Friends, Expats, and Winnie the Pooh

I'll start with the best topic of the three listed in the title - Winnie the Pooh. This commentary is almost entirely unrelated to anything, a bizarre train of thought sparked by one comment in the office today, but whatever. Here's the conversation that triggered it:

(MTH, MK, JW and V are all men. "The Chicks" are two visiting consultants from our Oxford office, one visiting consultant from Indonesia, and presumably, myself.)

MTH: Well, I'm taking the day off tomorrow, as well, if JW and V are gone! Ah, but then, MK gets all the chicks to himself...
MK (in the most Eeyore-like tone ever): What's new.

So, after this exchange, I could not get the idea out of my head that MK is the closest embodiment in human form to Eeyore I had ever met. A quick (ok, 10 minutes) analysis allowed me to match up nearly all my co-workers with a "Pooh" character - we definitely have a Tigger (MTH himself), a Kanga and Roo, a Piglet, a Christopher Robin, a Rabbit and an Owl...but we don't have a Pooh! I think this is why the feng shui of the office feels strange sometimes. We're all sidekicks with no main character.

Anyway, after spending 10 minutes thinking about this, I got back to work. Don't worry, I stayed 10 minutes later than I planned to because of it. It didn't cut into work. :)

Okay - now for Friends and Expats. Kim and I have seen Jiri, the guy from Prague in the photo post below, a couple of times since Friday. I hadn't realized it then, but even Marta had only just met him that night, so we're all quite new acquaintances. But Jiri is incredibly friendly and charismatic, and it's been really nice to hang out with him, Marta and Kim together.

Tonight we went to an Expat gathering that gets together once every two weeks. I met a bunch of people, from Italy, Portugal, Denmark...and New York. I admit, it was nice to meet someone with shared experiences, and she was very friendly, but the incredible thing is, we all have shared experiences. Everyone there tonight, regardless of country of origin, has (at the very least) the shared experience of moving to Den Haag as a foreigner. And everyone is so incredibly friendly and welcoming, it is constantly blowing me away. I think a lot has to do with the "traveler's mentality" (a phrase I made up, but probably not one of my more original ideas) - if you are the type to willingly pick up and start somewhere completely different, move by yourself, and face cultural and language differences, you have to be a pretty outgoing, open, friendly person in order to hold your own in that situation.

I'm also beginning to realize that 3 months in a place is definitely not long enough to learn the ins and outs. I think you'd need to be somewhere for at least a year or two to even begin to understand cultural novelties, how things are done, etc. It almost seems futile for me to try and make friends, since I'm just a 10-week blip on their radar that covers 2, 5, 10 years of living in Den Haag as an Expat. I'm not an expat; I don't even think the US gov't realizes I'm here (well, maybe, but only because I registered at the embassy to be an extra-cautious traveller). There was no paperwork, no nothing - 3 months is incredibly temporary.

But, that said, I am enjoying so much meeting all the new people. And I think part of the reason it's been so so nice to hang out with Marta and Jiri and Kim is that it provides some consistancy in meeting new people - it's not a complete constant whirlwind of new people every time I go out. Which is nice, too.