Looking in the mirror from time to time to evaluate how "things are going" is always a good idea. Taking personality tests online (on a regular basis because when you evolve so does your personality) can give your valuable insights in the way you live your life/want to live your life. Dialogue with the Dutch…
Continue reading ➞ Does your personality influence adaptation?
After my recent blogs on internationalisation in higher education, the next step naturally seems to be is looking at how we can measure the success of internationalisation in higher education. One way to do this is by looking at the outcomes and impacts of internationalisation. A recent research by Hudzik and Stohl addresses this subject…
The Netherlands hosts approximately 60.000 expats, also known as “the non-Dutch” and approximately 17.100.000 permanent residents, also known as “the Dutch”. When you Google: “what do expats think of the Netherlands” you get about 25 million results. When you Google: “what do Dutch think of expats” you get 138.000. That brings me to the question:…
Holland vs Netherlands, it’s complicated to the Dutch as well. Ok, not all of it, Dutchies do understand the difference between Holland and Netherlands, but the overseas areas, that’s a different story! The video I shared with you last week hopefully will give you some insights in the Kingdom, the Caribbean countries of the Netherlands,…
Recently I had the privilege to interview Majed Zain Aldin. Majed is a stylish thirty something single guy, living in Den Haag. First impressions go a long way and looking at Majed I never would have thought he arrived in the Netherlands only about 10 years ago by himself with none of his family or…
How funny are the Dutch? And what happens when a Dutchie translates a Dutch joke into English? And how do expats perceive this? Let me start by translating some very common Dutch sayings in English: This time, I can see it through the fingers. It’s dick black outside. To participate for bacon and beans. I…
Dialogue with the Dutch does not exist without the dialogue with the non-Dutch, and I am very pleased to publish the very first DWTND blog. For this blog I interviewed my good friend Maja de Garcia-Majdanac on the topic of raising kids in the Netherlands as an expat. Maja is Croatian, and she has lived…
Let me start by a confession: “Dutch people are pretty direct, yet we Dutchies do not perceive ourselves to be direct, at least not in a rude way. While the world is shocked by the way we handle delicate situations, Dutch people in general just wonder why people from non-Dutch background are so “unclear” in…
It’s 1987, summer holiday, the start of six weeks of endless days under the French sun. My brother and I, and my parents are leaving the house at 4AM in our brown Volkswagen Jetta. The trunk is filled with a gigantic tent, two suitcases we share, a badminton set, a cassette player with tapes of…
Hi there, welcome! I am a Dutchie. One with a passion for communication and miscommunication. For both work and leisure, I travelled to over 50 countries in the past years. It was on one of those trips, I was working in South Korea at the time, when I started an online conversation with an American guy from…
Dialogue with the Dutch 