Happy New Year 2020

Happy New Year everyone!

Here we are once again. The crazy month of December is over. Everything can calm down now and we can start looking to the year ahead. I love December and all its madness but I also love the feeling of a fresh start that comes with a new year.

The last twelve months were very busy for me again. I finally admitted to myself (and to all of you) that I was struggling with writing my book. It was scary to ask for help but I want to say thank you to Barb and Miriam for reading my messy first draft and giving me lots of great advice. It’s given me the confidence to start working on the second draft. I’d also like to give a special thanks to Anton who has been proofreading all my posts for the last few months.

2019 was also the year I read my first book in Dutch, Harry Potter en de Steen der Wijzen. I’d already read it in English a few years ago which helped a lot. I didn’t follow everything word for word but I feel like it helped me improve my Dutch. I certainly picked up a lot of new Dutch words (and some weird alternative character names).

During the last twelve months I also visited the Efteling twice, almost set the garden on fire and had an encounter with two angry swans.

I discovered kruidnoten in August, spent an entire month eating and rating Dutch drop, I even tried drop ice-cream.

My wife discovered she can drive a tractor, and my attempts to speak Dutch confused a waitress and scared my work colleagues. Who knows what crazy stuff will happen to me in the next year (or decade even).

I hope you all had an amazing 2019 and I wish you an even better 2020.

And as always, thank you for reading my crazy adventures about my strange life in the Netherlands.