Follow my family sabbatical

We are following the sun for a six month sabbatical with our two children — aged 3 years, 5 months.

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Lia's 3-pronged approach to planning a wedding, and not sweating the details

There are as many ways to get married as there are people in the world. The only thing that really matters is that you feel your wedding is yours, be it traditional with 7 bridesmaids and groomsmen, or a just the two of you on a beach in Hawaii. This is how we narrowed down our endless choices, left the details to others, and enjoyed the party of our lives.

1. Theme
If you have a wedding "theme", it really helps make decisions along the way for you. In our case, we wanted our wedding to express our personalities as individuals and as a couple. The final winner was "marine" -- symbolic ceremony at sea, party at a yacht club, boat-classy untraditional, international flavour, sustainable where possible, not too formal matchy-matchy. We made our wedding colours cobalt blue and white, we chose a font. Done and done.

Then whenever someone asked us about what colour flowers we wanted, or what the decorations should be, designing the save-the-dates and invitations and website and Facebook group, it was really easy to just say "Marine, cobalt blue, white, trebuchet" and then we backed off and let people do the rest for us (while retaining vito rights). Many things didn't match the theme, but that also made the wedding more us.

Your theme should only act as a tool to help make decisions, not as the omnipotent symbol of your wedding. Let go of your theme when it's not working for you -- for example, there are no blue flowers in September, they only bloom in early spring (so we had sustainable air plants in dry colours -- almost the anti-marine theme -- but beautiful and contrasting).

Another theme could be "random", or "I hate themes" or whatever, it just has to be you and enable detailed decisions without your involvement.

2. Prioritise and rank
What we did very early on was brainstorm priorities, and then rank them. For example:

• Above anything, our wedding is about bringing together all the cool people we love from around the world
• Intimate expression of ourselves that include wedding traditions that are true to us, rather than a traditional wedding checklist
• An experience worth flying from abroad for
• Chances for guests to meet each other and be familiar with each other before the actual wedding ceremony
• Free drinks, no one but Canadians thinks it's okay to pay for drinks at parties
• Nice food
• Matching rings vs. each of us really liking our own rings
• Vintage car to drop us off / pick us up
• Not too many speeches
• Etc.

And then ranking them right at the beginning really helped, both in terms of how to spend our money, but more importantly how to spend our organisation time.

1. Out-of-town guests-centred experience
2. Honour our families in our ceremony / speeches
3. Activities before and after wedding day
4. Free drinks during all activities
5. Fabulous dress
6. Fabulous family and ceremony photographs
7. etc.

Then when it came down to the hard decisions -- caterer, menu, venue -- it was really easy because we just looked at the ranking of our priorities. Example:

Out-of-town guests-centred experience = easy access to venue, venue in centre of city that showcases beautiful Vancouver views, boat trip, guest down time sitting on patio while taking family photographs, etc. To afford that we needed to give up having a photographer for the full day and night (thank God), and go with a different menu, etc.

In the end, our priorities were clear in our budget spending: most of our budget was spent on venue, boat and booze, a medium amount on dress, suit, photographer, rings, activities before and after wedding, and food, and little was spent on transportation (carshare car), cake (I prefer chocolate and pies to cake), flowers (wedding bouquets for the bride and maid of honour, corsages and boutonnieres for family and friends who helped with wedding), decorations (the view was enough!).

3. Keeping track of details
​We used this great template to organise the details of our wedding:
http://www.google.com/weddings/#/fill-in-the-blanks

There are lots of tabs to help you, just delete the ones you​ don't use (we only used about half of the tabs). But it's great for keeping all of the details recorded in one place, and then sharing the template with whomever needs access to it (we shared ours between each other, our emcee, mom, brother, sister, etc.). If the details are all organised in one place and shared with the right people, then you won't have to think about it on your wedding day.

The first thing we needed to do was decide where we were getting married and when. So we created a new tab in the template and inputted all of our key guests, and then put columns for "Amsterdam", "Vancouver" and "Destination wedding", and then put the likelihood that those key guests would be able to come to each of those options. In the end, "Vancouver" was the overwhelming winner, so we decided to have the wedding there (even though I preferred to get married in Amsterdam), and then when we discovered that Eid was landing on Labour Day weekend that year, the date revealed itself too.

Conclusions
Do whatever you need to do ahead of time so that at showtime you are totally present and available to enjoy the love.

For us, organising our decisions around our theme and setting priorities early on, and then having a centralised document to record and share the details meant that in the week leading up to the wedding we were totally mentally, emotionally and physically available to just enjoy everyone. 

When the "exotic" life abroad becomes just as conventional as the "settled" life at home

- I think moving abroad would bankrupt me. My 1500 square foot apartment is full of stuff.
- I used to have a rule to always limit myself to two suitcases when living in a country.
- Two suitcases? I could never live that way, being so limited. I mean I love to travel, but I also work really hard to enjoy some comforts at home. When you love your home you don't have to travel so much to enjoy yourself.
- That's very interesting. I see having few possessions as an expression of my freedom, and you see collecting things that bring you joy or comfort as your expression of freedom.


Three weeks ago I was on a project management course with a 30-something Belgian who works in Jerusalem for the UN, and a 40-something Dutchman who works for a large cable company in Amsterdam.

Throughout the course, we would relate the theoretical work we were learning about to our real-world experiences. The Belgian would relate one project management process to the time he was building a new temporary school in a refugee camp, and the Dutchman would talk about network architecture and engineers. Over lunch the Belgian described how exciting it was to be constantly surrounded by different people with different experiences, and how enriching his life was compared to if he had stayed home in his village in Belgium, and the Dutchman seemed very satisfied to have a good-paying job which he could work from 9-5 and come home and focus on his family.

I was the outsider and the insider, able to partially relate to both of these realities, but also playing devil's advocate. To the Belgian I asked how deep his connections were with the people he was meeting, if he would ever see them again when his post was over in 2 months and how long he imagined living this exotic international life. To the Dutchman I asked if he had ever felt a genuine excitement or passion about where he lived or his work, and what he found interesting and challenging about what he does.

The Belgian responded that the only thing he found difficult about it was finding and keeping a life partner, and that if he had children he thought the best place in the world to raise them would be on a post in Africa. The Dutchman said he admired people who are passionate about their work but never felt that way himself about it, and that his work involves constant growth and change and that it keeps him on his toes.

Am I the Belgian? Or the Dutchman?
At this moment in time, my life more resembles the conventional life of the Dutchman than the exotic life of the Belgian.

I have officially been living in the Netherlands for five years now, I am married, I own a condo, and I have 1.5 children. I often catch myself spending more time than I would like to admit thinking about re-negotiating our mortgage, which neighbourhood to move into so that our daughter can go to a good school in 2.5 years, searching real estate websites, and calculating the ideal distance between work and home.

This is the longest I've lived anywhere except my home town, where I spent my first 21 years. The other nine years were spent -- in descending order of time spent -- in Abu Dhabi, Montreal, Toronto, Japan, Ghana, Turkey, and France.

Settled vs. Mobile
What I love about being more settled in Amsterdam is the deeper relationships I've built, the new facets of life that I've gotten to see, actually learning the local language (for the first time) and really feeling like a genuine member of society.

What I don't like about being more settled in Amsterdam is that being part of society means that you are more influenced by what people think, and it's easy to slip into patterns that give you more material freedom but less mobility freedom.

In my home town of Vancouver I knew what it all meant: to live in a particular neighbourhood, to have a detached house vs. a townhouse vs. a condo, what each square footage bracket was, what car you drove, where you holiday, and what clothes you wore. I knew what it all meant to other people.

The downside of being a contributing member of society
For over a decade I lived outside of all of that: I didn't have much choice in the neighbourhood I lived, I didn't own possessions, my wardrobe was a collection of items I had bought in countries where I didn't have anything weather- or occasion-appropriate, and anyone who knew what any of these things "meant" never communicated it to me.

And now I own oyster shuckers, champagne flutes, and other unnecessary objects that symbolise settled-ness. And our priorities for good housing and owning a car are starting to eclipse our priority of being mobile and available to experience new things in the world.

Am I seeking more comforts in possessions because I'm getting older? Or am I simply diversifying the things that entertain me? Is the source of this change from inside myself? Or is the influence of my surroundings seeping in?

Regardless of the source, we have decided to start planning a mini-retirement to reset our values.

Carrot parsnip and apple soup

This was actually inspired by my daughter's baby food, but adapted for adults.

1 benghal spice tea bag (cinnamon, chicory, carob, vanilla, ginger, cardamom, black pepper, cloves, nutmeg)
2 parsnips (equal amounts of)
3 carrots (equal amounts of)
4 apples (equal amounts of)
fresh ginger, to taste
organic vegetable soup cube

Bring 1.5 litres of water to a boil with tea bag. Cut up all veggies into chunks. Add all vegetables to boiling water. Remove tea bag. Grate ginger into soup (don't add too much if you want your kids to like it). Add soup cube (half of what the packaging recommends for 1.5 litres of water).

The [Dutch] first six months

- How old is your little one?
- She's 4 months old.
- I have an 11-month-old. Oh, it goes so fast.
- Everyone says that, but I find that it goes really slowly. It takes them so long to develop! Four months and she can't even move herself.
- Be careful what you wish for.

Advice! Advice! Advice! My God do you receive a lot of advice when you have a young baby. Sleep training, breast feeding, formula, co-sleeping, vitamins, vaccinations, western medicine, eastern medicine.

With which parenting method do I most identify? Do I subscribe to the attachment parenting package? Or is detachment parenting better for her self-esteem? If I pick and choose as I please will it confuse her?

I had four friends all apply different varieties of parenting techniques to their babies, generally adjusting their approach as they learnt what worked for them and their baby, and I am more convinced than ever that parenting choices need to match your own style -- you have a better chance of succeeding and being consistent if it's natural to you. And be willing to let go of parenting ideas that just are not working for your baby.

What worked for us? After health & safety, we had the following priorities:

Sleep without props 
Our first priority was to get our little girl sleeping well. We decided that all of us, including the baby, could cope with everything else if we were well rested. We implemented the "Sleep sense program", and followed the rules. We established a little routine around her bedtime and naps, and though sticking to it was woefully, painfully difficult, by 8.5 weeks old, she was miraculously sleeping 12 hours through the night. This method did not work for any of our friends.

Breastfeed exclusively, almost 
Our little one was breastfed and periodically given formula. If I wanted to go to the gym or have brunch with friends, my husband simply gave her a bottle and I didn't sweat it. For a while I tried to pump and keep up with her, and there were weeks -- perhaps even months -- when she was exclusively drinking breast milk, but it was stressful to keep up. I didn't find that the added health benefits of being exclusively breastfed exceeded the health benefits of an un-stressed mother.

Alternate who puts the baby to bed and who gets to sleep
For us, it really worked to be co-parents, and since we weren't breastfeeding her to sleep this meant that [theoretically] anyone could put her to bed. Mama. Papa. Oma. Opa. Babysitters? Date night? Yes, it's all possible. However, whoever is responsible for the baby that night is responsible for the whole night. This way rather than having two semi-tired parents, you have one well-rested parent and one sacrificed parent (who gets to catch up on sleep the next night).

Breast and bottle, every day 
Even when she was exclusively drinking breast milk, I would pump and give her a bottle at least once a day (when your baby sleeps 12 hours a night, you have to pump before you go to bed anyways -- that bottle would become the next evening's last bottle before bed time). Most of our friends who exclusively breastfed had the experienced that their babies stopped taking a bottle after just a week or so. This meant that they -- and only they -- could put the baby to bed, feed the baby every 3 hours, and, well, I don't know a baby who is exclusively breastfed who sleeps through the night.

Papadag (Papa Day)
Every Saturday is Papadag, when my husband is the primary care person for our baby girl. I sleep in, go for a jog, or even rock climbing (pictured above, when my baby was 3.5 months old) and they have the whole morning together just the two of them. We often do a lot of activities together as a family also on Saturdays, but having alone time between papa and baby -- without mama interfering or managing things -- has been endlessly valuable in our family. There are too many benefits to name, especially for our baby.

Pause & listen 
More than anything, young babies need unconditional love from their parents. You can't spoil a young baby, they don't have wants, just needs. However, their only way to express their needs, big or small, is to cry. And though your first instinct might be to go to them immediately when they cry, to hand them the toy they are reaching for, I learnt to pause and let her try to handle it herself first. Then she slowly develops the self-confidence she needs to help herself.

Don't be a judgmental parent
What I love most about being an ex-pat parent is that I'm surrounded by contrasting and varying parenting ethos, with no real societal pressure to conform to one method over another. I enjoy direct exposure to Dutch, British, Portuguese, Filipino and many other parenting styles and secrets. I have learnt so much from these families, and we have fostered a community of genuine openness, freely comparing parenting ideas, finding out what works for whom, and not judging each other.

I've learnt about the reasonable side of the anti-child-vaccinations movement from a friend who is not vaccinating her baby (my closing remarks were "But, don't you ever wonder to yourself 'if there was a nuclear holocaust, maybe the vaccinated babies with formaldehyde in their blood might better withstand destruction?'", I got to compare the hands-on experiences of one friend practicing child-lead weaning with another who described her weaning technique as "as passive a possible -- we practically tie her hands behind her back when she's feeding!"

Work three days a week
The Netherlands has the shortest maternity leave in Europe (16 weeks), but when you return to work you have the right to keep your position and shorten your work week. I was really happy to go back to work when my daughter was 6 months old, to have something that was mine, where I could have adult conversations. After a month, the novelty wore off, but at least I feel very balanced, for now.

5 months to crawling is wonderful! 
When they are so little, it was quite distressful how fragile they are. When they're 4-5 months they are sitting up, moving things and their little personalities really start to shine. What a special time! But just as you're feeling confident in your decisions for your baby, they start to move a little, and then they lose their fear of the unknown, and then they start to have wants and require some boundaries, and it's a whole new basket of skills and judgment for mama and papa.

Where are the 21st Century leaders? Not in politics, apparently

This week we had local elections in Amsterdam, and it was the first time I've been allowed to vote in over 5 years.

I sympathise with voters, feeling un-inspired by the "leaders" they have to choose from, but I also sympathise with politicians.

On one hand, we romanticise strong leadership, Winston Churchill being the classic example. Churchill was someone everyone could rally behind. He was a charming and well spoken man who lead a country when there was a clear enemy and a clear direction to go. He was someone you wanted to follow, hold up on a pedestal, with un-tarnished integrity.

In modern days, we demand that our leaders be brought closer to our level and be accountable. We question what they do, we demand to participate more in the decision-making process. But we don't seem to quite know how to handle this new power of the people. The result is that people (citizens, press, other politicians) are so busy providing a constant stream of attack / defense (asking questions, demanding accountability and pointing fingers) that we no longer recognise the difference between a genuine scandal, simply poor accounting, and normal mistakes in responsible decision-making.

And the personalities that rise in this system are not the sort of leaders we identify with. To make it in this new political system, politicians need to be constantly pointing out the mistakes of their opponents, constantly highlighting their attempts to stop their opponents mistakes, asking tough questions, and not answering things in ways that can be held against them. If Churchill were alive today, he would either be an unsuccessful politician, or he would have become something else.

I have found no shortage of "leaders" who I would rather follow -- people with integrity, who work together for common benefit, moving forward, who give credit more than point fingers -- in business and work environments than I have found in politics.

Is it because everything's going well? Churchill (and Britain) had a clear enemy (Germany), and a clear economic goal (recovery from the depression). It's much easier to rally together against a common problem.

Maybe it's a bit of a bourgeois problem to be contemplating when many people in the world are still suffering under poverty and lack of security. But, when everyone is relatively prosperous, decisions are much more complex and difficult. How to fairly distribute wealth without dis-incentivising hard work? How to manage you country's resources now while prices are high, without leaving future generations resource-poor? How to provide everyone with a place to live, but still have mechanisms in place to allow for choice? Do you let everyone into your country, but expect them to fend for themselves when they arrive? Or be selective about who you let in, but better enable them to prosper?

These are tough questions to answer. So tough that I would almost be distrustful of a politician who thought s/he had all of the answers. But throwing your hands up in the air and saying "I don't vote. There is no one worth voting for" is not the solution either.

Uninvolved

- Mala, I heard you're moving to Kenya?
- Yes. I'm excited and terrified! I've got a place to live, but I don't know what my general security will be like.
- Are you going through an established organisation or company? And will you be living with other ex-pats? In Ghana I lived with a Ghanaian and had a nightwatchman sleeping in front of my window every night, and had no problems. In Istanbul we had three ex-pat women in one apartment, no security, and had big problems. But that was like 10 years ago.
- I didn't know you lived in Africa and Turkey! Don't you ever feel like you just can't relate to people anymore because of all the experiences you've had? I'm worried that normal life just won't be possible anymore after living abroad for so long.
- Mala, I'm married, own a condo, and just had a baby. Every one can relate to me.
- Ha, true.
- And yes, there were definitely chapters where I couldn't relate to my friends back home, but then 6 months later in a different context in a different life, you can't relate to who you were in those un-relatable chapters. We are constantly feeling involved in something, and uninvolved in something else. Life goes on, we adapt.

What I didn't have the heart to tell Mala was that every time you leave a place, you leave a piece of yourself there. And every time a friend leaves you, you retract just a little bit more in the next friendship. So the life of a nomadic ex-pat is one of slowly retracting yourself into a self-sustaining island, slowly becoming less and less involved in your surroundings.

- Guy's brother just had another baby.
- How many is that now?
- 5 children.
- How do they cope? And in the diplomatic corps, don't they have to move every 5 years? How do the children build reliable friendships?
- Exactly. That's why you need to have such a large family. You sort of breed your community.

I think army families have it even worse, because they know they have to move every 2 years. I was listening to an interview with an army woman on the BBC, and she said in her first week in a new place, she joins a minimum of 3 clubs. That's how she feels like she "lives" there, like she's involved, rooted. And then after two years of getting the house just right, when she's starting to find serious character flaws in her "friends", and as the clubs change and aren't like they "used to be", it's time to move on anyways. And the cycle repeats itself.

With virtual communication, you can build a sort of virtual community these days too. And in Amsterdam, there are months of the year when I don't have any time to see my local friends because I have so many visitors that they keep me occupied. So it's a sort of international community of travel-a-lots and we get to see each other more than our local friends at times. But it's not a real life somehow.

This is the longest I've ever lived in a place since leaving my hometown almost 13 years ago, and this is the least I've travelled too. When I was pregnant, and people would ask if I was planning on putting my child into Dutch school or international school, I was completely dumbfounded. The thought of knowing where I would be when my unborn baby was going to primary school was completely alien to me. And now as I research childcare options I have to keep reminding myself that I need to think through to her needs as a walking, talking child, and not just as a still baby.

I've joined a neighbourhood group. I'm planning on joining a choir in the new year. And I'm actually learning about the personal business of my neighbours. I'm becoming involved again.

Feminism and childcare

- I have everything I ever wanted in my life -- career, travel, lifestyle -- except a man and my own little family.
- Yes, but if you had a man and a child, you likely would have had to re-prioritise career, travel and lifestyle in order to accommodate your family.
- I don't think you need to sacrifice your life for your family.
- It's more about re-prioritising what's in your life. Your life is full, so when you add things into it, the rest needs to be...er...re-distributed.
- I don't buy it.
- Well, I would not live in Amsterdam anymore if it wasn't for my husband's commitments here. I would have given it two years then wrapped up the party and gone somewhere else where my career could effortlessly flourish and feel like an empowered professional again.
- But do you regret that?
- Definitely not! I get much more personal fulfillment out of my life with my husband and baby here than I got out of my life with my career elsewhere. But the blunt, feminist truth is that I have sacrificed my career, first for my husband's career, and now to care for my child.


I think above anything, the feminist and civil rights movements were meant to give people choices.

When I was a [overly-principled] teenager, I thought feminism was about women doing what men do, and not falling into gender stereotypes. I didn't want to be a nurse, teacher, or secretary when I grew up. And I would have viewed many of the things I now hold true in my early thirties as cop-outs.

But not doing what you really want because it's a gender stereotype also means you're letting gender stereotypes impact your decisions.

• Do you love caring for your child(ren) full-time, and can afford to live off of one salary? Be a fabulous stay-at-home mom / dad!
• Do you feel like a better mother if you're able to express yourself as a professional, as a woman, as well as as a mother? Go back to work and schedule lots of time for socialising!
• Do you need to escape your family life periodically and re-collect your inner drive? Travel alone!

I'm taking 6 months off of work, and then returning to work 3 days per week for at least a year. If I loved my job, I would work 4 days a week.

I live in a country where all parents have the right to reduce their work week by one day per child. Many men take "papa dag" and only work 4 days per week, and many women only work 3 days per week when they have children (but don't seem to go back to full-time when their children grow up!). I don't imagine we will ever live in another country that facilitates part-time work so seamlessly, and I really encourage my husband to also take advantage of this situation while it lasts.

And that's another thing I really hold true, which I didn't appreciate in my overly-principled years: my life occurs in chapters. How I define myself now is different than 5 years ago, and may be different 5 years from now. I'm very lucky to have gotten to experience the career-driven, jet-setter lifestyle for a long and important chapter of my life, and I fully intend to return to an emphasis on career in a few years. But I'm also happy I get to experience being a wife and mother settled in one place who doesn't think about work after 5PM. Having a job that doesn't consume you has it's benefits too!

And the more of these different lifestyles I get to experience, the less I seem to judge the decisions of others.

My [Dutch] first weeks with baby

"You must feed the baby every three hours, above all other needs"
"You must listen to the baby's rhythm"
"The baby needs to eat a lot, or it won't have the energy to wake up"
"Feedings should never go more than 45 minutes, even if the baby hasn't eaten very much"
"Don't use a bottle to supplement breastmilk"
"Your feedings are taking too long, you must use a bottle"
"The baby should lay against your body with its head aligned with its stomach horizontally when feeding"
"Always have the stomach below the head when feeding"

In The Netherlands, new parents are supported by:

• A maternity nurse, who spends 6-8 hours in your home with you for the first 8-10 days of your baby's life
• A midwife, who visits you at your home twice in the first week
• The consultation bureau, whose nurses and doctors monitor your child's development until it is 4 years old
• Your family doctor
• Hospital staff from the hospital where you gave birth, if applicable

Each of these trained medical professionals gives you advice, with absolute conviction. Each piece of advice conflicts with the advice of the other trained medical professionals.

Eventually we realised that caring for a newborn baby was a matter of blindly re-prioritising dozens of "essential" needs, and blindly judging the validity of conflicting medical advice.

The Internet
- Is Amy in labour?
- Yes! And I'm on call to google anything that the doctor says that sounds dodgy.

I don't know how people -- especially expats -- had babies before the internet. Most anglo expats have more faith in their own medical systems than the country where they live, and whenever any information comes into conflict with our intuition / upbringing, we google it.

• Does she seriously need to be woken up every 3 hours? And for how long?
• How do you use a baby wrap / sling?
• How long before we can use a soother?
• How long does expressed breastmilk last? Formula?
• How to sooth cramps?
• When is sex safe again?
• Why doesn't colic exist in The Netherlands? And how long does colic last?
• When does this start becoming rewarding?

We quickly learnt, however, that Google does not simplify the whole conflicting-baby-advice issue.

Doing the math

Our Dutch maternity care nurses kept us on a busy Dutch schedule for our baby's first days. We were instructed to feed the baby every 3 hours, calculated from the beginning of the feed.

Every three hours = 8 X 3 hour cycles per 24 hour period
A feeding takes a minimum of 45 minutes, and up to 1.5 hours
Burping, soothing, and putting baby back to sleep takes a minimum of 15 minutes, and up to 1.5 hours
The baby should sleep a minimum of 16 hours a day = 16 / 8 cycles per day = baby needs to sleep 2 hours per cycle
Waking baby enough to feed takes a minimum of 15 minutes, and up to 45 minutes

[Horrible realisation]: If baby takes more than 45 minutes to feed, and more than 15 minutes to wake up + put back to sleep, baby cannot have minimum 16 hours of sleep per day! And each time baby gets less than 2 hours of sleep in an interval, baby is impossible to wake up for next feeding, perpetuating the cycle!

What was happening is the wake-feed-burp/cramps-fall-asleep cycle was generally taking 2-2.5 hours, giving baby a mere 30 minutes to an hour of sleep per cycle. Which was completely contrary to her natural rythm which meant we were constantly battling with her.

Battling to wake her up.
Battling to feed in under 45 minutes, but not so quickly that it aggravated her cramps and/or burping.
Battling to put her to sleep.

With both the maternity nurse and the midwife in the room we demanded that they make a decision for us. What is a priority: feeding every three hours vs. feeding the baby fully at each feeding vs. letting the baby sleep uninterrupted? We never really got an answer except "follow the baby's natural rythms...but make sure you wake her often enough to feed".

Feeling good
While I was on my mandatory 4-weeks-before-due-date maternity leave, my biggest job was to feel good. Sure, I had lots of little projects -- knitting a baby blanket, completing my Dutch exams, enjoying the sun, riding my bike daily -- but my primary responsibility was to feel good. In fact, my midwife repeated several times in one visit "You must take more naps!"

If I felt tired, I should cancel my plans and take a nap. If I had lots of energy, I should go out on my bike. Don't feel like cooking? Don't!

After birth, I was much more in need of care, and while I did have 3 people to help me, I was the sole food source for a little creature who needs to eat every 3 hours. And it often takes 2 just to feed her. Even though my best-husband-in-the-world (yours is too!) was doing literally everything else -- changing diapers, soothing cramps, bath time, waking her up, putting her to sleep, feeding me -- it was really a struggle to keep up with feeding her and recovering me.

- How's motherhood?
- So far I mostly lay, bleeding and feeding.

I really under-appreciated the damage to one's body that labour causes. I think we're all so focused on the labour itself and, most importantly, meeting the little "familiar stranger" (borrowed from my friend Sara) we've spent the last 9 months dreaming about, that we don't imagine how mom's going to feel after birth.

Given that we only really had 30 minutes - 2 hours maximum every cycle to wash everything, feed ourselves, wash ourselves, and sleep, the only way to survive was to cut corners. And the pressure to sleep on cue, eat on cue and pee on cue resulted in me loosing more sleep, eating less, and being too lost to remember to drink water.

Six weeks
The one consistency that seemed to pop up across medical advice, Google, and frantic phone calls to our families was that everything seems to come together at six weeks.

Baby starts to smile around 6 weeks
Sleep patterns emerge around 6 weeks
Mom's pelvis is healed around 6 weeks
Baby's cramps ease around 6 weeks
Mom stops bleeding around 6 weeks

It doesn't seem imaginable, but here we are at six weeks (which feels like forever) beginning sleep training with a smiling, cramp-less baby!

My [Dutch] labour experience

Our little girl was born last week at a birthing centre in Amsterdam, and I just wanted to document my very positive Dutch birth experience while it's still fresh. Best of luck to all my friends who are delivering in the coming months! It's a baby boom!

The Dutch way
The Netherlands is all about natural childbirth, and ex-pats in Holland spread horror stories about pain relief being illegal, home births required by law unless there is a medical indication, and being given only paracetemol (tylenol) to women recovering from c-sections.

There is some truth to this, but these days expecting parents have more choices for their childbirth in The Netherlands than anywhere else in the world. The whole birthing process is lead by midwives, and you can choose to give birth at home, in a birthing centre, or in a hospital (though if there are no medical reasons for a hospital birth, you have to pay a hefty premium to your health insurer), if you've had a c-section, you can try to deliver "naturally" on future children (though only if it is deemed entirely safe), and there are choices for pain relief (though you must be in a birthing centre or a hospital, even for simple pain relief like laughing gas or remifentanil).

And, most importantly, in The Netherlands you get a trained "maternity care giver" -- think "professional mother" -- who comes to your house for 8-10 days after birth to train you with the Dutch system of raising babies.

Labour
I was one week late, my husband had just wrapped up all his projects at work, handed in his thesis proposal at school, and had his last class the day before. I had just finished the baby blanket and hat -- the last of my pre-baby maternity leave projects. We went for a date, dinner and a (very violent) movie, and came home to watch comedies to lighten the atmosphere.

Just as we were showering before bed, my contractions started around 2AM, were straight away 6-8 minutes apart, and almost immediately my water broke. There was clearly meconium in the water (which meant we had to go to the hospital), and the midwife came to our house to confirm this diagnosis.

I was quite relieved that we had a medical indication that forced us into a hospital birth. For months I had been making an ambiguous response to the question "Are you planning on having a home birth?" Natural childbirth at home just sounds so romantic, and is so valued in The Netherlands. Imagining candles, soft music, and an intense peacefulness in our loving home.

- Are you sure you want to be open to a home birth? There's a lot of blood and stuff. Which room / piece of furniture are you imagining giving birth on?

- Yah, I feel like I'd be more comfortable in a hospital, but we also live on the fourth floor in a building with steep stairs and no lift. Do you want to carry me downstairs in full labour? Home birth may seem like a really good option then.

The midwife made all the arrangements with the birthing centre attached to the Saint Lucas Andreas hospital in Amsterdam, and drove us there. It was such a smooth process, timing our movements between my contractions. When we arrived at the hospital, we just walked straight through into our private room, no hassles, no paperwork, no waiting. The birthing centre rooms are spacious, you have your own bathroom with shower, bath, and toilet.

My husband managed communication with the midwives, students, and nurses, and I managed my pain. My tactic to withstand the contractions was that he would pinch both of my Achilles tendons (an acupressure technique recommended by a work colleague), and I would focus on that pain and my breathing. This really kept me in "the zone", and enabled me to keep it together (I only had to ask my husband once to "Please stop talking" -- use of the word "please" constitutes "keeping it together" in my books). I spent most of my labour laying on my side with a big pillow between my knees, enjoying the spaces between the contractions as much as possible. I probably should have moved around more to speed up my contractions, but I was far too content laying on my side.

Almost immediately they ran tests to make sure the baby was not in distress (though I was never doubted it, I just knew the baby was fine), and after a short time we had the results: we were not in the unlucky 10% of cases where meconium is a serious indication, our baby was in great condition.

After about 5 hours of labour, I was nearing dilation but my contractions were still only 5 minutes apart. They explained that it was important my contractions were a minimum of 2 minutes apart before we could push the baby through the birth canal, because if something were wrong 5 minutes was too long to wait between pushes. They gave me oxytocin to speed up the contractions, at which point I also requested remifentanil -- with all the tubes and elastic bands I was hooked up to, it was one more that would actually make me feel good! I didn't find that the remifentanil did anything to lessen the intensity of the contractions, but they made the spaces between contractions even more enjoyable.

- Are you sure you would like remifentanil?

- I wouldn't be asking for it unless I was at my wit's end. Yes.
- Can you wait 10 minutes and then decide if you would like it?
- It will take you 10 minutes to set it up, so no, I don't want to wait an additional 10 minutes.
- Wait 10 minutes, then press this red button and we will start you on remifentanil.
[9 minutes later...]
- Do you still want remifentanil?
- I wanted remifentanil 10 minutes ago...OF COURSE! YES!

After the labour was over and I had my little girl in my arms they asked me if I was glad that they made me wait 10 minutes. I was far too tired to deliver a collected and calculated response which somehow articulated the depth of my displeasure with them, that the unnecessary and non-medical postponement of remifentanil was the only major disappointment I had in my entire labour experience, and that it explicitly states in my birth plan that if I ask for pain relief, I am to be taken seriously with immediate action because I tend to push my body beyond its capabilities.

- No.

Once the contractions were every two minutes (and I was already involuntarily pushing during contractions), we started the pushing phase. After 5 minutes, they said I would need an episiotomy because the baby was showing signs of distress (but again, I was not worried about it). I didn't really feel anything, and then we resumed pushing and within about 5-10 minutes I had a beautiful slimy baby placed directly from my womb onto my chest.

Although I could feel everything (the remifentanil is only used for a short window before the pushing phase, and leaves your system within 4 minutes), I almost couldn't believe that this little creature on my chest was our baby. All I could see was this little head, which shielded the rest of her body from my sight.

We waited 15-30 minutes or so for pulsations to cease, and then my husband cut the umbilical chord. She breastfed within the hour, and as soon as I was stitched up, everyone cleared the room and left us alone with with our baby for two glorious hours -- she was alert, calm, and such a delight for us. A while later they came with food and champagne for us. Eventually they weighed the baby with my husband (the elation of birth started to be replaced by the exhaustion of labour, and I spent the rest of the day laying down), and we were released.

Maternity care
We walked out of the hospital 5 hours after our baby was born, and a maternity care giver (in Dutch, a "Kraamverzorgster") was at our house within an hour of arriving home to help us settle in. This is something which I think is exclusive to The Netherlands. All new parents and babies are cared for in your own home by a maternity nurse / care giver for the first 8-10 days of your baby's life. The maternity care givers provide daily checkups to the baby and mother, assist with breastfeeding, diapers, cook, clean, fetch groceries, let you sleep, shower, and provide daily (Dutch) parenting tips. 

24 hours of bliss
The first 24 hours, the baby doesn't really need to eat much, and it was such a blissful and joyful time for us to spend with our calm and happy baby before the feeding pressure started the next day.

Always get pregnant in September

Most couples trying to conceive do not have much choice in the matter, but if you live in the Netherlands and can manage the conception date of your baby, I suggest always getting pregnant at the end of September:

1. In the Netherlands, woman must take maternity leave 4 weeks before their due date (but can take up to 6 weeks), and 12 weeks after their delivery day (or 10 weeks, if you've taken 6 weeks before your due date).

2. The Netherlands only has a few public holidays a year, and most of them fall in April / May. Check your calendar and see when the last public holiday in May is for the following year, add 4 weeks (maternity leave) to it to arrive at your ideal due date, and then count back 40 weeks to see when the first day of your last period should be.

This will optimise your chances of good weather + not losing any public holidays while on maternity leave. I was, sadly, one week too early and missed Pentecost this year.

Other great advice that I was given, and really worked for my pregnancy (but find the advice that works for you and your pregnancy):

1. Pregnancy is really long. Don't talk about it, think about it, or make decisions too early. It will go on forever.
2. Slow down, but don't stop. Once you stop doing something, you often can't pick it up again (I stopped jogging for 3 weeks halfway through my pregnancy, and couldn't jog after that again. But I did cycle throughout my pregnancy and am still very mobile on my bike 5 days before my due date). Being active has been so important to me in my pregnancy. However...
3. It's not necessarily all downhill. Every time I started getting cramps at night, or exhausted for a week, I thought to myself "This is it. This is how I am going to feel for the rest of my pregnancy." But actually I felt much more comfortable and was more active and mobile from 30-40 weeks than I was around 8 weeks, 22 weeks, and 36 weeks. But everyone's different.
4. Keep planning social activities right through your due date. Life must go on. Most women are late with their first child, and thinking beyond your due date will relieve the stress and pressure mounted on that day (and may also speed things up).
5. Get maternity clothes and a body pillow as soon as you start to feel uncomfortable -- don't wait. The body pillow can be used for nursing after baby is born, and you don't need to spend a lot of money to buy a few pairs of maternity trousers and some long shirts.
6. Find what works for you. It took half my pregnancy to figure out what I needed to make my pregnancy smooth. In my case, I really needed to micromanage my liquid consumption (drinking water all day did not come naturally for me), I needed to take iron, fiber, and magnesium every day for me, and just vitamin D for the baby (and folic acid for the first 12 weeks). And I ate sushi every week (for baby's brain development, and mummy's sanity).
7. Relaxed parents make relaxed baby. The only complications I had was when I was highly stressed at work leading up to my mid-pregnancy holiday in Italy.

Advice I didn't take, but wish I had:

8. Take a prenatal yoga or other course that encourages you to embrace your pregnancy. For at least 1 hour a week you can really take the time to enjoy being pregnant. I didn't really embrace my pregnancy, I only embraced my maternity leave.

Wonderful idea. Wrong species.

I was thrilled when I found this list of quotes that was compiled for me by a British friend in Japan in 2002, as I was migrating data to my new computer today!

"We are here on earth to do good to others.  What the others are here for, I don't know."  W.H.Auden, poet.

"If dogs could talk, perhaps we would find it as hard to get along with them as we do with people."  Josef Capek, artist.

"Egotist: person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me."  Ambrose Bierce.

"An idea isn't responsible for the people who believe in it."  Don Marquis, journalist.

"Wonderful idea.  Wrong species."  E.O.
Wilson, naturalist and ant expert, on Marxism.

"A curious sport where the object is to put a very small ball in a very small hole with implements ill-designed for the purpose."
- Winston Churchill on golf

"If one regards oneself as a sceptic, it is as well from time to time to be sceptical about one's scepticism."   Freud, psychoanalist.

"It's good to do nothing and then rest."  Spanish proverb.

"Never interrupt your enemy while he is making a mistake."  Napoleon, Emperor of France.

"He who praises everybody, praises nobody."  Dr Johnson, writer.

"Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon."  Susan Ertz.

"Buy land.  They aren't making it any more."  Mark Twain, writer.

"When two people in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary."  William Wrigley Jr., businessman.

"A bore is a man who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company."  Gian Vincenzo Gravina.

"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go."  Oscar Wilde, writer.

"Never confuse motion with action."  Benjamin Franklin, politician.

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use..."  Galileo

"Charm is the ability to make someone think that both of you are pretty wonderful."  Kathleen Winsor.

Argentina & Brazil, February 2012

We had two criteria for our honeymoon: that it be somewhere neither of us had ever been; and that it be a warm break from a frosty February. We had fallen in love listening and dancing to music, and thought Argentina and Brazil -- the lands of tango, samba, and bossa nova -- would be the perfect place to spend our honeymoon. We planned on spending the first half of the trip dotting around Argentina, from Buenos Aires to Patagonia to Mendoza, and the second half taking our time and combing our way along a 1000 km strip of Brazil's coastline from Florianopolis to Rio de Janeiro.

• Buenos Aires - 3 days
• Patagonia - 5 days, El Calafate, Perito Moreno Glacier, El Chalten, Los Glaciares National Park
• Mendoza - 3 days
• [Florianopolis & deportation - 2 days]
• Iguazu - 4 days
• Ilha Grande - 3 days
• Rio de Janeiro - 3 days

Our three week holiday was like six independent trips satiating all our senses. Six wildly different landscapes, different climates, a wide range of cuisines from Amazonian fruit to Patogonic lamb, and everywhere warm people and music. People were unexpectedly approachable and welcoming, and though my Spanish is out-of-practice, everyone was patient enough to let us try. We talked with people about warm but corrupt countries vs. cold but responsible societies, life in Europe, competition between Latin American countries, and how much beauty there was in the world (but especially in Brazil).

We maintained an adventurous and zealous attitude throughout our trip, delighting in everything around us, even when things went wrong. It was so nice to experience the magic of travel again, after having become a bit too comfortable and blaze about travel over the last few years. This trip renewed my travel bug, filled my belly, warmed my heart, and twinkled my eyes.

Buenos Aires, Argentina
We stayed in San Telmo, a quaint cobble-stone neighbourhood that is home to street Tango dancing and a big public market on weekends. Our lovely apartment was on a dark, too-quiet street, but inside it was an oasis of light and water. We had a lovely courtyard with a breakfast table next to a small fountain, and on the roof we had lots of sunshine and patio furniture from which to enjoy it. Sadly, we had to leave on Saturday afternoon though, and missed the street parties.

We spent most of our time in Buenos Aires walking around, from San Telmo, through the university campus, along the waterfront (a converted industrial area, but still with quite harsh edges and a lack of vitality except along the university campus), around the central shopping areas, around the museum, graveyard and park area, and through Palermo. Buenos Aires has beautiful old trees lining its smaller streets, and coupled with its decaying colonial buildings, it's undeniably charming. But, while you could tell that Buenos Aires should be a beautiful city, most of Buenos Aires seemed liked it had been cut up by security fences, construction fences, and traffic. The fine-grained intimate areas were criss-crossed with noisy impenetrable boulevards, some of which seemed to be around 75 m in width, and there weren't many places to sit and take in the city.

The exception was Palermo. Palermo had a great quality of life, and each of its three sub-districts have their own character. We spent our time in Palermo sipping drinks on carefully-decorated roof terasses, each with its own design, shopping at boutique stores that each had their own quirky elaborate entrances or gardens out back. A street tree dressed in a knitted skirt around the length of its trunk, residents sitting on lawn chairs in the middle of the street, the "best steakhouse in Argentina", everyone beautiful and creative.

Patagonia, Argentina
Not only is Patagonia really far away from the rest of Argentina (3 days by car from Buenos Aires alone), it's also enormous once you get there. With some of the most dramatic, tempermental weather in the world. We decided to fly and rent a car for the best combination of convenience and freedom, and decided that with 5 days El Calafate and El Chalten were our best bets for sights.

El Calafate is a very tacky tourist town. The kind of tourist town where people are trying too hard to over-compensate with authenticity and "character", resulting in a mis-match of buldings carved out of narly tree branches, hung with indigenous art from Australia. Mostly El Chalten is an airport and bus station and a big super market, one hour's drive from a remarkable glacier and within a reasonable drive to a great National Park. We stayed long enough to rent some tents and sleeping bags, buy some groceries, get our bearings, and eat Patagonic lamb atop a cliff with a view of the lake.

Perito Moreno Glacier was very impressive though. As a Canadian, I felt like you could see comparable sites to Patagonia in the Canadian Rockies, but with much more wildlife in the Rockies. But I don't think we have anything in Canada that compares to P. Moreno Glacier. It's a glacier funelling into a L-shaped lake, and the result is an impressive ice wall many km long, many km wide, and many metres high. Every few years there is enough ice to totally separate the two sides of the lake (such as this winter while we were there), and when the ice starts to retreat and the lake water pressures on, it can create an massive breach which is well-worth seeing (but occured a few days after we left!). We took a boat to ride (a safe distance) along the towering ice wall of the glacier, and then wore clamp-ons and walked on some smooth parts of the glacier. A bit touristy? But to go all that way and only spend an hour watching the glacier seemed more wrong, and who could object to a boat ride? And our guide was a really interesting experimental musician who rewarded us with whiskey.

After a beautiful drive through dramatic, wind-scorched landscapes, we arrived in El Chalten the next day and decided to pop into Los Glaciares National Park's Information Centre because we couldn't find the road to the camp ground.

- Excuse me, where can we find the entrance to this road that leads to the base camp?
- Well, you park your car here, pack all of your gear and it's a 10 KM hike to the base camp, where you stay over night, then it's another 10KM hike to the next base camp, where you spend the second night, and then on the third day you climb to see Fitz Roy, but it's been covered in cloud all week.
- Ha ha ha. No seriously, where's the road to the base camp? We don't have bags or hiking shoes.

She was unimpressed. And she was out of trail maps.

We took a picture of the trail map on the wall, put on every sweater, touque, long-sleeved shirt, and pair of socks we could find, and packed up all the light food we had bought in El Calafate. Sorry Patagonic beer and Mendozan wine, you'll have to wait for our return.

The trail was not too difficult, but the weather was changing constantly. While you were walking uphill, you would get down to a T-shirt with blue skies overhead, but as you crested the pass you would freeze and see the dark dark clouds up ahead. It was like walking into certain hypothermia, with our hopes of seeing Fitz Roy dwindling the closer we got. And we looked so foolish with our improvised backpacks and sneakers compared to the hard core trekkers head-to-toe in their hard core trekking outfits, complete with hiking poles.

We spent the first evening at the base camp to Cerro Torre. Though the wind was strong enough to lift me, somehow it was not strong enough to lift the clouds. We recorded a happy birthday message for my wonderful mother over a dinner we cooked inside our tent, and fell asleep shivering, listening to the howling of the wind.

The next day we set off for Fitz Roy, again following the dark clouds. By the time we arrived at Fitz Roy's campsite, there was still no sign that the clouds would part. As we took a nap to warm up in our tent, we overheard that a man had just left after spending 3 days at the base camp hoping to see Fitz Roy. We woke up from our nap and decided to just make the climb, regardless. After recruiting another ill-prepared Canadian in sneakers, we climbed the final 1-hour ascent just in time to see Fitz Roy reveal itself.

What a sight. The face of the peak looked like a sheet of gold, the sky and lake were crystal blue, the landscape green from the glacial water. It was one of those views that could knock you off your feet, and is even more special because of 2 days of anticipation and sore bodies.

Mendoza, Argentina
Our flights were delayed en route to dry, hot Mendoza, and we never seemed to recover from this bad timing. We missed the tasting at the restaurant in town by one hour, due to misinformation. We missed the entrance to the winery we most wanted to visit by 5 minutes due to poor planning. We ate too late and our food took too long and we missed the rest of the wineries. We missed the meat festival in the park because we were too early. It was strange. I remember this famous wine country most for the best steak I ever had!

Florianopolis, Brazil
Canadians cannot get visas at the airport for Brazil, contrary to what we understood, and the airline forgot to check us because we began our journey in Mendoza. Our week of surfing on an island would have to wait. We were under pseudo-arrest while the very nice Brazilian customs officials battled the airline. There was no doubt that I had to go back to Buenos Aires, but they were fighting to also make the airline return my Dutch husband with me. Every few hours we would get an update.

"This man is not helpful, we are calling his boss."
"It might take some time to get a visa because it's Carnaval and the embassy is closed."
"This is your honeymoon? Okay we will make sure you stay together."
"Now we are phoning the CEO of the airline."
"I have a plan, we can deport your husband. It's in the Brazillian constitution that family is the most important and that we must keep families together."

Once we were finally deported (took about 4 hours), the real red carpet treatment began!

While all the other passengers had to wait at the crowded gate, we were escorted by security personel onto the empty plane, with my passport being kept by the pilot. When we landed, all the other passengers de-planed while a special security force was sent to pick us up. We had phone numbers from the pilot and cabin crew for when we would finally be able to return to Brazil, and were escorted all the way to the visa desk by special security.

Iguazu, Argentina
Rather than spend four more days in Buenos Aires, we were convinced by a good friend of mine who spent 6 years evading Brazilian customs officials to go to Iguazu for a change of scenery. Iguazu is very tropical, and completely different than anything we had seen elsewhere in Argentina. Buenos Aires was like a beautiful Autumn, Patagonia was a dramatic winter, Mendoza was a dry hot summer, and Iguazu was like living in a jungle. With my papers dropped off at the consulate, it was time to see the famous falls.

We hadn't planned on going to Iguazu, mostly because both of us had already experienced Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, and how many great waterfalls does one need to see in their lifetimes? But Iguazu was a totally different experience. Like Vic Falls, the falls are very long -- at least a kilometre in length -- and you never can see the whole thing in one frame. You can experience the falls from the top, at a section of the falls where it almost seems like you've reached the end of the world. You can experience the falls from underneath, and even swim around an island at the centre of the falls. And you can see the falls alongside them. It was so great we went back for a second day to swim in a distant off-shoot of the falls.

Ilha Grande
With my visa in hand, we crossed the border and hoped that there was no record of being deported in my husband's passport. A few days earlier, I had started to really suffer from some inflamed bug bites which only air conditioning could sooth, and I hoped that long-distance buses in Brazil were as comfortable as those in Argentina. They were not, and in fact it turned out we hadn't paid for a long distance bus! We had paid for a car, a bus, a long wait at a bus station, and then still had to pay for a local bus and ferry ride. Every 4 hours I had to wash the calamine lotion off my body with wet wipes, and re-apply it to the 55 swollen bug bites I now had all over my body.

But it was all worth it. Thirty-seven hours later we found ourselves in an island paradise! No cars, no pavement, just sand, surf, snorkelling, drinking, eating, and arriving everywhere by boat. We ate some seriously amazing meals in Argentina, but we just kept going back to this restaurant along Ilha Grande's beach where all the chairs faced the water, and the food had an impressive number of accolades (we learnt later). My favourite was the crab pastry and the passion fruit caipirinha.

My husband had been patiently waiting to surf the entire trip. Even atop freezing Fitz Roy he had talked about how excited he was to surf. The cancellation of our trip to Floripa was a major blow to his Brazilian surfing dreams, but Ilha Grande did not disappoint. The surfing beach on the other side of the island was brilliant -- the waves weren't very big, but you didn't have to do anything to catch them. Normally when you surf, you spend most of your energy swimming against the tide, then treading water while you wait for waves. On Ilha Grande's Praya Mendes you could walk out to the waves, stand on the bottom, and then just jump up onto your board and be whisked to shore.

Rio de Janeiro
Rio seems to be a city with everything. The city centre of Rio is basically all the buildable land between beautiful mountains and stunning beaches, often just three blocks thick. You can stand atop several different peaks, each with its own unique view of the city, or you can stand on a world-class beach and look up at the characteristic mountain peaks. It's the birthplace of samba, and my favourite, bossa nova. It has great food, such as churrascaria (all-you-can-eat meat restaurants), but also a wide availability of fruits and berries from all over the country, including our favourite Amazonian fruit drink, made of açaí. Rio even has a tropical rain forest national park in its centre.

Along with its obvious natural assets, Rio has some urban quirks, such as the charming neighbourhood of Santa Teresa that clings onto the side of the mountain with its winding roads, picturesque courtyards, and colourful buildings. And who doesn't love a city where men in nothing but speedos and sneakers walk alongside men in suits through streets lined with skyscrapers?

Conclusions
In the end, we didn't get to spend the second half of our trip making our way along the coast (due to visa issues), but we didn't feel like we had missed anything either. The pace was just right -- slow enough to have a satisfying taste of each place we visited, but fast enough to keep an exciting momentum and diversity to the trip. We were so busy enjoying ourselves that we didn't realise until we had left that we had actually missed some pretty core activities. We heard a lot of music around us over the trip, and we did manage to go to a samba social club in Rio, but we never actually saw live tango or danced!

(But then it's always a good idea to leave some important things to do "next time".)

Customer non-service

I feel like such an expat housewife whining about customer service in another country, but this was a truly amazing conversation I had today with a certain credit card company.

- Hello, I'm looking to purchase a new credit card and saw your Panda card online. It says that by purchasing the card I will "automatically support the World Wildlife Fund", but it doesn't say how?
- And what is your question?
- How does my purchase support the World Wildlife Fund?
- [Silence]
- For example, do 1% of my purchases go towards the WWF? Or does all of my annual membership fee go to the WWF?
- Oh, let me check.
- Do you never get asked this question? Your website is very vague and un-transparent. I thought lots of people must phone you to ask how their money is going to the WWF.
- Okay, I checked and it says that a fixed sum is donated every year to WWF, but it says that the credit card company and WWF have agreed not to publicize the amount.
- That's very un-assuring. Is the fixed sum at least determined based on the number of cards sold?
- Yes! Oh wait, no!
- But then I don't know how my choices as a consumer are leading to raising funds for the WWF.
- I'm sorry, this is really terrible isn't it?
- [Me laughing]
- Why don't you choose the green card instead?
- Sure, what makes the card green?
- Um...let me check...[pause]...The card makes your purchases green!
- But how? Do they invest in carbon offsetting? And if so, how do they determine the carbon footprint of my purchases? And what type of offsetting projects do they fund?
- I don't know! But here's a phone number I just found for the company.
- Aren't you the company?
- Yes, but there's another company that knows why it's "green". Let me just transfer you please...
- Thank you for your help, please transfer me.
- [Ringing, ringing, ringing]
- Um, let me try another number.
- [Ringing, ringing, ringing]

Eventually I hung up because, as with all consumer and government phone lines, I was being charged 0.10 / per minute for this phone call by the company, and 0.10 / per minute by my mobile phone company as service costs for billing the other company, plus my regular minutes.

The joys of living in a "charming" [dilapidated], "historical" [old] Amsterdam [small] flat

We love our cozy home in the Jordaan.
Having grown up on the west coast of North America, I am so happy to live in a place built before the 1970s, in a neighbourhood where bikes out-number people, and dogs out-number cars.  When people visit us, they are immediately struck by the charm and character of our humble abode, and we are the envy of our neighbours for having windows on all sides, a skylight, and a [however inaccessible] roof terasse.

The Jordaan is an enchanting neighbourhood in the west part of Amsterdam Centrum that hosts two markets -- a farmer's market 15m from our doorstep every Saturday, and a vintage and organics market 100m from our doorstep every Saturday and Monday.  Every block has either a gallery or a cafe/bar, or both, and we are surrounded by canals on all sides.  Apartments in this neighbourhood are considered small, even by Amsterdam standards, but with the Jordaan as your living room, it's still one of the best places to live in the city.

When we first moved into our new home, the usual repairs and upgrades were required.  Some paint, a ledge for the windowsills, some flooring in the closet, nothing that seemed too out of the ordinary.  Since then, at exponentially increasing intervals, our home has become a source of entertainment for our friends who have been following our drama.

This weekend I came home at 5:30AM on a flight from Abu Dhabi to an email from our downstairs neighbour telling us that the re-occurring leak coming from our toilet and leak coming from our washing machine are back.  Then Reinier woke up and greeted me with a kiss and "oh, and if you use the washroom, don't close the door.  It fell off and I just re-glued it".  And then a few hours later while cooking lunch, "oh no!  Esmerelda ate the rest of our basil plant."  And there was a letter on the table from the internet company saying they owe us 0.20 euros.

To truly appreciate the humour in all of this, an explanation of the past year and a half of our cascading apartment pains must be documented.  Here is my attempt:

October 2009 - move in, painting, windowsill, closet floors, install washing machine.  Do not repair all the random holes in the walls, pipes sticking out of the floor, and what I can only describe as the corner of "ooze" [hole with insulation sticking out of it].

November 2009 - valve connecting washing machine to pipes is defective.  Contractor does not have a mobile phone, and our flat does not have a doorbell, so it takes several attempts for the contractor to finally install a new valve.

February 2010 - valve connecting washing machine to pipes fails, and is replaced again.  First appearance of a mouse in the house.  We name her "Esmerelda", and do not see her again for several months.

April 2010 - we apply for internet.

May 2010 - arrival of furniture from Abu Dhabi, and covering up of holes with pictures, chairs,  paintings, and plants.  After many follow-up phone calls, internet company finally tells us that the source of our problem is that our apartment doesn't exist.  Insisting that our apartment does indeed exist, it takes 8 weeks and 3 house visits for the internet to finally realise our apartment is not fitted for telecommunications, and that it will be impossible for us to have internet.  But in the meantime, they send us a box with a router and TV box.

June 2010 - valve connecting washing machine to pipes fails, and is replaced again.  New neighbour moves into apartment immediately below us.  We cancel our internet, and wait for 2 weeks for them to send a new box for us to return the router, etc. in [despite having retained the old box, just in case this might happen].  Finally they send the boxes, we re-package the items, and send them back to the internet company.  Our new downstairs neighbour applies for internet.

July 2010 - we receive a note from debt collectors saying that we owe the internet company for the items we had shipped back to them.  We produce the postage receipts proving that they were sent back, and that we are not culpable.  We find evidence that Esmerelda seems to be using one of our favourite plants to store food for the winter.

August 2010 - we receive another notice from the debt collector, and spend hours on the phone with the internet company trying to resolve the situation.  Finally the internet company sorts it out, and the debt collectors [supposedly] clear our records.  New neighbour [who also had drama with the internet company] finally gets internet and we share the connection.  We begin to see several Esmereldas.

September 2010 - new downstairs neighbour notices closet and all of its contents are wet due to leak originating from our apartment.  Valve connecting washing machine to pipes fails, and is replaced again. After a total of 5 Esmerelda captures over the summer, the Esmerelda situation peaks while my sister is visiting.  She has great advice on dealing with Esmereldas, and with the help of some wood to plug up holes, and a device that emits a sound that only rodents can hear, our Esmerelda situation is back under control.  We begin receiving monthly notices from the internet company that they owe us 20 euro cents.

October 2010 - our lease is renewed.  The only thing worse than living in a semi-dilapidated apartment is sifting through dozens of even more dilapidated apartments for months in search of one functional apartment which you cannot afford.

November 2010 - new neighbour notices the ceiling in his bathroom is becoming discoloured, and alerts us that there is another leak.

December 2010 - after being ignored by the contractor for weeks, we experiment and figure out that it is the toilet and not the washing machine this time.

January 2011 - contractor finally comes visit, tells us it is indeed the toilet, and says he will come back with a plumber.  City workers repairing the streets cut off all electricity on the block for 1 day, two weeks in a row while I am working from home and hosting a sick guest.  In an unrelated incident the same week, our heating stops working and it takes the contractor 3 days [and 3 freezing nights] to fix it [i.e. no heat, no hot water, for 3 days in January, and me waiting at home for the contractor to not show up, because he doesn't have a mobile phone to ring me if I leave the house].  Lia complains that we are not building managers, that endless phone calls to the wife of the contractor because he does not have a mobile phone and waiting at home for hours because we do not have a doorbell constitutes "management", and that "managers" are well-paid because following-up with people is tedious work.  Landlord pays no attention.  We begin house hunt.

February 2011 - contractor finally manages to "fix" the toilet, but leaves a gaping hole in our bathroom for 3 weeks to verify with our neighbour that it is indeed fixed before he patches up the whole wall with plaster.  All power goes out one day at noon in our whole flat [including hot water and heat], contractor comes with electrician to discover that the source of the problem is the electrical installation in the flat 3 floors below us.  This is magically fixed the same day it happened!

March 2011 - the washing machine valve breaks again, and a "definitive" solution is reached with the contractor -- yet another hole is made into our bedroom wall, and yet another pipe is attached to one of the pipes that was sticking out of the floor.  Reinier silently wonders if that pipe actually runs anywhere, but figures the contractor knows what he's doing.  The contractor patches up the hole in our bathroom after 3 weeks of dry ceilings for our downstairs neighbours, and we haven't seen Esmerelda in months.  An architect friends visits us, looks out our bedroom window to the neighbour's roof terasse that abuts our bedroom and says "that's illegal", turns and looks out the other window of our bedroom that abuts the other neighbour's staircase and says "that's also illegal".  We reach a final agreement on a flat just up our street which is not much bigger than our current place, but it's "new".  I go on a business trip to Abu Dhabi, and return to a leaking toilet, leaking washing machine valve, broken bathroom door (in an apartment with windows on all sides), notice from the internet company, and evidence that Esmerelda is back.

When we began our housing search, my criteria was: bright, at least 60 square metres, and older than the 1970s [if we wanted to live in a crappy 1970s building, we'd go back home to Vancouver!].  Reinier's sole criterium was "not requiring any repairs".

In the end, we've settled on a home from 1986, which is 58 square metres, and not very bright.  But it's in perfect condition, and if anything goes wrong it as least has a doorbell.

Happiness is hard work

I love seasons.  I spent 4 years on the equator, and it really reinforced in me that the temperate world is the most climatically variant.  The same place feels like 4 different places in just one year, and there is a constant sense of urgency to get the most out of the limited time you have to enjoy each season.

People behave differently in each season.  Spring is the rebirth -- the party -- when everyone sheds their winter layers, drag their couches downstairs and plop them down in the first sliver of sunshine they can find.  Summer is counter-routine -- school's out, friends are on holidays, you meet a lot of new people, and on a regular Tuesday afternoon, the park is filled with people who are supposed to be at work.  Autumn is the reset button, when everything settles back down, a routine is re-established, and you are reminded of the finite-ness of one's day.  Winter is the time to hibernate, drink hot alcoholic liquids, and enjoy a whole new range of outdoor activities.

This is my first winter in 5 years, and after a heavenly Christmas at home, I returned to Amsterdam smack in the middle of the most depressing time of year in the temperate world: 3rd week of January until 3rd week of February.  Tis the season of whiners, and I couldn't afford to listen.  Our toilet was still broken, the city workers shut off our electricity twice in two weeks due to road maintenance, we had no heat or hot water for 3 days and 3 freezing nights, and I was still waiting for clients to finalise contracts.  I had landed in Amsterdam after a restful Christmas with lots of momentum, and felt like I was facing opposition in all directions.  And everyone seemed to feel the same way.

We have to remember that this isn't Amsterdam's fault.  Everywhere sucks in January.  But suddenly all those Dutch quirks weren't cute any more.  They were painful.  It's like paying first world prices for third world services.  But Canada sucks right now too.  Remember that.  It's just January.  Christmas and New Year are over, and the next national holiday isn't until Easter.  Happiness and healthiness is hard work at this time of year -- eat right, exercise, maintain connections with people, avoid whining and whiners, and get some artificial sunshine if you have to!

And then I remembered another Dutch quirk at this dark time of year: Carneval.  Carneval is like a much more appropriately-placed Hallowe'en, held in the bleak mid-winter rather than in the sea of celebrations that is Thanksgiving-New Year.  A taste of spring indulgence to get you through the worst and final spat of winter bereavement.

Amsterdam, the Honeymoon

My first half a year in Amsterdam.
In the DFAIT Intercultural Effectiveness course that I took before I went to Ghana, the instructor described the "Stages of Cultural Adaptation".  The pre-departure jitters --> the honeymoon phase --> culture shock --> adaptation --> re-entry shock.  The duration of each stage depends on the individual and the experience -- in my 6 month post in Ghana, the honeymoon lasted about 3 weeks, culture shock about 3 weeks, then adaptation for about 5 months interspersed with mild honeymoon/culture shock blips.

[borrowed from http://www.expatmumsblog.com]

When I moved from Abu Dhabi to Amsterdam my pre-departure jitters were virtually non-existent because it took me over a year to move here -- normally I give myself about 2 weeks notice before I move to a new country.  And remarkably, I seem to have remained in the honeymoon stage for the past five months here.  I have characterised this post-Abu Dhabi interstitial period as:
"Mini retirement"
"Sabbatical"
"Intermission"

And have used the following job titles:
"Kept woman"
"Home economist"
"Lady who lunches with ladies who lunch"
And my favourite, courtesy of Patricia:  "You're not unemployed, you're a 'freelancer'"

After leaving Abu Dhabi, I had given myself a month and a half in Canada to refuel so that I was ready for the job hunt as soon as I settled in Amsterdam.  But I quickly learnt that Amsterdam in May is not a place for professional ambitions, it is much better suited for leisurely self-indulgence.
"You know, when I first moved to Amsterdam, I was really expecting to land running, but it has surprised me how long it took me to get on my feet here."
"I know, everyone I've met here is an unemployed ex-pat partnered with a Dutch person, who was a professional-over-achiever until they landed in Amsterdam."
"Exactly, no one is expected to do anything their first six months."
"But even if I tried to do 'nothing', I just can't be idle.  My natural default is hectic productiveness, and I always have a lot of to show for my time.  I don't expect Amsterdam to be any different."

Five months after saying that, I do have a lot to show for my first six months post-Abu Dhabi, but not the sort of stuff I had initially meant.  Instead, Amsterdam taught me a lesson in leisure this summer:

Public Holidays.  With Queen's Day as the opener, May is the month of public holidays in the Netherlands.  Queen's Day was a lively inauguration into Dutch street festivities, followed by Remembrance Day, Liberty Day, Ascension Day...and the list continues.  By the time June had begun, most people had forgotten what it's like to work a five-day week!

Queen's Day, Amsterdam, borrowed from www.iamsterdam.com.

World Cup.  My biggest piece of advice to people thinking about leaving Abu Dhabi is to leave in April. This way you benefit from the best time of year in Abu Dhabi (October-March) -and- the best time of year in the temperate world (May-October).  But even with a year to plan my entry into the Netherlands, I can't take credit for landing in Amsterdam just in time for the Oranje to go all the way to the final (and for Ghana to make the quarter final!!  Go Black Stars!). "You wouldn't believe how crazy it is here.  I am woken at 9AM on game days to people cheering and howling, everyone is dressed head-to-toe in orange, and all the offices close for the day.  I can only imagine the atmosphere in South Africa?"
"No one here has gone to the office since the World Cup began."

120,000 people at Museumplein for the World Cup Final, borrowed from www.mobypicture.com.

Fitting in.  Once my belongings from Abu Dhabi actually arrived 3 months after they were packed, it was a full time job for a month just trying to make the place functional.
"What's your schedule this week?"
"I'm fitting my 1200 sf apartment in Abu Dhabi into our 400 sf apartment in Amsterdam.  All week."

Art.  Art is everywhere in Amsterdam, and it's not something reserved for an artistic elite -- it's children's playgrounds, people singing on their bikes, temporary train station installations, overhead lamps, and random street characters.  A week doesn't pass by where I haven't seen a group of people dressed in costume break out into song.

Visitors.  I finally live in a city that is both central and desirable to visit, and whether it was a quick beer during a layover, or a week of hosting houseguests, we had a summer filled with reunions and good company.  Literally every week since I moved here, we have either been out-of-town, or someone has been visiting, and it has been a fantastic way to transition into life here, surrounded by familiar faces.

Cooking.  I've never been the primary chef in the household, nor do I ever plan on becoming one, but I've had fun learning how to cook and buy groceries this summer.  We have a farmer's market 50m from our doorstep every Saturday and a vintage market 100m away every Monday.  We invented a fantastic salad with goat's cheese, the crusty bits on top of fattoush, pasta, strawberries, and chicken; I learnt how to make stuffed butternut squash; Reinier learnt how to make cepelinai (Lithuanian mega-perogies); and I remembered how to make some of my old faves such as okonomikyaki, stir fry udon, and poor man's sushi.

Couples.  One of the biggest adjustments for me has been living in a coupled world.  Everyone in Amsterdam lives with their partner, usually expat female + Dutch male.  I don't think Dutch people marry Dutch people anymore.

Modes of Transportation.  Amsterdam has some very creative ways of getting around, including the beer bike, the penis bike taxi, the luge bicycle, and the disabled guy who pops a wheeley through crowded squares.

Beer Bike, with fully functional taps, borrowed from conortje.wordpress.com.

Festivals.  There are hundreds of festivals held in Amsterdam, and most of them occur between May and September.  "You want us to come to Liverpool for the Matthew Street Festival at the end of August?  I might actually tire of free outdoor music and beer by then."

Trips.  We found ourselves saying an enthusiastic "Yes!" to every travel opportunity that landed at our doorstep this summer.  And since we never know how long we'll be living in Europe, we felt it was the responsible thing to do.  Mountain biking, camping, family, building sand forts, sailing, yachting, reunions...a special thanks to my family in Lithuania for being such outstanding hosts, as always!

By September I was actually looking forward to the transition from summer bedlam into autumn order.  As the leaves begin to brown, this week I also started Dutch courses and working part-time setting up a Dutch Waterfront Centre and Network, and next week I start working a second part-time job.

It's been 5 years since I spent a winter in the temperate north, I can sense that the honeymoon is about to end at the same rate as the winter sets in.

Trips - Ethiopia

This fall, I'm hoping to have the chance to start documenting some of the places I've been over the past few years.  Here are some notes on my trip to Ethiopia in December 2008, and please check Mikey's version as well if you're planning a trip to Ethiopia soon.

Addis Ababa - the modern-day capital of Ethiopia, the location of the African Union. Go to the National Tourism Organisation (NTO) and have them organise your whole trip around the country. Not only are they highly competent and affordable, their guides are well-educated, and they employ local guides from villages to tour you around each site, creating local capacity.

Rock-hewn Churches - 12th Century Ethiopian Christian church, The Church of St. Mary is carved out of limestone and exhibits a distinctly Ethiopian Christian character. Unlike many other parts of Africa where Christianity was imported by Missionaries in the 19th Century, Ethiopia has its own orthodox faith, was the second country after Armenia to declare itself Christian, and includes its own array of black saints.
Nearby is an archaeological site with an informative 'museum' that illustrates the anthropoligal history of our species.

Bahir Dar - situated on Lake Tana, the source of the Blue Nile, Bahir Dar is an extraordinary collection of monasteries and other historical sites dating from the 16th and 17th centuries peppered amongst islands accessible via boat. Our tour guide, Adugnya, took us to hear traditional Ethiopian entertainment, and participated in many lively discussions about the current state of Ethiopia, and its democratic system.

Awash National Park - a wildlife viewing National Park with lots of birds, oryx and other bovines, but do not expect to see the big 5 like in South Africa and Kenya.

Not-to-be-missed next time!
- Gondar - the 17th century capital of Ethiopia with 44 churches.
- Lalibella - Ethiopia's 11 famous rock hewn churches, carved as crosses.
- Axum - the Holy City of Ethiopia, dating 2000 years back, including the tomb of kings and the parks of Stelae.