Meeting New People

Aweh, guys!

Since I am still a jobless bum, meeting people hasn’t really been easy. In a workplace there is this forced cohesion that ensures that you have people to interact with. If you are a dependent expat who doesn’t immediately find a job upon arrival, you definitely feel the solitude after a while… even if you are a vampire who never sees sunlight.

Luckily, I am blessed with the best friends a girl could ask for and my wonderful family who are constantly checking in, sharing their lives, sending memes (v. important) and just doing their best to stay in touch and be there for me. However, it is not a substitute for real human contact. Hubby also tries his best but at the end of a long day I can forgive wanting peace and quiet… also I can become hecking annoying after being left alone on my own for long periods of time.

So, I decided to put on my big girl pants and reach out to the world in the form of the South Africans in the Netherlands facebook group. I put up a post asking if there was anyone interested in meeting up who live in Woerden and I got a really nice response. There are actually quite a few of us living here! And the world is smaller than it seems.

Three of the people who reached out already vaguely knew us! One of the gent’s worked with Hubby at the same company in SA (but a different department), the other guy we actually met on the day we applied for our visas, and another lady went to school with me back in the day (but she was in a higher grade and has actually not come to the Netherlands yet). The gent Hubby worked with reached out and we arranged to meet for a beer on Thursday.

We had a really nice time! We chatted, compared our expat stories and basically shot the breeze while drinking copious amounts of amazing beer… the Dutch love their beer and there are many lovely little pubs around Woerden. A little while later his fiancée arrived, and we shared a similar sense of humour, so it was really fun. We also had a kitto friend join us for a few minutes.

Hello hoomans

Today, I also had another meet up with other South Africans in Woerden but since Hubby was working, I went alone… and to be honest, it was a little awkward. They are such lovely people, but they are very much adulting. They have two kids and another on the way, so they are in a totally different phase in their lives and I think I’m a little too immature to fit in. I was also hoping to meet people who were free during the day and they both have jobs so I don’t think it was meant to be, but I was very happy to have had the opportunity to meet them, even if it wasn’t a perfect fit.

Meeting people can seem daunting, but it is definitely easy enough with social media. Create a post, include some details about yourself (I mentioned how disappointed I was in the Game of Thrones finale), the area you’re in and maybe specify what you are looking for in terms of relationship (walking buddy, book club, murder victim, available on certain days).Try reaching out and even though you might not always fit in, you might make a friend… or an accomplice.