Coming Home?

Tomorrow evening I leave for Holland. While I am there just for a visit. It is kind of like coming home. Four years ago, I was ready to leave Holland, move to Canada and take on this new adventure. This journey is in its concluding stages. This week I finished my last work and I graduate May 23rd, pending the grades of my final weeks of course.

In the mean time I am visiting Holland. Spending time with my family, going back to my old home town of Ede, visiting Barcelona, and I get the chance to reflect. It is kind of weird coming back to Holland. The last time I visited was during Christmas of 2006 at that point I was still very much rooted in Holland and getting rooted in Hamilton. Today it feels a bit different, I have started to grow deep roots in Hamilton and my roots in Holland are established, but no longer growing.

So, I leave for Holland, my home country, yet it doesn't seem like I am coming home. I will feel that I am coming Home when I fly into Toronto again on May 15. This June I am moving into a house with some dear friends. We have been given the opportunity to live in a beautiful house on the Hamilton Harbour. Six of us will be living in the upstairs house and two will be living in a separate, but connected basement apartment. We will have the opportunity to just live. Be intentional about the simple things in our lives, give thanks for the abundance of blessings, and seek to combine a sense of community and culture in our home. (Once we get closer to that day, I will post pictures and be sharing more about this.

I am coming home. Perhaps surprisingly Hamilton has become that home to me. Initially due to my four years at Redeemer, now it continues to be home as I will start the next part of my journey here. There is so much to be thankful for.

A cool story

So, this is something worth blogging about. When I left for Canada about 2,5 years ago I met a few cool peopleat the Schiphol airport. One of them was wearing a Redeemer University College T-shirt. I ended up talking to them, and telling them I was going to be going there in September, however, they had just graduated, and so that was kind of it. I always saw this random meeting with a few random Redeemer people at Schiphol as a pretty cool confirmation of my move to Canada. At that time I was quite nervous about my move to Canada, and thus this was very encouraging for me.

About 2,3 years later I was thinking about this story, and thought that again about how cool it was that God had provided me with such a cool encouragement as I was about to move to Canada. So, I asked some of the people that I know have been around Redeemer for a bit and I found out that a couple of guys were travelling through Europe that summer. When asking one of those guys who happens to be my prof. for my International Relations class I found out that he was actually one of the people I met at Schiphol - I think that is pretty cool.

Please come visit me

Well, I know that I am often far away from my family and friends in Holland and other people are far away from their family and friends. But, just come visit me, here are the directions, it is not that expensive. Although step 41 might take a bit of time, but that's all.