vancouver, yet the volunteer work I did at school was more rewarding than any paid job I have ever held. Me, the girl who was always awkward in friendships, was all of a sudden surrounded by extremely inspiring people who were surprisingly easy to hang out with! Far away from what we used to call home, our roots dug deeper than expected and made our family tree grow strong and healthy.

And yet... Life in Vancouver was not sustainable. And we knew that. Yes, we knew that from the start. It would only be a temporary position for Menno. We managed to stretch those 2 years into 5, but we knew, deep down, all along, that settling in Vancouver would simply be too high a price to pay. Literally.

And so it began. Taking the glacial pace of the academic job application process into account, Menno started applying for a new job about 2 years ago. We knew competition would be fierce. I could write an entire blog post about the highly stressful tedium of watching someone dear to you (and relatively crucial to your family's income ;-) ) go through job application hell. I doubt, though, that it would be fun to read ;-) So let me just say that we all breathed a huge sigh of relief when we got the news that the NTNU had recognized Menno for the budding scientific genius he is!

This great news had the rather unexpected consequence of our family moving back to Europe. You see, all through the process of applying for jobs, I had relied on the fact that our family would at least get to stay in Canada! And although I obviously knew that the position in "Trondheim" that Menno applied for was indeed in "Trondheim, Norway", I still had to shift a few gears in my head to prepare myself for the challenge that lay ahead.

Not only did we have to move, we had to do another transcontinental move (YIKES!). Not only did we have to move out of Vancouver, we would also have to say goodbye to Canada. The first part meant I needed to organize a lot more, the second part meant that, well, saying goodbye would be even harder and would feel more permanent.

Nonetheless, we started off great! We hatched a plan to move out of our apartment a month before Menno would leave for Trondheim. That would allow us to send our belongings to Norway ahead of us, plus we would not have to spend our last weeks in Vancouver in utter moving frenzy. Those last few weeks in Vancouver we would spend in the basement of our amazing friends. Which turned out to be so much fun, I actually considered numerous times to just forget about the whole moving-to-Norway-plan until the end of the school year. Dang, it sucks to be the responsible adult, let me tell ya!

So off we went. To embark a new adventure in a new country. Although, almost 2 months into the adventure, it actually feels less like an adventure and more like I'm following a rather convoluted and time consuming recipe.

Anyone who has ever had dinner at my place, knows cooking is not my forte. Probably because I am not too good at actually following a recipe. Yet the current situation I am in, requires a lot of step-by-steps. A lot of finicky conditions that need to be met. A lot of things that have to simmer for a while under just the right circumstances, with little guarantee that they will taste good in the end.

Right now I am "stuck" in Holland. In order for us to start our lives in Norway, and to be reunited with Menno, I have to sell the house we still "own" in Holland. Ever since we boarded the plane in Vancouver, I have been working on all the little steps it takes to put a house on the market and deal with what follows after your house gets listed. My mantra of taking it one step at a time, has resulted in me humming the lyrics to a really old New Kids on the Block song for a while now. It was only after finally looking up the lyrics that I realized the song was by the New Kids on the Block, rather than Take That, which made me feel even more tired and a lot older at that particular moment ;-)

Right... I just realized I should go to sleep. And that I should leave the details of my cooking for some other time. I promise that post will be a lot more fun to read. Because these past few weeks have been anything but boring!