You've probably been reading a lot about Brexit, England's unexpected vote last month to exit from the European Union. This has been big news for weeks here, although I must admit I didn't read the articles with much care. I trusted the experts that this would never happen, and turned my attention to a really pressing issue. I'll call it Frexit: when your friends exit your life to head off to other parts of the world. For an expat, this process happens with alarming frequency, although starting in June, the whole goodbye-folks-dance suddenly accelerates. It's sometimes hard to tell from the weather alone when winter/spring leaves off here and summer begins. In the past few weeks, I have donned scarves and worn layers. However, one sure-fire way to know summer is here is when you see the moving trucks move in. At the end of the summer, in September, just like a kid heading back to school, you have to get used to a whole new classroom of expats. This blog post is more about the people I've come to know here than about the places I have seen. After all, aren't the best travel experiences not just about what you see, but the people you meet? I apologize in advance to those of you who read this blog to get ideas of where to go in Amsterdam, or - in the weeks when I go away - to experience those places with me. Instead, you will meet some wonderful people. And then, like me, you'll have to say goodbye to them.

I suppose you could call it the expat cycle of life. You start off new, clueless and clumsy, needing to ask everyone for everything: which dentist to use, where to buy baking soda, what all those different kinds of milk really are in America-speak. You meet expat people who can help you, and before you know it, you have a few friends. And then, again before you know it or are ready for it, some of them exit. It's a phenomenon that has garnered a lot of expat press, but no matter how often you read about it, when it's time to go through the goodbyes yourself, it's no easier. Suddenly, you go from being a "youngster" - not in chronological age maybe, but in number of expat years - to being an old-timer, all in the span of two years. You go from being a follower, to a leader. And I can't help but turn to this hymn of praise for that cycle of life that is a favorite at my Zumba class. If you are pressed for time, fast-forward to 1:42-2:06 and the immortal words, "We lead, you follow." That's how the expat cycle works. And just imagine a class of fit Dutch women of all ages, plus a few Brits and me, making the walls shake. Scary, I know. Even more scary for me is the prospect of being considered a leader. I still feel like a baby, expatically-speaking.

The longer you are here, the greater the loss. Some of our friends who have been here for four years or more are deluged by goodbyes. If there were a mathematical equation for this, it might go something like this: length of stay = amount and degree of pain. You might think it would make an expat reluctant to form new friendships after those painful goodbyes. I'll admit there is a certain amount of "What's the point?" feelings when it comes to the notion of starting all over again with a new crew of friends. You console yourself with steady-streams of visits from long-term friends or family members from the U.S. So for inspiration and comfort, and for bucking myself up to endure this expat farewell business, I turn to the immortal words from that paen to cycles, Eat. Sleep. Rave. Repeat. Here is a short clip from my beloved Zumba class, where the effortlessly funky and enthusiastic instructor Sanne leads us in an endless cycle of body-bending dance moves. In a topsy-turvy world in which countries are leaving unions (causing upheaval in financial markets), and friends are leaving Amsterdam (causing upheaval in my social world) it's comforting to know that dance routines can stay the same. One day's, Eat. Sleep. Rave. Repeat routine is just like any other day's. Thank goodness for that, at least.

Before writing this post, I looked back to my early blog post on friendships (Are You My Friend? January 2015). You could say I know how to pick 'em, but all of those early picks are now actually friends. The cynics among you might say that I was just too lazy to keep looking for friends, and hunkered down with those early fruits of my friendship-picking labors. To you I say: not at all. I did find some other friends after January 2015, and sadly, some of them are in this Frexit category, too. It reminds me of the last day of sleepaway camp, when I cried and cried while saying goodbye to my best friends, some of whom I must have realized I would never see or hear from again. Just like with expat friends, you built up quite a strong relationship in a short time, or maybe you built up that strong relationship precisely because you knew you only had a short time together. There was no time to waste, so you got right down to the business of being friends.

And just as there has been so much written about the goodbye phase of being an expat, there is also a lot of buzz about the process of moving home. There's even a name for the phenomenon: the repatriation blues. I know this because I recently took an online course called Intercultural Communication. I thought it might help me figure out why so few of my neighbors smile at me when I pass by, or why Americans have such a different concept of time than the Dutch. It actually did. The course also gave me some insight into why I often feel like a "fish out of water" (also a phenomenon with a label). According to the academic experts, "Sojourners [that's a fancy word for expats] experience a 'subtractive' identity response. They feel as though they no longer fit into their home country and culture, and as a result find it difficult to relate to family, friends and co-workers. But, upon returning home, sojourners may also experience an 'additive' identity response due to having interwoven some of the host country’s values and behaviors into their own. Yet acting on those adopted values and behaviors when back in the home country causes discomfort or distress for repatriates and those in contact with them. If repatriates experience both subtractive and additive identity shifts, this leads to a double dose of repatriation shock." In other words (my words) you have trouble fitting back in both because you have lost some part of your old skin, and because you have developed some new skin from your new country. I may never be able to move back if that's what I have to look forward to.

Apparently, no one wants to hear your stories about the best place for coffee in Copenhagen, or the time you encountered drunk frat-like German teens on the train ride back from Frankfurt. They put up with it all when you were far away, and were their exotic pet of a friend who lived in Amsterdam. They liked your endless FB posts, and commented with compliments on your endless blog posts. But once you return to the land of Trader Joe's and Target, life goes back to "normal", and your travel fairytales are fascinating to no one but you. At least, that's what I've been told.

Looking at photos of expats is like watching a revival of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, in which one by one, the characters are killed off. Thankfully, these expats are just moving. Bye, Adela (in the middle), and Michele (far right)!

And then there were two. Kirsten (far left) went back last summer, taking with her a wicked sense of humor. Laura is leaving this summer, for an-as-yet-undisclosed location. She will take with her some of the purest New York City moxie I have ever encountered. This allowed her to get up in the face of a Dutch guy who reminded us we could walk our dogs without leashes here. Then he got up in her face with his cigarette and I prayed it would end peacefully. Thankfully, it did. Cristina has six months left before she leaves. And then there were two. And that's not even counting Oliver and Lucy, some of the best dog pals we have. It's not just people who leave you behind, but the dog friends, too. Poor Casey! by the way, I love this photo for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is because I look like a giantess/real Dutch woman here.

Vera (on the right) is off to Tokyo. She's a pro at this pick-up and move business, having lived in Singapore, Johannesburg, Dubai, Beijing, Hong Kong, and Kazakhstan, among other places. I can't even find those places on a map without help. Vera is warm, generous, and full of stories about the Dutch. She's German, but married to a Dutch man, so that qualifies her as an expert. She deserves a medal for single-handedly trying to teach a small group of American expats how to speak Dutch. In the process, she became a friend.

Deb and Marc politely and reliably laugh at my jokes. Needless to say, I will miss them for that quality alone, in addition to their enthusiasm for joining in on whatever plans anyone wants to make (as long as it's not tax season. Deb is an accountant).

Cristina is not leaving until March, but I will begin the grieving process early. It will take a long time. She is a Spanish teacher on leave from teaching. We share stories about what we miss/don't miss even a tiny bit about teaching. Plus she's funny as hell, and I like that in a gal.

Darlene isn't moving back until December, but I need to start wrapping my head around her exodus now, too. You can't sit next to her at a dinner party if you object to wine pouring into your glass and your veins at lightning-fast speed (hence the guilty look on her face and the, well, happy thumbs-up look on Richard's face. I suspect he was singing a different tune the morning after). Darlene herself has a hollow leg. Maybe it's her training as a chemistry teacher that allows her to drink wine as if it were water. Luckily, she will repatriate (that's the official word) to New Jersey. That will make it easier for us to stay in touch.

In one study on cultural transitions I read for my class, the researcher interviewed volunteers returning from the Peace Corps. I love the way the author of the study analyzed the process of returning home: "We are born at the center of the earth, into the insular and complete given of an infant's domain. All assumptions about who we are and how things work are reflections of the context of family, community, and culture which surround us. Most of the important assumptions are rarely stated and almost never questioned.... The returned volunteers know--in some deep place in their consciousness--that there is another center, another definition of life, another way. Much like immigrants, they live with the complexity and the richness of another vision, and know they will never again see with only one." That's a much more positive spin on the concept of repatriation blues. I will keep that philosophy in mind when it's time for us to exit. As you can tell, I like to plan ahead. One of my Frexit friends, Michele, shared this piece of wisdom she got from another expat - see, I told you we love that "You lead/You follow" cycle: “You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart will always be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place!” Most of us would say it's worth paying the price.

This is Stanley, Vera's dog. Off he goes to Tokyo, leaving many of us with broken hearts. How will we survive without the opportunity to look at this face on a regular basis? Here he is cheering on his German team during a recent Euro Cup soccer mat… — This is Stanley, Vera's dog. Off he goes to Tokyo, leaving many of us with broken hearts. How will we survive without the opportunity to look at this face on a regular basis? Here he is cheering on his German team during a recent Euro Cup soccer match.

I set off to write this month about the police in Amsterdam. Then I started to get streams of emails and texts about going-away parties. I realized that writing about the Dutch approach to policing can wait. I suspect the subject of the cycle of expat goodbyes might not, at first blush, be so interesting to my U.S. readers who aren't "repats". Actually, this goodbye cycle is not just an expat phenomenon. Most of us are in an endless cycle of goodbyes, without realizing it. Your parents or friends' parents die (and that has happened way too frequently in the two years since we moved away): that's a sad and final goodbye. Your kids go off to college, or onto jobs in new cites: goodbye to childhood, and to a certain phase of life. You leave a job, even if if's just for the summer like my teacher friends: goodbye. Isn't life just an eternal series of small and larger goodbyes that we have to contend with?

When I left summer camp every August, it was without the safety net of Facebook or iMessage. The friends just fell into a giant black hole, not to be seen again, unless we broke down and wrote an actual letter, or returned to camp the next summer. I really want to know what happened to Julia, a bad-ass tomboy with six brothers who was an endless source of fascination to me. I don't even remember her last name, so I can't Google her to find out she is living in one of those monasteries where no talks all day. That's what happens when you grow up with a bushel of brothers. But I'll never know for sure.

With the blossoming of social media, I keep my fingers crossed I'll be able to maintain at least some of my expat friendships. Carly Rae Jepsen, I agree with you. I just want to ask these friends, "Where you think you're goin' baby?" And then remind them, "Hey, I just met you. And this is crazy. But here's my number...."

I just finished a collection of essays and short fiction called the Opposite of Loneliness, by Marina Keegan. I don't want to bring you all down, because it's a wonderful collection, but there is a tragic note about this book. The author, an aspiring writer bursting with talent, was killed in a car accident four days after her college graduation. Her parents and two beloved writing teachers put this collection together. In the title essay, she writes with wisdom beyond her years about how we don't really have a word to describe the feeling that is the opposite of loneliness. "It's not quite love and it's not quite community; it's just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together. Who are on your team." She was describing college, but that's just exactly how it feels to be a part of this group of expats here in Amsterdam. It's just that now, I'm losing a few valuable members of the team, and the game has to go on without them.

So to Michele, Vera, Deb, Laura, and anyone else I missed out on mentioning, I won't say goodbye. I'll just say, "Tot ziens", which is Dutch for goodbye. Actually, I think it more accurately translates to, "Until I see [you again]." I don't have the experience with expat friendships that my more seasoned expat friends do. This is my first gig. Is it hard to maintain friendships when you can't walk in Vondelpark with your dogs, or bike to the Bos, or visit yet another food truck festival? Do you go visit your expat friends in their new digs, be those digs in Tokyo or Burlingame, California? When you take the friendship out of Amsterdam, does it survive? I sure hope so. I'll keep you posted.

Yes, we have been talking about Amsterdam people, but I'll leave you with a few Amsterdam place descriptions from my assorted travels over the past few weeks. Here are some of the canal house gardens we saw during Open Garden Days. Unlike many of the adventures I have here, in which I pull the median age way, way up, this was an activity mostly for the much, much older set. I still loved seeing those beautiful gardens.

Here is one of the best examples of street art I have seen here. Rachel and I saw it while traveling out to a corner of the city to visit a community garden.

Remember when I said visits from old friends help sustain you during the busy expat exodus season? Laura couldn't have timed her visit more perfectly. I finally got to set sail on a canal boat tour with Those Dam Boat Guys, a group of Americans who lead a tour that is silly, informative, and just a damn good time.

Rachel and I went on a public transportation adventure and finally made it to this little oasis in the far, far west of the city. I felt like we were in another universe, one with fresh juices, and winding paths leading to these hammocks, where we parked ourselves before we had to head back to civilization. It was so chill at this place that I almost forgot my expat exodus sadness. Almost.

(Still the best song on friendship).