Reflections

Howdy. We’re now broadcasting from the USA heartland! In April, after a long 8 month application process, I finally received my permanent resident visa from the friendly people at the London US Embassy, so the last month has been a flurry of frantic activity. We finished up our jobs, packed up all our stuff, and went on a short holiday to the Netherlands.

Holland was absolutely beautiful. We did a week-long cycling trip from Amsterdam – Utrecht – Gouda – Delft - Leiden – Haarlem – Amsterdam. The weather was perfect, the Dutch were super-friendly and helpful, and the countryside simply stunning (all of the photos in this blog are from our trip).



We tend to be quite enthusiastically naive when it comes to traveling as we just get an idea and go for it without really knowing whether or not we can pull it off. Consequently, the first day of cycling was a little harrowing. All we had was a vague (often wrong it turned out) set of directions from a cycling guidebook and we couldn’t find one of the first roads onto which it said to turn. We went the wrong way and hunted for it for around an hour, and ended up quite lost, before finally backtracking and eventually locating the following road on the list (the one we were looking for turned out to have been removed by roadworks). We got back on our way, but then missed another turn and went a few kilometers on a different wrong road, only realizing it when the railway tracks we were supposed to cross weren’t there. And we got lost again in the confusing network of unnamed small roads in one of the towns we passed through. It took us about 8 hours to get to Gouda, so the next day be bought a map.

With a map it was plain sailing (who would have guessed!!!). Some of the highlights were the beautiful fields networked with small waterways near Gouda, the windmills at Kinderdijke, the awesome stroopwaffles and pancakes, the incredible cycling routes (almost the whole journey was on paved cycle-only roads), the route through the dunes between The Hague and Leiden, and the Keukenhof botanical gardens. It was one of the best trips we have ever been on – slow paced, beautiful, relaxing and sprinkled with great food, great places to stay, and wonderful local people. Simply amazing.

If you get a chance to go then we fully recommend getting bikes from Bike City in Amsterdam because it is really central, the staff are very friendly and helpful, it’s inexpensive, the bikes are not marked with huge signs advertising where you are renting them from so you don’t look quite as touristy, they are very comfortable, and come with excellent security. Some of the best places to stay are the Soul Inn in Delft (definitely one of the coolest places we have ever stayed), hotel Utrechtsche Dom in Gouda, and the weird Joops Hotel in Leiden. Avoid B&B Utrecht City Centre at all costs – that was the worst hostel experience we have ever had.

After a wonderful holiday, we went briefly back to Leeds to finish packing, and then emigrated (again) to the USA. We are staying with my lovely family-in-law in Lafayette, Indiana. It is wonderful to be here, a very welcome oasis from a two-year high-stress lifestyle in the UK. Things were getting quite bad towards the end and were beginning to seriously affect our mental wellbeing, so it was very good timing to leave, and it is so good to have this time between work to relax and recuperate. It is really our first sense of stability since we left Japan in 2005.

That is not to say that the UK experience was a negative one. In a number of ways, we both grew and benefited from our time in Leeds in some very major ways. We gained a sense of adulthood through moving to a country and building a life with absolutely no local connections and no direct support from family or friends. We both acquired some very valuable work experience, myself particularly in the refugee field which I hope to make into a career here in the States, and Kristy in some important contributions to the lives of isolated and vulnerable foreign residents through her teaching work. We had some amazing travel experiences to Wales, Scotland, Italy, Spain, France, Belgium and Holland. We saved up enough money to get ourselves started here in the States. We made some wonderful friends who we now miss very much. We found a great church and homegroup and learned a lot about the place of social justice as an important and valid part of Christianity (countering the popular idea that the only valid activity should be evangelical).

Where our experience in Japan was primarily one of comfortable integration, an enjoyable lifestyle and material abundance, our UK experience felt more like we got to know the real world - we lost absolutely everything that made us happy in Japan and that we had previously defined ourselves by (such as our jobs, friends, reputation and social connections etc.), we had to start working hard to survive, and we discovered a lot about what I’m coming to think of Christ in the dirt – not a detached middle-class spiritual life heavy on ideals and doctrine, but living with the people who God had always been with –the dispossessed, the poor, the outcasts and the invisible. Learning how to live when the spiritual legalism of clear-cut rights and wrongs that is so easy to live by when you don’t have to make hard choices no longer applies. More about that in another blog.

So, where do we go from here?

Kristy is now applying for Japanese teaching work in Indiana and Illinois. We don’t know where we are going to be yet since it depends on where work comes up. I’m searching out nonprofit organizations that do refugee related work, but am also looking into other types of charitable work with vulnerable groups. We have both had a few good leads, so it’s looking hopeful, but it will be a month or two before we know where we are both going to be. There is no hurry though, Kristy’s family is taking very good care of us, and it is so very good to be able to spend some quality time with them.

We are at the point where we would both like to start investing into our work for the long-term, which means no more moves for a while. Traveling between countries has been an incredible experience and has taught us an enormous amount about ourselves and the world we live in, but you can never really completely dedicate yourself to your work and community when you know you will be leaving in a year or two, and it is heart-wrenching to have to say goodbye to great people and friends over and over again, so perhaps it’s time to put down some roots. But who knows, perhaps we’ll be off to Africa in a couple of years – you never know.