In August I got married and moved to the Netherlands, my husband’s country. I knew I had to be proactive about my social life, as I didn’t have a job yet and hardly knew anyone in the city (only some friends of Mr. Fantastic). I’m not really an extrovert, but I do love interacting with people. It makes me feel like I belong and as my friends don’t live anywhere near me, I knew I needed to get to know some people. As soon as I moved, I actively searched where I could volunteer ánd meet people. Of course, I searched for things I liked, so the library was my first stop.
The government has lowered the budget for libraries, so they’re in desperate need of volunteers for various functions. Two of those functions really interested me: being a reading buddy to a child struggling with the language and be a supporting librarian in the neighbourhood children’s library. I couldn’t choose which one I wanted to do, so I decided to do them both. Every Wednesday afternoon, I go to the children’s library and organize books, help clients and just have a nice time. The library is a three-minute walk from where we live and I often see people I recognize from our neighbourhood. It’s nice to get to know them!
The reading buddy program started a few weeks ago and is a lot of fun. I asked for a family that lives near me and they matched me with a family just a few houses from ours. I read to a 4-year-old boy, who really really really loves cars! He’s the sweetest little thing, but as he only hears Dutch at school, he’s not confident in talking (he answers almost any question I ask with “weet niet”, “don’t know”). So we read and talk a lot during our weekly hour. At first he was a bit shy, but now he runs to the hallway when I ring the bell. As I can’t take a picture of the little boy, I took a picture of the books we read today.
In the background, you can see some lovely tulips I bought and (to the left, only partly in the picture) a nice bouquet Mr. Fantastic bought ‘just because’. I just love spring flowers! If I had unlimited resources, I would put hundreds of tulips in the living room. As I love flowers so much, I’m also volunteering in our neighbourhood “green” group. We maintain the flower boxes, plant shrubs and little plants and make our neighbourhood a lot greener! As I’m so active here, I already know more neighbours than Mr. Fantastic. I think I’m pretty good at integrating. 😀
It sounds like you are doing a great job! When we moved to a small town in Eastern Oregon when Aidan was a baby, I volunteered at the library, too – but as it turned out that meant doing things in an office in the back all by myself! The nice thing that came from that, though, was that when people donated old books they didn’t want, the librarian would give them to me. I don’t mean used paperbacks, or something, I mean antique books by obscure authors or whole sets of books by popular Victorians. I LOVE stuff like this – I still have them all in my bookcase and took pride in reading every single one. Full sets of Dickens and Charles Reade among others. I didn’t make any friends that way, though – that took volunteering at church.
I volunteer at church too. 😉
People aren’t allowed to donate books here. It’s a bit sad. So no books for me. Tomorrow is the annual old book sale at the library. No idea what it will be like, as I haven’t been to one here. We’ll see!