My New Year’s Expat Resolutions

Expat New Years Resolutions

We’re already three weeks into the New Year which means we are passed the point where you can comfortably still wish people ‘Happy New Year’ without them giving you a strange look in return. It’s also far enough into the New Year that I can already look back at my New Year’s Resolutions and see how well (or bad) I am doing so far. Here are my expat related resolutions for the year 2016.

New Year’s Resolutions Checklist

1) Recover from my oliebollen overdose.
2) Master the Dutch language.
2) Get better at speaking the Dutch language.
2) Learn to speak Dutch better than a three year old.
2) Learn one new Dutch word a week.
2) Learn one new Dutch word a year.
3) Introduce Hagelslag and stroopwafel in England and become rich.
4) Alternatively, become rich by holding The Netherlands supply of Mayonnaise for ransom.
5) Find a way to use the word ‘schommel’ in every Dutch conversation. It is my new favourite Dutch word (and my new word for this year).
6) Pimp my bike with plastic flowers so that it looks more Dutch.
7) Invent a new kind of stamppot.
8) Invent a new kind of Speculaas product.
9) Possibly combine the above two ideas.
10) Learn the Friesian anthem (hopefully it is not as depressing as the Dutch one).
11) Find an English translation for the word ‘gezellig’.
12) Alternatively, invent a new English word that means gezellig.
13) Speak in Dutch conversations in exactly the same way Google Translate would translate English to Dutch.
14) Get myself on to the Dutch television show ‘Wie is De Mol?’
15) Break the world record for the largest Dutch Circle Party ever.
16) Reclaim some land from the sea and create a new Dutch province just so I can say I did it.

What are your expat related New Year’s Resolutions? How well are you doing?

Stuart

Stuart is an accident prone Englishman who has been living in the Netherlands since 2001. Even his move to the country was an unintentional accident, the result of replying to a cryptic job advertisement he found one day in a local British magazine. Since then he has learned to love the Dutch (so much so that he married one of them) and now calls the country home. He started the blog Invading Holland in 2006 as a place to share his strange stories of language misunderstandings, cultural confusions and his own accident prone nature.

9 Responses

  1. Gez says:

    12a) Just introduce the word ‘gezellig’ into the English language. Hell we’ve taken enough from the Dutch language (FAR more than I realised), one more word won’t hurt…

  2. Ephie says:

    I managed to get couple of victims in Oregon , they love hageslag and stroopwaffel, and on my SEA trip now , they dont like Mayo ( helaaspindakaas)… They love pindakaas thou , so still win win trip!! -:)… Did you call your in law with mem and heit already?

  3. 1) Keep studying Dutch. (I can relate to #2; my Dutch word for the year is “de kraan.”)
    2) Keep improving my university-level French.
    3) Tape a paper fish unto an unsuspecting victim’s back on April Fool’s day.
    4) Drink more wine under the guise of mastering oenology.
    5) Visit a région that I’ve never been to (which is now more complicated as the French regional map altered this very year).
    6) Send a petition to French Hema so they can finally bring some damn rookworst over here!

    Perhaps “convivial/conviviality” could be an approximation of “gezellig”?

  4. Invader_Stu says:

    Does the French Hema only sell French things? Hema frogs legs?

    • Alas (helaas), no. You’d think that French Hema would try to cater to French tastes, but it doesn’t even sell wine (French or otherwise). However, it tantalizes with having a bounty of stroopwafels, drop and the odd “bottle-licker” available, but no rookworst. Nor stroopwafel cake, for that matter. :P

  5. Ingrid says:

    Have been searching for “gezellig” for a long time. Best we got was – cozy. Not nearly good enough!

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