Erin has had to go shopping over the past week to try to stock our kitchen and obtain necessities such as paper towels, soap, and toilet paper. After only being in the country a couple weeks, she ventured to Wal-Mart while John was at work one day. Going very slowly and taking lots of deep breaths, Erin managed to get through the food section of the store rather well. Then she got to the toilet paper aisle.
Not only was a man stocking the shelves and moving things around while Erin searched the aisle, but there was toilet paper of every shape, size, thickness, and brand imaginable filling the shelves on both sides of the aisle. Erin tried hard to remember which kind she used to buy two years ago, but of course then she realized the packaging was probably different now anyway. This was no use. She actually almost had a panic attack right there in the toilet paper aisle. A few tears were definitely shed. Honestly, the toilet paper section in stores in Amsterdam is about 1/8 the size, and there are only two or three brands to choose from. Why on earth would anyone need 800 different kinds of toilet paper to choose from? I mean, come on, you wipe your behind with it! How fancy does it have to be?
When Erin first appeared in the aisle, the man stocking the shelves apologized for the inconvenience and asked if he could help. In hindsight Erin should have just asked him what kind of toilet paper she should buy! After the “almost panic attack” and tears, Erin finally just grabbed a pack and decided it wasn’t worth it to spend any more of her time in that aisle.
By the way, in the last couple years companies in the U.S. have come out with twice as many kinds of detergent and fabric softener, 10 more types of Cheerios, and we think the frozen food and chips sections of the grocery store have both doubled in size.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
20 Days
Erin has now been back in the U.S. for 20 days. Well, 19 since the entire first day of March was spent in airplanes flying over the ocean. Time has gone by fast and in slow motion all at once. Since this is now the longest stretch of time we have been away from the Netherlands, our minds and hearts are pretty convinced of the permanence of this move back to Texas.
We moved back into the house a week ago today. By now most things are put away, organized, and clean. Of course, we’re still missing a lot of clothes and other items that should be on their way over here from Amsterdam. Amazingly there is apparently no way for the moving company to track our shipment of goods across the ocean, so it could be another couple weeks or another month before it all gets here. Why, we wonder, can’t this shipment be tracked when UPS tracks absolutely everything going anywhere all over the planet? The arrival of our effects will just have to be a surprise.
John is still enjoying his job, and now that he is out of the hotel he lived in for a month and back in the house, he describes his adjustment back to life here as “seamless.” Erin’s experience is much different. Fortunately she only had to live in a hotel for 1 ½ weeks. Even though she is living in a city she has lived in before, in a house she has lived in before, something seems weird. Just a little weird. She finally decided that things are weird because almost everything in her life is different now…except the environment, which is also not exactly the same now that she views things through eyes with 18 months of experience living on a different continent. Erin will have to find a new job, a new church, and new friends. She’ll have different colleagues, different volunteer opportunities, and a different schedule than she ever did when she lived here before. She’s even driving a different car. This is all not much different than we expected; the one thing we are certain of in life is that there will always be changes.
We moved back into the house a week ago today. By now most things are put away, organized, and clean. Of course, we’re still missing a lot of clothes and other items that should be on their way over here from Amsterdam. Amazingly there is apparently no way for the moving company to track our shipment of goods across the ocean, so it could be another couple weeks or another month before it all gets here. Why, we wonder, can’t this shipment be tracked when UPS tracks absolutely everything going anywhere all over the planet? The arrival of our effects will just have to be a surprise.
John is still enjoying his job, and now that he is out of the hotel he lived in for a month and back in the house, he describes his adjustment back to life here as “seamless.” Erin’s experience is much different. Fortunately she only had to live in a hotel for 1 ½ weeks. Even though she is living in a city she has lived in before, in a house she has lived in before, something seems weird. Just a little weird. She finally decided that things are weird because almost everything in her life is different now…except the environment, which is also not exactly the same now that she views things through eyes with 18 months of experience living on a different continent. Erin will have to find a new job, a new church, and new friends. She’ll have different colleagues, different volunteer opportunities, and a different schedule than she ever did when she lived here before. She’s even driving a different car. This is all not much different than we expected; the one thing we are certain of in life is that there will always be changes.
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