Seven months of heaven!

Here is a quick summary of the things I have loved most about my first few months in this new country:

#1:  the school!

I’ve longed to work at a school like this since graduating in 2007. My class are incredible, the leadership is incredible and the people I work with are incredible and I’ve made some lovely new friends. I’m very lucky and so thankful to finally be at a school that makes me happy and in which I feel inspired and appreciated.

#2:  the distance to home and time difference

Holland is SO close to England and I love it! I’ve already been home three times and I’ve only been here a few months. Even though I’m living abroad again, it never feels like I’m that far away. The one hour time difference makes it easy to Skype with friends and family at home of an evening and I just love the thought of being able to hop on a plane and jet home for a weekend if I ever needed to. Amazing.

#3: all my visitors

This has been wonderful! I have been so lucky that so many of my friends have already been over to visit me and that my mum came here with me when I moved and has another trip booked for a few months time. Except my mum’s one visit in the two years I lived in Korea, it was never possible for anyone else to visit due to the distance and the cost. Seeing the people you love most when you’re so far away from home is like no other feeling in the world!

#4: exploring Holland and lots of Eurpoean adventures

Since moving to Korea in 2010, I developed a passion for travel and was lucky enough to explore a great proportion of Eastern Asia. My move to Holland has meant that I have a brand new country to explore and lots of surrounding countries to visit. So far in Holland I’ve explored Den Haag (where I live), Amsterdam, Delft, Den Bosch and Utrecht. Further afield I’ve already been lucky enough to travel to Bruges, Brussels, Paris, Disney Land and Dusseldorf. 

Life in The Netherlands V life in South Korea

I’ve been living in The Netherlands for almost seven months now and what a fantastic seven months it has been! Unlike my move to South Korea in 2010, my move here was fairly sudden and more ‘on a whim’ but just like my move to Korea, my move here has been one of the best moves I have ever made!

Before moving here I made the mistake of assuming that living abroad this time would be just like living abroad last time. I was wrong. And it didn’t take me long to discover that. The greatest things about my time in Korea (the freedom, all the time on my hands, the lack of responsibility, feeling like a student again, the way of life because it’s so cheap to live there, the ability to live life to the absolute max, the person I became) are things that either don’t exist here or are much harder to achieve/ maintain here (predominantly because the job I do here is what takes up most of my time...and energy!) But on the flipside, the things I liked least/found the most challenging during my time in Korea (the mind-numbing, uninspiring job, working for people of totally different and often clashing cultures, values and opinions, being so far away from home... and normal life!) are not a problem here because the opposite is true for each.

So, to conclude, both experiences are ENTIRELY different and shouldn’t be compared (although I still do more than I should).  All I know is that whilst I’m enjoying and appreciating the things I have here that I desperately longed for in Korea, I must MAKE time for all the things that made me happiest in Korea. And in some ways, being that girl here, in spite of the demands of a high pressure job, will be more of a challenge than the quest it took to find her in the first place. So I’m still that ‘Seoulsearching’ girl I was a couple of years ago just in a slightly different place and on a slightly different journey...