Nuts in Nederland

Last year this time we were on vacation in the U.S. Prior to that, it had been five years since my last visit. I now know why it took so long to want to go back. In the seven years that I have lived in the Netherlands, I've been home twice. And both times by the first day I have thought, "I could never live here again."

I grew up in the Washington, DC metropolitan area which is a very ethnically diverse region. I always found the foreign kids to be especially fascinating. They spoke another language, had different clothes, and their houses always smelled different.

When I reached high school, an upperclassman advised me to wait until my last two years to take a foreign language so that it would be fresh on my mind before starting college. I was so happy I waited, because by the time I was a junior my school was offering French for the first time. I was estatic.

As a 16-year-old student