Expat Challenges by Kate Berger

Kate Berger, an expat expert
specialising in helping expat kids

For the Expats@Home February newsletter, I asked expat expert, Kate Berger, to share a little about some of the challenges that face expats. She interviewed some local expats from different countries and shared them with us. The result was interesting with issues ranging from how to make friends to ensuring that your retirement plan can sustain you in later life.

Kate Berger offers emotional health services for expatriate children and adolescents in the Amsterdam area through her practice, The Expat Kids Club. Individual and group sessions are offered, and target issues including anxiety, family & peer conficts, and socio/emotional adjustment to non-native lifestyles & cultures. For more information visit http://www.expatkidsclub.com/index.html

If you want to read the article in it's entirety visit the archive. If you want to sign up for future editions of my newsletter visit my website page.

First Day at School Traditions

My four year old has just started to make his own way in the world - well, he's just started at primary school in any case.

It's not only his initiation into the Dutch education system, but mine too. The first difference between the Dutch and the British education systems is the fact that he is already starting. In the UK, he would still be in pre-school until the school year he turned five. Children in the Netherlands can start at primary school when they are four if they (or rather their parents) wish but it is not compulsory until five.

However, as my son has been in a peuterspeelzaal (preschool or nursery) since October 2009, this is a natural step for him to move with his friends to a new school.

Photo: Tim & Annette

What was strange to me as I waved my son off in his new classroom was the absence of school uniforms. In Britain it is common to wear a school uniform. Dutch children wear their own choice of clothes. So there's no photo of my son on his first day at school in his crisp, clean uniform (which looks like it's been dragged daily through a hedge by the end of the first term). Instead there is a photo of him wearing the clothes he wears every day and a rucksack on his back. Not quite the same picture for this British mum.

An American friend told me that she missed putting her daughter on the big, yellow school bus when she started school. This picture is as traditional and memorable in the US as putting a school uniform on for the first time in the UK. Both pictures very much linked to the first day at school.

Of course, it is not about whether school uniforms are right (there are lots of positives to not having a school uniform: costs and stressing to get it all washed on time spring to mind) or whether children should be bussed to school (in fact in the Netherlands, most parents can walk or cycle their kids to school so buses are redundant) - it's about the feeling of missing out on a classic, traditional memory which we associate with that first day in school.

What first day of school traditions or memories are associated with your home country?

Expat Book Review: Postcards from Across the Pond by Michael Harling

Michael Harling is an American who accidentally ended up living in the UK. He met his future wife in Ireland and moved to Sussex to be exact. And having been raised in a rural area of corn fields and cow farms, a twenty minute drive from the nearest shop, Sussex must have seemed a little crowded to this new immigrant in town. In any case, the move from the US to the US certainly gave Harling enough fodder for an amusing book about life in Britain through the eyes of a foreigner.

This book is not only a funny read, but highlights something interesting: For an American, a move to the UK would seem an easy one to make - the language is (almost) the same, the culture is not worlds apart. However, Harling soon discovered that the differences lay in the small things in daily life. He found that everything "is just off-center enough to give you a sense of permanent imbalance." This struck a big, clanging chord with me.

I wrote an article for The Telegraph last year about the differences between life in the Netherlands and life in my native Britain. A reader commented that adjusting to life in in the Netherlands was in fact a piece of cake and the two countries really are very alike. But they are not - and I think Harling hits the nail on the head with his observations of life in Britain: When you move to a far off land you expect life to be very different, when you to a country nearby or one with much in common you don't expect your life to be rocked. But it is - just by leaving your home country.

The differences lie in the little things like posting a letter, getting a parcel delivered, getting a social security number, driving, shopping, sports, weather, TV, queuing, bureaucracy.... Need I go on? 

Luckily, this book is not a mammoth whinge about everything in the UK being inferior to its US cousin. Au contraire, Harling doesn't see all the adaptations he needs to make as a step in the wrong direction. In fact, he gives the impression that he actually quite likes a lot of the differences - once he got used to them.

In this book, which is actually a collection of blog postings he has made over the years, he shares his astonishment at the lack of St. Patrick's Day celebrations in England; his difficulty buying shoe laces; his confusion playing the game of rounders (which he likens to baseball until he sees the bat. "The bat resembles a giant rolling pin with only one handle," he explains); the haphazardness of the local bus schedules; and trying to recreate Thanksgiving away from the US ("Last Thursday was Thanksgiving, and 60 million people on this island didn't give a shit," he tells us).

This book is 172 pages to make you titter (a word us Brits can use without sniggering) and it's a great read for all expats everywhere, for Brits who can laugh at themselves, and Americans who want to know how different life is on the other side of the Atlantic.

His blog of the same title (where he describes himself as an "American author living in the south of England, sort of like Bill Bryson but without the best selling books and gobs of money") is http://postcardsfromacrossthepond.blogspot.com/ 

Expat Christmas Gift Ideas (3): Expat Shops

Continuing the series about tips for Christmas gifts for expats...... Expat shops are a great port of call for present shopping for your expat and local friends and family alike.

How about making up a basket of British products for your in-laws? Or putting together a hamper of flavours from the US for your American expat friend? Christmas can be a great opportunity to introduce your local friends to the tastes of your home country - like a beer selection from home or a pudding for the Christmas meal or something special for breakfast on Boxing Day. Or just to make sure they experience the delights of crumpets at least once in their life.

Lots of expats have food parcels sent to them all year long so making up an extra special package at Christmas time will certainly go down well and your local expat shop will be able to help you.

If you are British, and want to introduce your local family and friends to something new.... try mince pies. Not only do they get to experience a new taste - but you get to have a whole conversation about minced beef as a dessert...... which of course is not what mince pies are (although to be fair in some countries ask for a mince pie and you will get a ground beef pie). The British traditionally eat mince pies in the festive period around Christmas and the New Year - and in the lead up to Christmas the shops are full of them. British expat shops are no exception.

Mince pies are sweet pastries full of mincemeat. Nothing related to a cow but instead dried fruits such as raisins and sultanas and apples with spices. They are delicious. Particularly with brandy butter or single cream. And more importantly, they are a favourite of Father Christmas, who appreciates children leaving him a mince pie along with a glass of sherry on Christmas eve.

If you have never had a mince pie, like the idea of sharing a British tradition with your friends and family here in the Netherlands, or just want to stock up on your usual treat at Christmas, then hold on to your hats....... For those of you living within a commute of The Hague there is a very special offer for readers of this blog at Kelly's Expat Shop.... A FREE BOX OF KIPLING MINCE PIES when you spend 15 euro on shopping at Kelly's. Just quote A Letter from the Netherlands blog at the till. That simple!

Kelly is actually Dutch (read a previous article of mine if you want more on the interesting tale about a Dutchie running an expat shop) but provides the expat community of The Hague and surrounding areas with goodies from Britain, America, South Africa, Australia and more. Open seven days a week, Kelly's is located at Piet Heinstraat 105 but also offers online shopping for delivery in the surrounding area. Incidentally you can also get your Christmas turkey from Kelly's. What are you waiting for?