I decided to start this blog in the fall of 2008, while working on my Master’s in Linguistics at Leiden University in the Netherlands. While many times it has served as an update and anecdote service for my family and friends about life in the Netherlands, it was started because of my interest in writing and my lack of a decent outlet. After graduating from the University of Minnesota, I denied real life and drug my fiancé to Guadalajara, Mexico to study and teach English for a while. In all honesty, I didn’t have to do much dragging, he more or less just skipped along happily. After ten months, real life knocked on our front door again, announcing the upcoming start of student loan repayment, and after a tour of beautiful Mexican landscape for five weeks, and then a quick tour of Eastern Europe along with an extended stay in Vienna (all thanks to frequent flyer miles…), we headed back to Minneapolis, Minnesota in search of our first real jobs.
As you well know, the perfect job is harder to come by than we are taught while growing up. In fact, even a satisfactory job is fairly hard to come by. Eventually, we both found a job, but while my workplace (the University) and my coworkers were great, I knew that I needed adventure and inspiration to dedicate me to a lifetime in the work force. This brings me to Leiden…where my husband and I are both in Master’s programmes and it is completely normal to spend an hour or two debating whether it is indeed important that some people say roof and some people say ruf.
Meanwhile, after all this shuffling about, you would think I would be about ready to re-enter what I called the real world…
But no. Instead, I have decided to go out on a limb and reject it forever, accepting only the things that keep my brain stimulated and my soul and heart inspired. If all were to go swimmingly, this dream would prevail. Wish me luck, and I will fill in the rest of the pieces.
-Patricia Willers
patriciamar.com
