Student at TopTaal – Amsterdam
Next year, I will be a barista in my own coffee bar!
Nahla
Nahla has lived in Amsterdam with her husband and five children since 2017 and is taking Dutch lessons at TopTaal. Now that her youngest is starting school, she is beginning a barista training course – and she is dreaming big.
Nahla is from Damascus and feels completely at home in Amsterdam. She knows everyone in her street in Amsterdam-West, where some of her fellow TopTaal students also live. She speaks Dutch as much as possible with neighbors and classmates, precisely because everyone has a different mother tongue. I learned quickly because I practiced a lot. Now I feel strong because I have a good command of the language. Learning Dutch was difficult at first, Nahla says. But once she got used to it, things improved step by step. The language is indispensable in her family: her husband does not speak Dutch and two of her children need extra support. Conversations at school, with the doctor, and at the child health center therefore fall to her. To get everything organized properly, she had to learn the language quickly and keep improving. Now that her youngest is going to school, Nahla is starting a barista training course through the City of Amsterdam. Thanks to her experience in the hospitality industry, she dares to dream big: in a year's time, she wants to open her own coffee bar, where her husband and eldest children will work with her. Force yourself to ask people things: go out without an interpreter or Google Translate. Her tip for other students? Keep going, even when it is difficult, and consciously seek out conversation. Even turn off Google Maps – then you simply have to ask for directions. In daily life, Nahla takes every opportunity to practice, for example as a volunteer at school. More stories