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Little Moments

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Our lives are made In these small hours These little wonders, These twists & turns of fate Time falls away, But these small hours, These small hours still remain -Rob Thomas I'm sitting on the kitchen floor with my toddler. Lasagna is in the oven and we're licking the sauce pot. Soon he'll be off to play with blocks or demolish a pile of laundry, but for now, it's perfect. It's the kind of homey relaxed moment I want my life to be filled with as a mama. There are a lot of those moments in my days and weeks. But there are also other moments that are everything but homey or relaxed. And who takes photos of the tough times, or talks about those tear-my-hair-out and we-may-never-have-another-kid moments?

Learning the Language

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A Hungarian Poster "Study the language. The language is key to the culture. This doesn't, however, mean you have to attend class (thank goodness). Just turning on the radio is a big help - you'll become familiar with the speech patterns/intonations/dialects, the popular music, and what's going on in society. You can also watch movies in the language (especially with subtitles), take up a hobby outside the home, or get a language buddy. Then, of course, there's the Internet - podcasts, language websites, and online forums. If you enjoy classroom learning, there are classes at different language levels....." I'm drafting my response to interview questions on an expat site. Some of my answer I've already put into my draft of DutchInLaw, the book. It's fun to think through, but I feel like I'm missing some of the answer because it has been so long ago that I first set foot on Dutch soil. And the way I look at language learning as a 29 year o...