Talk of Marriage?

[Hollandia]

I am slowing understanding how big the difference really is! In Norway the standard vacation time is 38 days, prefferably taken as 4 weeks in July and 1 week in October. We also tend to have more 3-day holidays throughout the year, and for Christmas and Easter the whole country closes down for a week, the few ones working get double pay. We have a tradition of not paying overtime but saving it up as holiday time to take time off for longweekends. It must be hard to plan with little vacation. The only time I have not had summer holiday was when I was a student (we got student loans for 10 months a year only) and had to support myself in the summers.

I use most of my free time with SO as study time when he works. He works all day every day (he had one day off so far in season) and he can't take time off when I am there. I see this as rehersal for more CD life when we will both be working, although I do hope he gets better hours in the new job! But we are doing it like this until next year when he goes into military. When he comes here I will probably have Christmas holiday which will be about 10 days but if he stays longer than that I will work daytime 4-5 days a week when he is here and that is just life.

The one I have learned from being in an LDR is that we have different cultures but neither is better or worse. I am not happy with USA having less vacation time but we are a different culture. I have found many things in NL that are quite different. I try to never say, your country is worse because of this or my country is better because of that. They are just different. We have worked to meld some cultures and traditions and also respect the origin of both our nations. I could cite you several other things that the workplace will not protect you from in NL that it will in USA, it is all just give and take.

[differentcountries]

The one I have learned from being in an LDR is that we have different cultures but neither is better or worse. I am not happy with USA having less vacation time but we are a different culture. I have found many things in NL that are quite different. I try to never say, your country is worse because of this or my country is better because of that. They are just different. We have worked to meld some cultures and traditions and also respect the origin of both our nations. I could cite you several other things that the workplace will not protect you from in NL that it will in USA, it is all just give and take.

There are things about his culture that I absolutely love, and where I think ours has a lot to learn or even I think we do it all wrong while they get it. I love their food, their music, the climate, the collective feel and the ability to be impulsive and here and now-oriented. When it comes to the workplace though, people are clearly being taken advantage of in Turkey and not just because of the lack of vacation rights, but for having people working long hours without proper compensationor right to sick leave, and having no real rights to personal safety (the mining accident deaths provokes me to no end, in Norway the government would had to walk over something like that and even our government during the Breivik murders was not re -elected).