<\/p>\n
Almost ten year ago I\u2019ve met the love of my life in a modern art museum, in\u00a0Amsterdam. We fell in love at first sight and from the very beginning, we learned that we were coming from different countries, cultures, and religions. He was born in Israel and I, in Romania. He was living in Amsterdam, while I was commuting from Bucharest to Brussels. We were \u00a0both, to some extent, living far from our motherlands, families and friends, working and socializing in English, a language which clearly was not our native one.<\/p>\n
A couple of years later, I joined him in the Netherlands and we started living\u00a0together. The entire process of moving in together represented for me a big leap as it also\u00a0coincided with becoming an expat, going back to studies, learning a new language( Dutch)\u00a0and, besides all of this, getting to know a bit more about the cultural background of my\u00a0significant other. The entire process wasn\u2019t a comfortable one, but also not a hassle, as\u00a0living abroad taught us to \u00a0welcome \u00a0change and not to be afraid of\u00a0life\u2019s tussles.<\/p>\n
Years passed and our daughter was born. She was blessed by a woman rabbi and baptized as Orthodox Christian. Today she\u2019s only 18 months old, but she travels every second month from Amsterdam to Bucharest, or Tel Aviv, to visit her families. She learns to say her first words in English, Romanian, Hebrew and Dutch and she very much enjoys the Israeli meals made by \u201cAba\u201d (father in Hebrew) and the Romanian ones made by \u201cMama\u201d. \u00a0She is gradually building herself roots in more than one country and, in the end, without even knowing it, she will \u00a0become the product of many cultures. For us, diversity but also freedom of movement are facts of life. The same applies for her \u00a0toddler-friends, who come from all over the world.<\/p>\n
We are a cross-cultural, interfaith, family and we represent the archetype of a society\u00a0that values human mobility and diversity, overcomes stereotypes and teaches people to\u00a0focus on the similarities among different cultures, but also to see the Planet as a big\u00a0courtyard, where we are all ONE. In our world, the borders get broken down and distances\u00a0compress. From this perspective, living in the\u00a0Netherlands is an absolute blessing as here the values mentioned before are sought by the\u00a0big majority of people. \u00a0In our motherlands, however, families like ours still face some\u00a0challenges, but we prefer to remain positive and hope that the future will bring more\u00a0openness.<\/p>\n
Understandably we regard with skepticism any public discussions that could bring\u00a0back burdens to human interconnectedness\u00a0or people\u2019s mobility \u00a0as we imagine our\u00a0daughter growing up as a citizen of a world where people are allowed to be whoever they\u00a0\u00a0want, whenever and wherever they want.\u00a0For many, such a world could only be a “utopia”, while for many others is a mundane reality.<\/p>\n
With this in mind, we\u2019ve decided to share pieces of our \u201cnormal\u201d life and to invite all of\u00a0you, who believe \u00a0in such a world, \u00a0to let us know your life experiences and to build together\u00a0a community of similar ideas.<\/p>\n
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