F**K IT MILES, GIVE ME SOME PRIVACY

Let’s see, New Year’s resolutions. I have given this quite a lot of thought and this is the first year I’ll try to make some resolutions, but I’m having hard time picking just one, so here goes:  I’ll better my Dutch . I have already signed up for a conversation based learning course. Yesterday I talked to my taxi driver, an Afghan man who has been living in the Netherlands for 20 years and he thought I was Dutch. So my level doesn’t fully suck, but I also know some Dutch people who think I butcher the language to this date, so I gotta become so awesome that I can tell them to suck it. Last month I read about a guy whose New Year’s resolution for 2015 was to exercise a certain amount of hours during the year (I believe it was 150 hours) and since I started off last August quite nicely with adding regular exercise to my life, but somewhere in November when me or one of the kids were constantly ill, I stopped trying so hard, I decided it’s about time to get back on track. I sti...

Have you ever asked someone what they do in life and didn’t know what to say back after they answered? Did you know that being a stay-at-home mom is a good answer to throw most people off, especially academics. I was sitting today, having a nice conversation with six other people whom I barely knew beforehand. We all speak the same language and had sought each other up via social media to have a drink and a talk  just because . At one point the conversation someone asked the obvious, “so, what do you do?” and stared at me. “I’m a mom of three, married, and that’s basically what I do.” I answered. The whole table grew silent, people stared at me and the table uncomfortably, until I stared at the next person so she could tell everyone what she does and everyone would have something to talk about again. By all means I wasn’t the only mom on the table. There were two other moms, one stay-at-home like myself and one working mom, both awesome people and both academics. I was the only ...