1 month in - Miles

I interviewed Miles - or I tried, anyway - on December 30th (barely age 7) and I'm just getting around to the transcription.  This is directly what he said, though some of his answers required my deeper probing before he answered them.  My comments and clarifications will be in non-italics font while Miles' answers will be in italics.  And, for the record, David (age 4) refused to participate.

What are some of the best things about being here?

Well, the dogs don't bark as much.  The dogs around this neighborhood.  Also, there's a lot of fresh bread - bakeries - and there's a lot of fun Christmas routines around Christmas.  There's a lot of parks.  And one more thing, there's much more cute cats out than in America.  (This is absolutely false, but I'm glad he's happy about the few we've seen.)

What are some of the things that are different between here and Tacoma, either good or bad differences?  What have you observed?

I've observed that there's more canals.  There's more water.  (We then had a conversation about the difference between the canals and the Salish Sea, but I found it fascinating how his experience here is so much more aware of the water.  It makes me feel a bit like he didn't have the opportunity to get out much in Tacoma or something and that sucks).

People don't live in tents in Leiden.  We know that for Leiden at least.  

What about differences in the weather, plants, people...?

Only the language.  They look like they could perfectly be known as American, if they spoke English.  (Nearly everyone here speaks English, they just speak Dutch first and to each other so I imagine he feels like there's a lot more of it around than I do.)

Is there something you miss from Tacoma?

No.  Not at all.

Is there something that excites you about being here?

Yeah, there's a restaurant next door.  (It's a Thai place, he has extremely happy memories of the one time we ate there in the last month even though he only liked the food a little bit.)

Is there anything you're looking forward to?

Yeah, having a bigger house.  I'm really disappointed that I don't have school right now.  I really need some people to make friends with that aren't just at parks.  I need to make friends at school so that I can know their phone number and stuff like that so we can play with them at our house, since we'll have much more room.  We can even make sure that there's no furniture in the bottom big room, when you first walk in the door, so that we can do Yoda (sic) and things.  This apartment is really tiny.  It's boring.

(This is where he started losing focus and the conversation makes more sense to include the detail of the back and forth.)

Is there anything that has surprised you?

No.  There's just nothing.  I was just like expecting... there was just going to be all this cool stuff around us, there was going to be a grocery store... like, I expected to live in this kind of house.

Do you think dad and I just did a good job of helping you prepare mentally, so that when you thought about moving your brain was ready for it?

What I imagined was... what I imagined was "hey, here's a bakery right next door.  Let's just walk over there to have fresh bread!"

Is that something you remember from being here last?

No.

We were just talking about it enough?

Yeah.

Is there anything that you do remember from when we were...? (he interrupted me)

That bakery was just like the restaurant right next door.  (He's talking about his favorite one down the street.)

Bakker Jan was closed the whole time we were here last year, for their summer holiday.

Oh.  I didn't know there was a summer holiday.

I'm all done.

So, my conclusions:  

• He's doing okay, but he's lonely.  I'm disappointed that he didn't make any friend connections in Tacoma before we left (thanks in part to a super traumatic kindergarten year, but he also only had 2 months this year before we moved).  Maybe it's a good thing, though, because he's less likely to experience that variety of homesickness.  
• He's super excited about the density and proximity of everything here, but I wonder how much of that is also our own excitement.  I'm truly thrilled and it was something we talked about a lot before we moved, but I think he's also genuinely enjoying it as well.  
• I'm really glad he's excited about our new house.  We had 1880sq ft in Tacoma, have been living in a 500sq ft apartment, and will be moving into a 1050sq ft house.  So even though he's excited in part because it's bigger than where we are now, I hope he continues to be excited about how big it is once we move in.