Nice weekend

Throughout the Netherlands families celebrated Sinterklaas on Saturday. It's a uniquely Dutch holiday. Families gather together in the evening to exchange presents (or in some cases, get them from St. Nicholas, aka the neighborman). The most interesting tradition is writing poems for each other. Ideally, the poem should have something to do with the gift and how you present it. The presents don't have to be anything too expensive, but there is a significant investment of time involved in the presentation that makes it all quite special.

As wonderful as Sinterklaas must be, Liesbeth and I did not celebrate in any of the customary ways. We spent the evening very nicely together. By Saturday evening, I had spent two days studying for the Sunday morning service, so I was ready for a little diversion, which Liesbeth quite happily provided. We spent some time decorating the apartment. A week earlier, Lies put up some lights in the front windows and put a nice red table cloth on the table. But while I was studying, she went out and bought a table runner and some candles. Lots of them. As we sat on the couch that evening, I counted nearly 20 candles in the room. Of course, all of them weren't burning ... just 17 of them. Very nice atmosphere. (I've suggested installing a fire extinguisher beside the couch, but the idea went down in flames.) It's important to open a window when we blow out the candles to prevent the smoke alarm from arousing our neighbors!

This past Sunday afternoon, Liesbeth and I enjoyed the company of Chris and Susanne, along with their two children. (Chris is Liesbeth's brother, and Susanne is his wife, as well as one of Lies' good friends.) They came to view the wedding album, and have some tea with us. After church that morning, Chris told Lies they'd like to come over. It was rather ironic because just that morning, Liesbeth and I had plotted to pay them a surprise visit. But they made the first move, so we played host. It's a good thing someone said something, otherwise we both might have showed up to empty houses! I took a picture of us sitting around the couch ... or, rather, since I took the picture, it's best said that I took a picture of them sitting around the couch. I'll try to do a better job next time by somehow including myself in the photo. (Note the candles....)
Their two boys, Eelco and Jesse, were brave souls. Poor chaps ... when you're a five-and-under, it's rather difficult to visit someone's house when said someone has no toys for you to play with. Their cars occupied them for awhile, and then they went to the races themselves. They enjoy Auntie Lies, but I think the boys prefer if she and Uncle Rapp visit them!

All for now ... perhaps I can write more later this week. There is a lot of talk in the Dutch government about tossing out annual auto taxes and replacing them with user fees ... the more you drive the more you pay (especially at rush hour in areas of high population density). How's that for a cliffhanger?

Happy Thanksgiving!

On this fourth Thursday of November, in the year of our Lord two thousand and nine, I wish my family and friends a very felicitous Thanksgiving. Today, much to my American colleague's chagrin, we have language class from 12:30-2:45 in Rotterdam. (As I return home on the train, I think some turkeys will probably begin to trot around Bresler Reservoir.) Not having experienced the delights of an American Thanksgiving, the Dutch know no better than to go about their usual daily tasks. Perhaps, they weren't too sorry to see the Strangers leave their shores nearly 400 years ago. But, in all fairness, the Dutch have plenty of other holidays to satisfy their appetite for feasts and fun.

After seeing Liesbeth off to work this morning, I sipped my tea this morning and mused over Thanksgivings past. Some of our more recent celebrations are especially memorable. Last year's competition with the socks was a real winner. As I recall, Ashton and I fought off an especially fierce onslaught from Jess, but having vanquished this particularly persnickety aunt-in-law, we made peace. Our objective had been achieved. (But as I recall, I still had both of my socks on, while Ashton lacked one ... for the record.)

I've also enjoyed singing around the piano ... in the past, we've sung "We Gather Together" and "Count Your Blessings." I suppose it'll be harder to sing this year, unless someone discovers that Grandma has a piano hidden in one of the back closets. It did seem a little strange at first to sing, but I've really gotten used to it. It's a nice way to begin the day, doing something completely together, and it also brings our minds back to the One Who for all these years has kept us together.

What a pity I never got around to writing a skit on "The Shakiest Gun of the (Mid)West"! If the weather holds out today, I'm sure the neighbors will be blessed by loud popping sounds reverberating across the fields as the Alpha's go out to prove their mettle. (The real war will be going on inside, though. I wish you all the best, Ashton, as you assail Jess's battlements. Just remember, though she's a good talker, she's likely fall apart like nothing more than a house of cards.) With all the concealed-carry licenses added to the family this year, I think metal detectors should become a regular piece of furniture for large family gatherings.

I also remember participating in some kind of gift-giving ritual. (I don't remember what it's called.) Will gifts be circulating amongst the family again? As I recall, I received a CD one year (the audio kind) that had Fur Elise on it. It is a very pretty song.

Anyone for a game of CatchPhrase this year? Or perhaps Scrabble, Huggermugger, or better yet, Quibbler? If Virginia will be around, I'm sure some word game will find it's way on to a table.

I can see Jaden some years ago playing electrician, as he would move a stool around the house, visiting every light switch, so he could turn them off and on. Esther and Janessa enjoyed playing in the rooms down the hall, that is, until Daniel and Jaden drew them into a ferocious wrestling contest with Ashton, James, Bryan, or me. Might those kids be getting a little big for wrestling?

Now that I've allowed my thoughts to wander over the other side of the Pond, I’ll consider this side, since this is the side I’m on right now. What will Liesbeth and I be doing today? She’s working today, with her colleague Rimka. They are the youngest assistants in the office (the others are 50+), so Lies and Rimka tend to have a lot of fun together. This morning, I’ll go for my walk, and then work on another chapter of Dutch homework. I had one chapter almost finished before my brother called yesterday (it was very nice to talk to you, Bub). Then, I’ll hurriedly grab a PBJ before dashing off to catch the 11:28 train to Gouda, where I’ll wait for about 5 minutes (if all is running to schedule, which it often doesn’t) before setting off on the 11:46 to Rotterdam. Then, I’ll come home and settle in for some studying for this weekend’s special meetings in Germany. This evening, we will eat dinner with Ab and Anneke. (Lies was going to make Chili con Carne, one of my favorites, so I'm rather sorry to be missing that lekkernij!) Then, return home just about the time the food drops from throats to stomachs on 1616 N. Grubb Road.

Happy digesting, and an even happier Thanksgiving!

And, to reward anyone who trekked through this lengthy post, here's a picture of me with the one I'm quite thankful for on this Thanksgiving .... A picture is worth a thousand words, I know, but I couldn't resist adding a few words beneath it, in the great tradition of American romance poetry!

Rozen zijn rood,

En violetjes blauw:
Maar niets is zo lief
Als mijn prachtige vrouw!

Undutchable?

The first week of the Intermediate Dutch classes went well. The American woman (Laurie) and I were joined by a Turkish expat. It's nice to have a small class again. It's also nice not to have class 4 days/week. It was a pretty intensive pace. Now, I'm going just twice a week, which gives me time to explore the job market some.

Last night, I met with a recruiting agency in Rotterdam. The Undutchables specializes in recruiting non-Dutch candidates for jobs in business. The lady who interviewed me is a South African expat (named Petra). I think the interview went well. (It was not an interview for a job per se, but one to gather more information about me and my background so I could be entered into the Undutchables database.) Petra gave me some additional ideas of websites to explore, and she was very positive about the steps I've been taking thus far to look for work. She was impressed with my Dutch--especially given I've not been here very long--and described it in her notes as "good." I think that will help open doors. Next week, I'll probably go to visit a Dutch Reformed School in Gouda. Our wedding photographer's husband teaches there, and he encouraged me to come by. We arranged an appointment with the director of the school so we can get acquainted. Who knows what can happen there....

Legally, I can't work yet (which is nice to remember when an application is politely rejected), but I should receive my residency permit sometime next month. At our first meeting with the IND (Immigration & Naturalization Dept), Liesbeth and I were unhappily surprised that her gross salary was too low for my request for residency to be granted. We had spoken with the IND in May/June, but on July 1, the laws changed, and the minimum income was revised upward. We were 13 euros too short (that works out to about 50 cents per day!). Fortunately, Liesbeth's employer was able to work out a solution by somehow revising the accounting relationship between vacation days and gross salary. The next week, I returned to the IND. (Since we're married, Liesbeth didn't have to go with me; if we we're simply "partners," she would.) I arrived an hour early, because there was no point in returning home from Rotterdam after my class only to leave immediately for the appointment. I was so surprised when I was led directly to an agent who looked over the papers and approved everything for processing. I didn't have to wait one minute to be seen!

This afternoon, I'm going to do some household chores, and then this evening we're off to church. Stefan and I have worked out that Friday evenings are my night to be the A/V man. The sound board isn't too hard, but sometimes song projection can be difficult, as if the songleader goes off his list, I have to find some Dutch song in the listing!

Yes, it really is a post.

Now that I have probably thoroughly trained anyone who did look at this blog not to look at it because of my very infrequent posts, I write again. Liesbeth and I are still (very much) alive, which should discount one possible explanation for the cessation of posts. Four weeks ago, I enrolled in a three-week intensive course in Rotterdam. We had classes four days *** oh my, I just had a kiss from my wife! *** from 9 to noon. Then, we had 2-3 hours of homework to do in the evening. I was quite fortunate, as there were only four students in our class: one Austrian, a Greek, and two Americans (my compatriot was a fifty-two year old woman from Connecticut whose husband had been transferred to Rotterdam). On the last day of the class, we had to give a short presentation in Dutch. I spoke for 5-10 minutes on the history of Lima. Perhaps that seems a rather mundane topic, but there are some interesting links to be made. For instance, in the year of Lima's founding, Darwin began his voyage and the Belgian Revolution ended with Belgium winning independence from the Netherlands. Lima's railroads, oil, and tank plant all make for an interesting story that can be linked to both hot and cold wars. Lost in Middle America provided a nice conclusion.
Today, I began the intermediate Dutch course, which will continue for 5 weeks (I think). Liesbeth has also been doing some studying, taking a diabetes course one evening per week. She had a busy day today at the office because hundreds of people came for the H1N1 vaccination. Not a fun day at the office. But now we are home, and all is well. The tea has steeped, and I shall now depart. But hopefully, I shall return before several weeks have again lapsed.

Happy Birthday!

This morning shortly after 3AM I turned 28 years old. Liesbeth and I had a very romantic breakfast together. While I was in the bathroom, she lit some candles on the dining room table. I went to sit in my chair, only to discover a present there. Inside, I found a handsome new shirt. (Since I am beset by color blindness, I will not hazard a description of said shirt.) I had a nice walk this morning, and then sat down in my office to read my Bible and study some. I'm preaching this Friday evening, so I prepare for service each day. This evening, some of our family will come over to congratulate us (she has her birthday next week, on the 28th) on our long lives, and to eat the cake Liesbeth made last night. The latter reason may take precedence. At lunch today, I asked what happens at Dutch birthday parties. As already indicated, your friends/family come over on your birthday (even if you don't ask them too), and they bring a small present with them. They may sing, but they definitely eat snacks. In fact, there's even one Dutch birthday song to the effect, "Happy birthday to you, we're so happy you had a birthday, though really we just wanted to eat your snacks." (Pardon the loose, unpoetic translation.) The lyrics' practicality more than compensate for their limited sentimentality. But there is also the ubiquitous "Happy birthday to you," to which all ears are accustomed, though to fit the polysyllabic "Gefeliciteerd met je verjaardag" to the tune requires a tongue Peter Piper could be proud of!

Three-week anniversary

Yesterday marked our three-week anniversary. Liesbeth made a nice dinner, of chicken cordon bleu, with potatoes and salad. It was quite delicious. For dessert, we had a kind of yogurt they call kwark, with a fruit sauce. (The dictionary's translation of kwark is cream cheese, but it's not really what we think of cream cheese. It has the texture--that is, it's a quasi-liquid--but isn't as sweet as yogurt, hence the fruit sauce. Sometimes, we put a spoonful (or two) of jam into the kwark. Later last evening, Liesbeth's sister Suzanne, from Belgium, stopped by for a visit. Her husband is working in Germany this week, which provided her an opportunity to visit Holland without the guilt of having abandoned her husband. We had a nice time together; we especially enjoyed looking at the pictures of the wedding that Pamela Cupples from Scotland posted on her website (location unknown to me).

Mom and Dad sent a birthday package last week, and it arrived on Tuesday as Liesbeth was leaving for work. I intended to hide it and give Liesbeth the present on the 28th, but I forgot. So when she came home from work, there were the birthday bags on the table, and there was absolutely to bridling her curiosity. I was a bit embarrassed because I wanted to make a surprise of it, but that didn't work. We were very pleased with our presents. I got a large bag of Mom's homemade granola, and Liesbeth got a Willow figurine of man and wife. She really liked it, so much so that it was promptly positioned in the places of decorative honor, first on her china cupboard and then in the living room's front window, where it still stands. One can tell how highly a piece of, say, artwork ranks with her by where she places it. The living room and kitchen are the high regions of the scale, and my office is on the lower end. If it goes in the living room or kitchen, a person has hit a homerun. If it goes in my office, on the other hand, it's a sign she respects my style. It's a pretty useful compromise, because a lot of the things I like, I'm quite happy to have surround me in the office, whether perched above me on my desk or bookshelf, or looking up at me from my desk top.

Friday is market day in Waddinxveen. It's something like a miniature Square Fair, without the music and entertainment. I'm supposed to go down to the market this afternoon to buy apples, tomatoes, and waffles. (The waffles aren't the breakfast variety. They're about the diameter of a teacup with caramel syrup between the two circular waffle-like wafers. They are a great accompaniment to a cup of tea.) Shopping is becoming a good way to practice Dutch. I went out yesterday, to the City Hall to work on our documents, and then to the shops. I wanted some gloves, but I forgot the word. So I asked the clerk if they had clothes for cold hands, explaining that I didn't know the right word. Fortunately, the conversation stayed in Dutch (most everyone knows enough English that an emigre could get on pretty easily without learning Dutch. But I should be careful not to get too distracted, as the market closes in two hours.

I'm also on deck for dinner tonight, since it's a church night. We're having spaghetti, left over from when I cooked on Wednesday night. I'm just going to make some more meat sauce to go with it. She praised Wednesday's entree quite highly, but I know that food is usually better when someone else cooks it (just like the yard always looked best when Ashton mowed it!). She's going to have to get up earlier to fool me!

Now, I'd best be getting off to the market, as I have some waffles and tomatoes to buy!

Several thoughts of varying interest (for lack of a better title)

For our honeymoon, Liesbeth and I visited one of the beautiful state parks in northern Holland, in Drenthe province. (If you refer to a map of the Netherlands, we were near the town Diever, which is situated close to the city of Assen.) We cycled some most every day, and in the evenings we greatly enjoyed the fireplace, as we sat on the couch with Liesbeth's classic hot chocolate! Here's a picture of us taking a break from bicycling. I used the bicycle as a tripod:


We made the transition to "normal" life (whatever that is) after we returned home on Monday. On Tuesday, I finally purchased a bicycle, with which I am quite pleased. Liesbeth returned to work on Wednesday, and I then commenced my study of Dutch. One of the sisters in the church is a teacher of Dutch to foreigners, and she lent me a textbook. Her name in Nienke. After she saw that I could follow a church service, she suggested I try to teach myself beginning Dutch, and for the intermediate level, I could take classes. I think the idea is a good one. A two-week course costs about $1,000, and I did not relish the thought of spending a few days in such a course with folks who had absolutely no knowledge of Dutch at all. Liesbeth is a good language partner; when she comes home from work at noon and in the evening, we talk in Dutch for awhile, and then move to English. And Sis. Nienke is great for grammar questions. Just today, after service, she told me a rule about word order that shed much light on things for me. (In short, the verb always occupies the second position in the sentence in Dutch. So if a sentence begins with an adverb or adverbial phrase, the subject and verb are inverted; for example, Today, had we a good service. ... Just in case anyone was interested....:)

Yesterday, bought Liesbeth and I a bookshelf and desk chair for my office.=) At first, I thought the regular table chair would be sufficient, but after a few days of working at my desk, I knew I needed something better. Last evening, I put the chair and bookshelf together. Bro. Ab arranged for me to get a set of English Message books from VOG, and I enjoyed unpacking those and putting them and the books my parents brought me onto the shelves. Such great joy to have again a shelf of books at one's side! I enjoyed putting the books in order, and remembering when I had read various ones for the first time, and what they meant to me then. Many such books I'd read in high school, and it was special to recollect the memories they created in me.

Liesbeth is working on dinner now, so it's time to bring this post to a conclusion. I have thoroughly enjoyed Liesbeth's cooking. She warned me time and again that she really wasn't a cook at all, but her cooking belies her words. The fragrances are even now wafting through the hallway and into my office, tempting me to depart and sup with my beautiful wife....

Tot ziens!