Why I (still) did not live abroad
May lived with her love in Milan, Simoon left for London, Theo also headed to la vita è bella and Elke, well, that's our world citizen (Paris, Ankara, Brussels and more). And me? I did a round trip in the Netherlands, but that was about it. Oh sure, I went traveling, I saw Australia and backpacked through Italy, I took trips to grand cities and chatted with villagers from small hamlets. But living? No.
I wanted to, but later. It was just really strange if I, with my urge to write in Dutch and tell stories, left for another continent for a year? I wanted to practice during my internships, learn things from people who know things and create an outsize portfolio. Well, you get me, I didn't go. No worries by the way, because the partying overshadowed the learning on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday over the studying on Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday. Nice balance, right? I loved that balance so much that I even tacked on a year of study. Ha, no one can take that away from me.
“Well, you get me, I didn't go.”
But living abroad, that's what I really want. Throwing yourself into a culture and country, giving it your all and seeing what it makes of you. Maybe I'll run back home like a child with homesickness within two months, that's possible. Or I'll hit myself against my thick skull for only doing it now. That chance is definitely present, but I, alias we (because yes, there is a we) have the solution.
My love and I turn it around, we’ll just go later when we’re grown up. Together, I already find it the coziest on this planet. If you work at the editorial office of ‘Ik vertrek’, then this is your heads up. Around retirement age, we’re going to hit the road. Maybe Italy (I’m already practicing Italian with my LOI CD in the car) or a little cabin along one of the fjords in Scandinavia and then do a bit of lagom. And a sailing school on a Greek island seems like the ultimate, but maybe you shouldn't want that when you're nearing sixty-seven? Oh come on, you’re wild and you’re young, we’ll just do it. By the way, if you think now: she’ll never do that again, then I’m going to prove you wrong.
