Background

So how did I end up in the city of Amersfoort, in the Netherlands? Well, it started during my senior year of high school on Maui. I was a high-achieving slacker with a lot of spare time between the end of the school day and the start of extra band practices or extra AP chemistry classes. I spent some time in the tiny computer lab, probably playing solitaire, until I noticed a fellow high-achieving AP/band slacker doing something less tedious, and was covertly given the password for network access and the telnet address for a text-based online multi-player game, collectively known as MUDs. Eventually I met my future fiance, a Dutch university student there, as well as a lot of other interesting people from exotic locations, and was soon able to say very naughty things in several languages, instead of just English and Spanish.

For a couple years, we were friends and chatted a lot, with no hint of romance. He taught me the basics of how to code on MUDs. It wasn't til I was ending a relationship with a moron (my first boyfriend) that I realized what a good boyfriend Jan would make. After many more late night chats while I pondered my feelings, I finally told him "I think I love you." He didn't proclaim the same right away, but didn't run away screaming either, so I figured that went quite well, all things considered. I guess our talks got more intimate after that, however, and eventually we agreed to meet in Amsterdam shortly before I started college for the 2nd (and not last) time.

I bought a plane ticket with some of my summer job money, and flew out of Seatac. We stayed the first couple days in Amsterdam, and hit it off right away. I still remember how weird it was, 12 years ago, meeting someone I had only talked to online. On the one hand he was different than I expected because my mind had filled in the missing blanks somewhat randomly, but on the other hand, we already knew each other very well from two years of chatting a lot. It was nice to skip the awkward dating thing, and go straight from being friends to being in a relationship.

We got engaged about a week after I arrived. I visited the Netherlands a few more times over the past 12 years, and after leaving college and starting work, he started visiting me in Seattle most Christmases, and visited me or we both went on vacations in the summer. The general plan was that he would get a couple years experience at his job (and make contacts through it) and then use that on his resume (C.V.) to get a job in the US. Well, we got to about that point, and I had finished law school and got licensed, which was just what we were waiting for, and then the economy did its famous nosedive. It did this right before I got admitted to the state bar association and could work as a lawyer. Local governments started laying off lawyers, and everyone else stopped hiring. I was not amused.

I started applying for jobs of course, but there were very few positions and the recently laid-off lawyers had the rather huge advantage of experience. I got invited to two interviews and didn't land either job, despite both jobs being located in the Washington State equivalent of Siberia (but with more drugs). I also applied for every law-related job I could find, but none wanted a lawyer, assuming the recession would end in a week or so and I would run off to do real lawyering and they'd be stuck hiring and training someone all over. I even applied for data entry and craptastic minimum-wage jobs cashiering, both of which I do have some experience with (and |33t typing skillz). Nada.

I moved in with my aunt for a very reasonable rate (with a broken-ankle discount for helping out a lot and puppy-sitting when she got back from the hospital), and my mother paying my rent and food bills. Yeah. 30 year old attorney dependent on her mummy :-P I started attending a community college to retrain as something useful to society, such a nurse. But couldn't get financial aid because I'd earned 2 (albeit useless) degrees in the past 5 years. Shortly before Jan came over for his summer visit, I did the math and realized the only way we could have two kids before I hit 35 would be if I scrapped the nursing school plans and moved to the Netherlands, since we sure as hell weren't going to find jobs in the US for a while, and they wouldn't let him over without a job or other financial support.

So we started looking for houses online, using funda.nl . That was an epic saga in its own right, but exactly one year after starting our search, we owned our first house. I flew over on August 6th, and that was that.