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9 Days left

9 days left before Judith and I will catch a plane to Edmonton. We’ll overnight in Edmonton with our friend Camille, who was kind enough to host us as well when we arrived in Edmonton, almost four months ago. Our last post already updated all of you on our attempt to secure a life in Yellowknife and how it turned out differently, but not better or worse, than we planned. 11 days (mainly because of the 8 hour time difference between Central Mountain Time and GMT +1) before Judith and I land at Amsterdam Airport (I know, Schiphol), The Netherlands. 11 days until a new adventure starts, with new challenges and things to look forward to.

The last few weeks have been and still are, great, awesome, and what not more

As you can and most probably will see, we have done a lot of things lately. We are still living by our mantra: “Say yes to everything you’re invited to” (within reasonable limits of course) We have attended a medieval pig roast, visited with heaps pf friends (and still more to come, pretty much every evening until the end of our stay here); we’ve gone “bison hunting” (with a camera), Judith has done a glass workshop with our friend Robyn, we went sailing (and will be going sailing again this upcoming weekend!), we had dinner with friends and above all: we’ve enjoyed the good weather. The last few weeks, we have had beautiful weather, hence the increase in activities. Yellowknife has woken up from it’s winter hibernation and all kinds of cool things are going on. I am forgetting tons of them, like picknicks in the park, barbeques, hikes, going to the Yellowknife Farmer’s market. Some firsts for us, some things that we definitely wanted to do one more time before we leave. Add to that a ton of dancing classes I (/we) have been teaching lately.

Not a farewell

Despite the fact that we want to settle down and get a life that is a bit more fixed and less living it from year to year, we haven’t written Yellowknife off. How can we, it is our home away from home, it is a place where we truly feel at home. A great community with great friends and opportunities. We have packed our parkas and snowpants in a big box, which we’ll store with friends in Yellowknife. We have a feeling we will need them again one day, whether it is for a visit or a more successful attempt of setting up a life here. But for now, we’re looking forward to things in The Netherlands.

So, what is life going to look like for us?

Well, in the first week after we’ll back, besides seeing family and friends, we have a few appointments and plans already made:

• Visit with my new employer (Bas)
• Meeting with bank to learn more about mortgage (approval)
• Buying a car (we need some wheels fast 🙂 )
• Checking homes that we’ve shortlisted (we’ve spent hours online investigating the market in and around the town of Emmen) Weighing pros and cons to living in the actual city of Emmen (which with ~61k inhabitants is fairly sized and has all the amenities, but higher house prices). Weighing pros and cons of living near the city of Emmen, in a smaller town / suburb. Add to that our view on homes, which has changed and has become quite a bit North American. Think open living areas (and also think: decent size, a.k.a. quite big lving areas), nice finishes (I know we can get new kitchens, floors, bathrooms and the likes, but it is so much easier if you can start with as many things you actually like) but also: ensuite bathrooms, more than one full bathroom, not a bathroom on the main floor when you actually have your bedroom upstairs, to name a few…. Add to that the wish for an office space for Judith, not just a room, but a space with a separate toilet and entrance, over 10% of the size of the entire house. (Taxes, taxes, taxes…..) We’ll hope that with some help of family and friends we’ll come to a good decision
• Investigating (tax) rules for all kinds of things including mortgages and home ownership, which still is a tad bit different for us, since Judith has her own business. I think we’ll never be “normal”

After that first week of settling and figuring things out, we’ll need to buy a house pretty fast, as fast as possible while still making a good decision, update what we need to update (preferably paint and flooring only), move the things we still have stored in Groningen to our new place and buy everything we don’t have anymore. Like beds, couches, dining table and chairs, tv, to name a few big decisions (expenses) that are coming up.

But for now…

We try and enjoy the last days in Yellowknife. Hanging out with friends, doing stuff that’s still on our list. Buying art we’ll bring back for our new home (not just the awesome stuff we bought at Dave Brosha’s gallery). Anyways, enjoy the pictures. We hope to see you at the Monkey Tree at July 2 if you’re a ‘knifer, or in The Netherlands somewhere after July 6. Or elsewhere in the world if you’re neither YK or Dutch, whenever our paths may cross again.

Decision time (and a good lot of photos)
Just over three months ago, Judith and I left for Yellowknife. The two months before leaving we cleaned out our apartment and shrunk our amount of belongings to fit in one room of 1.90m by 4.5m and 2.45m (that last dimension is the height of the room, and to be really fair about how much stuff we have left, mentioning that dimension is quite relevant). Just before those two months, we lived for ~360 days in New Zealand. The 5.5 months before the time in New Zealand we were able to do some really cool senior communication assignments (Judith) and finish a second Bachelor of Education in Physics, while being an assistant-teacher in the same university for applied sciences (Bas). The two years before that were spent in 3 stints of living and working in Yellowknife, North of 60, Canada. In the last four years, Judith and I have never been able to call a place home for longer than a few months. So, the goal in Canada was to set-up that kind of situation, in which we would be able to call a place home for a longer period of time.

Don’t count on them High Schools!
Quite fast after returning to Yellowknife, it became clear that student numbers in both High Schools were going down. Partially because of economic situations teachers in the schools held on to their jobs, also unable to find a position back home (which a lot of young teachers do; they come up to Yellowknife for a few years experience, then go back to where their family and friends live). Whatever the reasons, whatever the logic, halfway May Judith and I decided we needed a good plan B. Talaria Communicatie is doing fine, but I had been without a teaching position since January, and despite being able to explain, besides volunteering as a tutor and as a coach with Track & Field, being unemployed for too long isn’t that great, neither for future job perspectives or for one’s sanity. So I carefully went through job postings in the Netherlands, cherry-picking, finding the schools I would like to work. All of the schools I applied for a job were either international schools or schools with a bilingual (English immersion) program. And in the end that meant three schools.

Job interviews
Two of those schools ended up inviting me for a job interview. Due to timing issues (which included me swearing like a sailor one day) I had to decline one interview, since I had already accepted the job with the other school. In hindsight, I would have liked the choice between the jobs, or at least the option of doing both interviews. But even with a week of time to decide, the other school still managed to push their deadline to apply by 4 days, and despite having a 2-3 day window, they invited me for an interview one day after I accepted the other job, or to be more precise, ~16 hours later. Despite all that, getting the chance to interview for 2 out of those 3 jobs I applied for felt pretty good.

Tough decision
Anyway, heaps of technicalities, but those have been part of our life the last few weeks. Add to that a job that came up with one of the High Schools in Yellowknife, start of June, and you can picture how much pondering and deciding we had to do. Because a position posted is one, an interview is two, a job offer is three, a labour market opinion is four, and the work permit makes step 5 in the process of being able to work in such a job in Yellowknife. All those steps take time, they all have requirements and the school that posted, posted in such a way that one the requirements wasn’t met. So we decided to go back to The Netherlands. Like I said, I accepted the school that offered me after a nice interview over Skype, bringing me back to Emmen, the city where I was born and raised. With all kinds of decisions to make that come with that, like finding a place to live, deciding whether we’re going to buy a place or rent one, and where, since our experiences have learned us we would like to live in a smaller town, close to amenities, but not too close to too many people. We’ll need to buy quite a few things we don’t own anymore, to fill up a new place and make it livable. Anyway, you get the idea.

Head up high
We’re not overly sad a life in Yellowknife did not work out the way we planned. After a month we realized we could see ourselves living in Yellowknife, just as well as in The Netherlands. Both have a unique list of pros and cons. We’re taking some of the best of Yellowknife with us. A few friendships that we hope will last, good memories, heaps of good pictures and as of today, some nice art as well. (It did cost us though, ouch!) We’ll keep you posted and in the meantime, we’re pondering on what the new name of our blog will be…. after an “Aboot” and an “About”, after “Siebring in Canada”, then “New Zealand” and now “Canada” again, it will be “Siebring in The Netherlands” if we would follow that logic, but that would be too obvious, too easy, and as most of you know, or have found out: We almost never take the easy way. We take the way we like. And it’s bringing us to one of our three homes now: The Netherlands.

More pics!

1) Our two fabulous days on Stewart Island

2) Papatowai and driving through Catlins on Christmas Day (part 1)