Final Dutch Adventures

This post should also be called Life After Exams: Doing Everything you Haven't Done Yet.

The past few days (well, since Friday) have been filled with me trying to fit in all the things around the Netherlands that I still wanted to do. Has it been fun? Oh, yes! Extremely fun. Have I done everything I wanted to do? Not a chance, but I have hit all items at the Very Top of the List. And if I did everything now, I wouldn't have a reason to come back, would I?

Right, so what have I done? Most Calvin people began scattering all over Europe last Saturday as soon as exams were finished, but I have been in Amsterdam and the surrounding area. (My international adventures begin tomorrow). On Saturday, with an iced mocha in hand:

























I wandered around central Amsterdam, going absolutely anywhere I wanted to go. I found a market I didn't know existed, watched a man balance on a pole in Leidseplein, and did my final souvenir/gift shopping.

Souvenirs -- check.

Sunday was mostly cleaning my room and packing. I will spare you the details.

On Monday I made it back to Den Haag. I wanted to finally make it to the Mauritshuis:




















If anyone is looking for touring tips, I would strongly recommend this museum. Like the Rijksmuseum, it has top-notch art (Girl with a Pearl Earring, for example) but all contained within only 12 rooms. The small size lessens the chances of catching Museum Fatigue, an all-too-common ailment in Europe. Plus I got to listen to a free audio guide and, thanks to the uncrowded nature of the place, I could stand 6 inches away from paintings (including GwaPE!) for as long as I liked. This was no Louvre where you and five hundred closest friends look at the Mona Lisa together. If you're in Den Haag, go to the Mauritshuis!

After the museum I came across a cafe I had heard about from Deborah and Bonnie. I knew it was the right place because it had the stroopwafel Frappuccinos they told me about!

























Keep in mind that an iced coffee in the Netherlands usually means the ice is blended, so it really tastes more like a Frappuccino. And, yes, I can call it a Frappuccino even if it isn't from Starbucks! You still call that Puffs tissue a Kleenex, right?

Gotcha.

The stroopwafel frappuccino was a dream come true.

Final item on the Den Haag agenda was...Madurodam!

Madurodam, Madurodam, how I love you so,
Of all the places in the world, you're where I want to go,
A tiny Holland, built with care, for me to wander through,
Madurodam, Madurodam, oh how I do love you!

That spontaneous poetry stemmed from how amazing this place was. The best way to describe it is as a tiny Netherlands.



















You can feel like a giant for the day and wander through the buildings replicated at a 1:25 scale.



















I was smiling the entire time I was there. First, I kept finding buildings I knew (The Dom in Utrecht! Kuypersport in Middelburg!), and it was like reliving my entire semester. Second, I had a good time placing my miniature friend amongst the miniature buildings.

























Obama now has a test for you: How many of these Dutch landmarks can you name based on their miniature alone?

A)


















B)


















C)


















If you said A) Maeslantkering, Nieuwe Waterweg; B) Dam Square, Amsterdam; and C) Binnenhof, Den Haag, YOU WIN!

But really, I got a huge kick out of Madurodam and have over 100 pictures to prove it. Miniature Holland was a blast!

























Another thing on the Very Top of My List was the flower auction in Aalsmeer. I had only heard wonderful things about it, and let me tell you...


...it lived up to the hype. Maybe I was still on a Madurodam-high Tuesday morning, or maybe I was just pleased not to be visiting another museum/church/city hall (no offense to the thousands out there to be seen), but I thought the flower auction was one of the coolest sights I've seen in Amsterdam.

The gist of it: Every weekday morning millions of flowers are auctioned off in the auction halls located throughout this giant warehouse. Meanwhile, outside the auction halls, life in the warehouse is organized chaos. Flower carts are pulled around in trains, or pushed around individually, with beeping and honking and clanging and craziness.

To top it all off, the entire warehouse looks like a patchwork quilt of flowers.

AND the place smells amazing.

I took about 100 pictures here too. These will hopefully give you an idea of the colors:












































































This video might give you some idea of the noise and ordered chaos going on down on the warehouse floor. So many workers driving like crazy! Yet they don't run into each other!



I'm very sorry, but I can't think of any way to get the beautiful smell in the warehouse to you. You will just have to visit the flower auction yourself! Go now. Bus #172.

I'm serious.

...


Although I am not leaving until Sunday, yesterday (Tuesday) was my last chance to go into central Amsterdam. Continuing with my theme, I took about 100 photos of my favorite places:




















I also enjoyed delicious ice cream from a street vendor (something else I've heard wonderful things about, just now tried, and now agree that is wonderful), poffertjes from a street vendor, and a croquette from the vending machines of a FEBO.



















Try the ice cream:
Enjoy poffertjes one last time:
Finally visit a FEBO:

Check, check, check.

Checking things off mental lists feels great!

I also tried to achieve some personal poetic justice. This was the first picture of Amsterdam I took this semester (Jan. 30):




















And this is the last (June 1):



















How nice.

...


...


...

I realized on the tram ride back that they are of different canals (Prinsengracht vs. Keizersgracht). It's the thought that counts, right?

On to the final Dutch adventure: the Efteling!

Efteling is the coolest of all Dutch theme parks. Well, there is not that much competition, but it is still very cool! I have heard (and heard and heard) about this place from some certain Dutch people I know :) Eva and I went down for the day, and now I can say I've had the true Efteling experience!



















There we are with our little elf friend. Highlights of the day include getting "cursed" on the Flying Dutchman (a ride that goes from boat to roller coaster to boat!), eating fries in a grassy field with sad, sparse grass, getting wet on the river rafting ride, wandering through the fairy tale forest, seeing an unsupervised child fall 10 feet down a ledge (he was fine, but learned his lesson about sitting on railings!), getting "stuck" in the Python roller coaster seats (worker-boy brought out his special hydraulic pump to release us), eating ice cream by a garbage can that wouldn't shut up, getting the theme music for every ride stuck in my head...

You get the point -- Efteling was great! The weather was also perfect, and I did not at all mind spending a lovely day outside.

And my list is complete :( The only adventures I will have in Holland now will be had at the airport, and I hope to not have any adventures there since "adventures" in the world of flights are never fun. The three days I have left will be filled with beer, fries, waffles, chocolate, and other Belgian delicacies. Close to the Netherlands, but not quite! It should be great fun, and you might hear about some of it Saturday night.

But I feel like I still have pages to write about this semester. I don't want it to be over! So this blog might continue for a little while after I get back to the States, just so I can get caught up on everything worth saying ;)

Words of advice: keep checking back in! And as always, thanks for reading!

A Girl's Got to Eat

My exams are finished! Now I have eight days to do -- ??? Whatever I want? Really? Write on my blog? Go to Belgium? Meet the Dutch Royal Family?

Yes to everything but the last one. I only have eight days left before this blog becomes officially out of date and I am no longer in Amsterdam, so one of my goals is to now make the most of it. Post, post, post. Write about all the things I have been meaning to write about this semester but haven't gotten around to yet. Starting with:

Grocery Stores!

Let me tell you a secret: I love grocery stores. I love how you can know exactly where you are based on what grocery stores you see around you. Seattle is all about Safeway, Fred Meyer, Albertsons, and QFC. I know I am in Iowa when I see HyVee. And nothing screams Michigan like a mega (mega, mega) Meijer monopoly. So to me, some of the most important parts of my "Amsterdam identity" are what grocery stores I shops at. They are:

Aldi
Albert Heijn
Super de Boer

I know this is not a complete list of Dutch grocery stores, but I've never made it to a Dirk van den Broek or C1000 or others, so I won't write about them. Instead I am going to write a little bit about the pros and cons of each store that I have been to over the last (yikes!) four months. Starting with:

ALDI

Some of you are saying, "Hey, we have Aldi in the U.S.!" You are correct in noticing that the same chain found near Buffalo Wild Wings in Grand Rapids is also found several places in the Netherlands. Such as the Aldi found near Uilenstede:



















Pros:
Aldi is by far the overall cheapest option for food that we've got. You can generally buy more food there (larger boxes of cereal, larger packages of vegetables) than at the other stores, and yet the price is still lower. I have also deemed the stroopwafels found at Aldi to be the best packaged stroopwafels available.

Cons:
At a 15-20 minute walk away, Aldi is further than most stores I go to. The walk is not so bad since spring has arrived, but earlier in the semester it could be brutal (Hint: my first walk back from Aldi convinced me to buy boots). Also, Aldi is a bit like Costco in that things are not always there when you look for them. It depends on when the shipments come in, I guess. But for giant boxes of pannekoeken mix and cheap deals in the bargin bins, Aldi can't be beat.

**Side note**

My walk to Aldi takes me along this canal:



















Who doesn't want to see that when they walk to a grocery store? Last week I saw a heron! A heron!




















My point is that I love being able to walk to the store. Sad as it may sound, I've never lived anywhere where that was possible. I love my house in Seattle, but the fact that it is at least 1 mile from anything non-residential and on top of a giant hill make walking TO anything a rare event (as in, only when we are snowed in). In Grand Rapids my house is walking distance from Calvin, which helps satisfy my desire to be able to walk places from my house, but getting groceries is still a load-up-the-car-and-go-to-Meijer event.
But in Amsterdam I can walk to the store! Sure I have to make many weekly trips since I can only buy what I can carry, but that is part of the Dutch lifestyle. I can honestly say (now that I have entered the end of the semester where it is appropriate to be retrospective) that walking to the grocery store is one of the things I will miss most.

Back to business!

ALBERT HEIJN



















That cryptic little symbol on the blue sign there is the A and H of Albert Heijn, a pillar in Dutch culture. I would go there more if it weren't so out of the way.

Pros:
AH is one of the *bigger* grocery stores out here, although by American standards it is still very small. Its vegetable mixes for soup, stir fry, etc., are some of the freshest and best. The bread from their bakery is delicious. Oh, and did I mention the FREE COFFEE?




















I didn't get any the day I took this picture because it was 70+ degrees out and coffee did not sound good. I did, however, snap some other sneaky photos to give you an idea of what AH looks like. Here is an action shot of my basket:



















Note the Albert Heijn brand vegetable mix and Albert Heijn brand cola. Also note that everything is BLUE. These grocery stores are big on their color schemes.

And here's the chip aisle. Impressive:



















Cons:
Far away. Albert Heijn is also a 15 minute walk away, but it is in a completely different direction than Aldi and Super de Boer, as in away from the VU, the direction I hardly every go. But this can turn into a

Pro:
I walk far away to a hidden little neighborhood store and no one knows that I am not Dutch. More on that later.

**Side note**

There is also a small store on Uilenstede's campus that I will describe briefly here. It has no name (that I'm aware of) which is why I didn't mention it earlier.

Pros:
Extreme convenience. For example, I went there once this past week because I needed a break from studying but I couldn't be gone long.

Cons:
EXTREME overpricing. To the extreme. Which is why I try to go there only in emergencies.

But last week constituted a blogging emergency, because I realized there were two brands I needed to share with y'all. Ready?

First, this pizza that always makes me feel self-conscious:



















This pizza is saying, you are going to become a Big American because you bought this frozen pizza to eat! And to that I say, no, pizza! It is exam week, give me a break! Plus it is all for my blog readers!

Then, to boost my self confidence, I turn to these Doritos:
























Thank you, Doritos. I know I am a Cool American. Confidence restored.

I hope you enjoyed that.

Last but not least,

SUPER DE BOER



















Pros:
This store is by far the store I frequent the most simply because it is close to Uilenstede (5 minutes) AND located directly on the travel path between Uilenstede and the VU, a path that I travel quite often. Super de Boer is slightly less cool than Albert Heijn, but in general it is a solid place. Good variety, good food.

Cons:
Not the overall cheapest (Aldi) or best quality (Albert Heijn). But over the course of this semester, convenience has trumped price and quality nine times out of ten. Besides, if you know what brand to look for (cough, Eurocent brand, cough) there are great deals to be had (six mini-loaves of bread for 13 cents!).

And now a look into the teal-and-lime store. I told you these stores loved their color schemes!



















On the right there is the rack where I have picked up Dutch recipes several times. What am I going to do with recipes in Dutch? Who knows.

Here is a look at the vegetable section. Notice the diligent worker clad in a teal and lime green jacket:



















One of the strangest things about stores here that we had to get used to is the fact that eggs are not refrigerated. It freaked me out at first, but now I hardly notice:
























There you have it, grocery stores that I have grown to love! Time to let you in on another secret: in Berlin we "practiced" coming up with answers to the questions that we will inevitably be asked when we return home, questions like "What was your favorite part?"

Although I have many favorites about this semester, I decided that one of them is going to the grocery store and blending in. I don't see a-n-y tourists at a neighborhood Albert Heijn or a hidden Aldi. I can see what normal people are buying and what foods are unique to the area. And, with the rudimentary Dutch skills I have acquired, I can make it through the "Hello...here you are...thank you, goodbye" exchange at the checkout relatively unnoticed. That's right, I can pretend to be Dutch! Or rather, no one knows that I'm not NOT Dutch, if that makes sense.

After four months of saying "English, please?" and always being blatantly aware of the fact that I am so American, I love the feeling of going to the grocery store and getting away with not explaining myself. It's when I feel the most like I live here.

So I will keep going to the store for eight more days, since I at least have those left...

That Quiz was A) terrifying, B) surreal...

Never underestimate the multiple-choice quiz. At least not when you are in a foreign country. Here is a story for you that will illustrate my point exactly. The event I'm going to describe actually happened last week Wednesday, but I figure telling a story late is better than never, and this one fits nicely under the "cross-cultural experience" category.

On the third day of my shiny new Molecular Development class, we had a quiz over basic cell biology material that we reviewed the first two days of class. The quiz was going to be 16 questions long, multiple choice. No big deal, right?

Wrong.

The lab assistants came in to the classroom and distributed the quizzes to everyone. I put my name on the top without thinking, looked down at the first question, and realized I couldn't read any of it. While our lectures are given in English...

...this quiz was in Dutch.

Oops. Miscommunication there between the professor and the lab instructors who wrote the quiz. The rest of the Dutch students began to take the quiz with no problems (actually, it was probably and advantage for them to have the quiz in Dutch!), but Adam and I...well, what to do? This was a short quiz that we only had half an hour to take. There was no time for someone to go translate the quiz. Only one thing could be done. We were off to our professor's office.

Lucky for me, I didn't fully realize on the way to Prof. Koes' office what I was in store for, because I don't remember dreading the walk there. If I had known what was coming, I would have been waaaaaaay more nervous. Really.

We got to our prof's office, and the lab instructor yelled at him for a bit about the quiz-should-be-in-English confusion. Then she left. It was soon realized among Prof. Koes, Adam, and myself that Adam and I could not exactly take the quiz at the same time. Now Adam knows some Dutch, which was unfortunate for him at this moment because it meant he was sent to another room to fend for himself and try take the quiz as best he could. Not very fun. Meanwhile, I was going to take the quiz in Koes' office after he translated the questions for me.

He did get me some coffee at this point. That was nice. It helped a little.

But, really, let me explain this process to you. Koes would translate question X for me, all well and good. Then he would translate answer A. I would pause and not say anything (is that the right answer???), and then he would ask if I wanted to hear the next answer. Um, yes please. We'd make our way through all of the multiple choice options, and then there would be that waiting moment again...with me thinking something like this:

"answer the question...answer the question...GET THE RIGHT ANSWER...answer the question..."

Finally, I would circle an answer and wait. Hopefully (and thankfully, most of the time) I would hear:

"Good choice. That was the right one."

But some of the time, it would be:

"You shouldn't have chosen that one."

Drat. I guess that's one good thing about taking a quiz with the professor able to see everything you do. You get immediate results. I knew when I walked out of that office what my grade was.

But, boy, what a strange way to get through sixteen questions. I now fully appreciate taking a test at a desk by yourself, where you can mull over answers as long as you want and be unprepared for the test with the comfort that your professor won't find out that you were unprepared for at least a few hours, maybe days. And, thanks to the clarification this situation achieved between lab instructors and professor, I trust that our future exams in the class will all be in English, the only language that I, the poor foreign monolingual student, can understand. The prof-over-the-shoulder quiz will be a one-time occurrence, my friends.

At least I hope so.

So, this week

This week I learned some stuff, did some things. It was fun.

What, that's not enough information? Okay, I AM sort of procrastinating until it's time to go do homework (on a Friday? what?), so I will go into more detail...

Sunday:
Happy Easter, everyone! I hope the day was wonderful for all of you. I had a great, relaxing day. A few of us went downtown to the English Reformed Church in the Begijnhof. We went there on Good Friday and it felt appropriate to complete the circle in the same place on Sunday. We got there early, as the pastor advised on Friday, and it was a good thing because he was right -- the place filled up. The service was great, but the weirdest part was walking out of the church to a courtyard filled with tourists talking pictures of the outside (I guess since they couldn't go in since the church was "in use"?). Anna and I also had quite a vocal tourist couple behind us on the way into the church ("Is this the church? Oh, it's so cute!"). Now, I have been to this church a grand total of four or five times, and I can't say that I even know anyone who goes there regularly, but...urg, the tourists got to me. Maybe because I never expected church to be a touristy place. I guess that's what you get when you go to a church built in 1607.

Am I turning into an Amsterdam snob? Maybe. But like to think I have a little bit of a reason to be.

Tourists aside, the service was great. Then that afternoon, the Aays graciously had all of us who could come over to their apartment for a delicious brunch. Easter was great!

Monday:
I honestly don't remember anything special from Monday. So sorry.

Tuesday:
Ahh, Tuesday. This was the day I got to spend quality time with some of my fossil friends:

























































Oh, and one (very sticky, nasty) foot:



















Yes, my Human Evolution biology class had a lab that met for EIGHT HOURS on Tuesday. To be fair, we did get a breaks for lunch and such, but we were in the same room from roughly 9am to 5pm. I came to the conclusion that, no matter how interesting something is, it begins to become uninteresting after eight hours. I remember sitting at the last of the twelve lab stations that we had to do, almost visually observing Chris and Adam's words bouncing off my head. Knowledge absorption at that stage is minimal.

But, hey, I got some pictures! (Nevermind the fact that they are for our lab report that we still need to type up...) I now could tell you the difference between a male and a female skull, or give a jaw an age based on what teeth it had come in. And I've seen enough "brow ridges" to last a lifetime.

What I'm saying is, this class is extremely interesting, but I'm coming off of two months of a history class that met for four hours a week. Now I go to lectures for sometimes five hours a day, and the lab...sigh. Not complaining! Just pointing out a difference for, you know, posterity.

Wednesday:
Something you should know -- the concert hall in Amsterdam, the Concertgebouw, holds free concerts at 12:30 every Wednesday. Something else you should know -- if you are ever in Amsterdam on a Wednesday, get to the concert hall at noon at least, because every retired person in Amsterdam will already be in line to beat you to a seat.

But Deborah, Anna, Bonnie, and I made it there early enough, and we got seats!





































The concert was short (30 minutes), FREE, and much, much different than I expected. Well, I expected Mozart, or something. The Nieuw Ensemble played three new pieces written by...university students? (It was hard to tell, the program was in Dutch). The pieces can best be described as experimental, and described worst as strictly melodic. Some of the new things were kind of cool! For example, in the piece called "Mice," the instrumentalists scratched on boxes with pencils at one point to make the sound of scurrying mice. Then they all sang "Three Blind Mice." But other times, I would kind of zone out. Experimental music doesn't always hold one's attention well.

I experienced a bit of "culture," though, instead of just spending my time reading TV recaps on Entertainment Weekly.com like I sometimes do. And - bonus! - we emerged from the concert to find that it was a beautiful sunny day in Amsterdam.

We had to photographically take advantage of the sun, the blue sky, and the fact that they finally took down the tent in front of the Rijksmuseum, meaning you don't have to stand three feet away from the I amsterdam letters to get a picture with them.



















Now if only they would finish up with that scaffolding...

We also took a walk through the Albert Cuyp market, rumored (whisper, whisper) to be the largest daytime market in Europe. But don't tell the other countries, they'd be jealous.




















We found things there both good and bad.

Good: the fresh stroopwafel that I had.

Bad: these harem pant-jeans.




















Thursday:
We experienced a classroom landmark, namely an AMAZING guest lecturer. Meet Jan van Hooff.
























I admit, the picture is not mine. I took it from a website I found a link to on his WIKIPEDIA PAGE! And one of his former students, Frans de Waal, is now slightly famous among some biology circles. You could say I was starstruck in a biological-academia sense.

Like all good professors I've known, he was a great lecturer mainly because he was slightly crazy. He talked about the social groups that primates live in, which naturally includes acting like a chimpanzee from time to time. He would also start speaking in Dutch whenever he got very excited/distracted. Most of the time he would notice. But once:

Prof. van Hooff: Dutch, dutch, dutch

Student: Professor? You're speaking in Dutch again.

Prof. van Hooff: I can switch to German, too, if you'd like.

(hehe)

Overall, one of the best lectures I've had at the VU!

Friday:
That is today, which means I can't write about it yet since it isn't over! I can tell you, though, that writing a lab report is in my near future.

And Saturday/Sunday bring another round of our group excursions with Prof. Aay. Let's hope for no stomach flu/traffic jams on this one! Honestly, though, I think this weekend will be pretty fun. We are going on a biking trip on Sunday around Amsterdam's largest park, the Amsterdamse Bos, and the trip may or may not include goat's milk ice cream and Scottish Highlander cows. Saturday -- I still don't know exactly where we're going. You and I will just have to find out, won't we?

Until next time, thanks for reading!

Beware the Ides of March

Not only is today Hug an Engineer Day and the day after Pi Day, it is also the dreaded Ides of March (dreaded for Caesar anyway). March 15, 44 B.C., did not turn out to be one of his better days.

Fortunately March 15, 2010 is not turning out so bad for me. I am mostly just stuck in the long, slow crawl towards SpRiNg BrEaK! Let me explain...

The VU does not have one organized spring break that spans all majors. In fact, all departments run on whatever schedule they think is best. My biology classes meet for only four weeks in all, which is why I haven't started them yet, and my history class lasts for eight weeks. So my "spring break" is whatever time I can squeak out between the end of my history class and the start of the biology classes.

And the end of the history class is near. I had my last normal lecture this afternoon, and will have one last guest lecturer on Wednesday. Then I have an ENTIRE WEEK to study for my history exam on Wednesday, March 24.
Thursday...Friday...Saturday...Sunday...Monday...see what I mean by a long, slow crawl?

We will also be taking a mid-term for our STNL class next week Tuesday, so I feel I should include that in the mix. Two exams to take is sadly going to be the most homework I have done yet this semester.

Ok, so we have two exams, ten days to go, and then (and here comes the seamlessly-worked-in-Ides-of-March-reference) ROME!

Yep, three days in Rome will be my spring break, and what a whirlwind those three days will be. It's getting very close now...and I am getting antsy...10 days...10 days...



And now for something completely different, a story from my day:

I managed to run out of all my food at one time, so after class today, at about 3:15 or so, I made a much-needed trek to Aldi. The only thing is, Aldi was strangely closed (I'm sure the sign on the door explained it all, but I didn't understand it). I turned around and headed back towards Uilenstede to go to Super deBoer. By now it was about 3:30. About a block away from Super deBoer, walking by the local junior high, I realized that 3:30 must be the time that the junior high lets out school for the day.

Great.

Let me explain to you the cultural differences I've observed between junior highers in the Netherlands and those in the United States:

THERE ARE NONE

You see, these junior highers think, and I'm sure all U.S. junior highers would agree, that it is absolutely the coolest of cool things to go hang out at Super deBoer after class. They clog up the aisles and check-outs buying energy drinks and candy bars, and then hang out in super-cool groups right outside the door to laugh and make generally snide comments about the other junior highers who are hanging out on the other side of Super deBoer (trust me, I don't need to know Dutch to know that this is what's going on). When there was snow last month, I even witnessed a few snowball fights across the tram tracks. And absolutely all of them wear black. Boy, these kids are the coolest of cool.

So after getting stuck in a slow-moving mob of them on the last block between the school and Super deBoer, I spent some quality time this afternoon shopping with Amsterdam's coolest bunch. The kid in the check-out line behind me was even buying -- no joke -- a Red Bull and a carton of ice cream. I had to laugh at how predictable my little tween friends turned out to be, and how universal I've learned the junior high attitude really is.

Don't worry, kids, you'll make it out of junior high soon enough! We all did!

Weekend Excursions Part II is coming up tomorrow!

What you remember

Oh my gravy, it's been a long time since I posted. First of all, bonus points to anyone who can accurately attribute the phrase "oh my gravy." Second, what better way to fix the lack of updates than by updating?

This post is going to try to be an all-encompassing post that draws elements from different things I've done over the past four...five...six days. Sorry if it doesn't work. Bear with me.

We had a guest lecturer in Democratization yesterday, as we do on all Wednesdays, and I will be honest in saying that it was extremely boring. I did not do very well paying attention. At all. I think it is mostly because:

-These guest speakers are speaking in English, which is not the easiest thing for them. It's a hard thing, and I couldn't do it. I give them props for that. But...

-The speakers do not have the best organization for their lectures, as in main points of any kind. That makes it hard to jump back into the lecture after zoning out for a second or five.

-The guest lecturers are not inclined to speak very loudly. Maybe that is a cultural difference between the Netherlands and the U.S.? Calvin profs do a good job of giving animated lectures, and I think that goes a long way towards helping students pay attention.

All three of those are valid reasons why I had a hard time listening yesterday. But as I listened to "in the 18th century, the Netherlands did this" and "in 1918 women did that," I realized that maybe I could barely pay attention because the lecture was so stinkin' generalized. I like hearing stories of actual people, like the Mayor of Leiden who offered to cut off his arm to feed people. That's what I actually remember!

(impeccably appropriate segue to...)

On Saturday I went to the Dutch Resistance Museum.



















It was a good one. It definitely does not receive the Bijbels museum rating, which is "Go only if you have four months to waste." No, the Dutch Resistance Museum gets the rating of "After hitting the Rijks, Anne Frank Huis, and Red Light District, make this the fourth thing you do in Amsterdam." That might be extreme, but I really liked it. Can you guess why? The stories!

Keep in mind that the museum covered the reactions of Dutch people to German occupation in WWII, including people who resisted the Germans and people who collaborated with them. The stories of resistance were my favorite. I had to take pictures of a few signs so I could remember them and share them with y'all :)

So here you go:

"In April 1941, Jacoba Maria Blom-Schuh of The Hague tells a Winter Help collector, 'I won't contribute to Winter Help until our queen comes back. The proceeds from Winter Help are for the Germans and the NSB members, and they're a gang of thieves, just like Adolf Hitler.' The collector files a report and Maria Schuh is put into prison for three months. The experience does not soften her temperament. The SS guards giver her their socks to darn and she sews them shut, supposedly out of ignorance."

"The Hague, early 1941. Father and mother Niehot want to name their newborn baby Nelia after the midwife, Nelia Epker. But she suggests they give their child an 'Orange' name. The result is announce in the newspaper in a birth advertisement: Irene Beatrix Juliana Wilhelmina Niehot. ...Perfect strangers send cards, flowers, cakes and even money. When Nelia Epker places a thank-you advertisement in March 1941, so that all the names appear in the newspaper once again, she is arrested. She does not return until August 1945, a survivor of Camp Ravensbruck."

"Nico de Graaf is a senior officer at the Department of Social Services in The Hague. When faced with signing the Aryan Declaration he hands in his resignation. Ever since the first day of the occupation he has insisted 'You've got to stick to your guns' and 'Watch out for slippery slopes.' In a statement made to his co-workers he writes, 'Any partiality shown to one human being over another on account of his belonging to a particular race or nation is contrary to the deepest foundations of faith in Jesus Christ."

This is the history that I will remember, and people in the Dutch Resistance are my new heroes!

On a final note, I bought tulips earlier this week and they looked like this:


















And look at them now!


















I knew they continue to grow after you cut them, but wow! Tulips are my new friend :)

Gezellig

You've probably heard this word before. Maybe? Maybe not. I heard it MANY TIMES in my intro to Dutch course in January. It is both the classic example of an untranslatable word and the classic word used to "encompass Dutch culture." The Wikipedia article "Words hardest to translate" says "literally, it means cozy, quaint, or nice, but can also connote time spent with loved ones, seeing a friend after a long absence, or general togetherness.” It's also supposedly one of those you-know-it-when-you-see-it things.

So I guess I'll try to tell you What Gezellig Means to Me, or at least some of what it means. I'm no expert yet, but I'll give it a shot.

A few girls from my History class invited me to come over for "dinner" on Monday after class. I say "dinner" because saying I was there for a meal hardly tells the whole story.

Class got out mid-afternoon, and we made it to their house by maybe 4:00 (actually, 16:00. I'm still getting used to that way of telling time). We spent the first hour hour or so drinking tea, eating cookies, and talking about Dutch & American holidays. No TV on, no background noise, and the hottest cup of cinnamon tea in my hand that I've ever held. Mmmm.

At maybe 5:30, someone said, "What do you want for dinner?" We still had to go to the store to get what we wanted to eat. We walked to Albert Heijn (sadly it was raining) and spent time in the store with everyone else on the west side of Amsterdam. If I haven't already said it, the Dutch go to the grocery store more often than we do. In fact, just about every day. But they don't have the (convenient? monstrously huge?) Costcos and Meijers that the U.S. does.

We decided on tacos for dinner! My Dutch History friends were surprised to hear that in America, we eat tacos, pasta, potatoes and chicken...basically a mix of foods from everywhere, just like they do!

(I still haven't gotten over the fact that I'M the exchange student here. For all the moments that I ask about Dutch life, they ask me questions about mine.)

Before making the tacos when we got back, we made dessert. It was supposed to be a tart/pie/thing that would chill in the fridge for a few hours, but a few packages got mixed up and the instant mix didn't turn out too well. Powdered tart mix + melted butter for the crust = the weirdest smell I have ever smelled. Some sort of strange chemical reaction going on there. We tried.

Forgetting dessert, we made the tacos. Then, the four of us went and SAT AT THE TABLE to eat dinner (sadly, something we hardly ever do at my house in GR. We always sit on the couch). There were some atmospheric yet slightly hazardous candles decorating the table. After dinner was over, we drank --you guessed it-- more tea.

Then finally we watched a Dutch movie, Alles is Liefde (while drinking tea. Seriously, I thought Dutch people liked coffee???). Alles is Liefe = Everything is love, all is love, love is all, something close to that. Think Dutch romantic comedy. It was really cute! I'm currently on a quest to find it in a North American DVD format. No luck yet, so if any of you see it, let me know!

So, seven hours later, "dinner" was over. And I can say that the evening felt gezellig to me. It was cozy and nice, but more than that it was...slower. More relaxed. Somewhat simpler than the fast-paced American life I'm used to. I like the gezellig feeling. I think I (you, we, non-Dutch, whoever) have something to learn from the gezellig attitude towards life.

And yet...I don't think you have to go all the way across the Atlantic to find people who enjoy life, either. I think of gezellig and I think of two nights ago, yes, but I also think of drinking coffee at Starbucks after church on Sundays. I think of eating at a Thai restaurant with a friend I haven't seen since summer. It's not that Americans don't know how to have a cozy, relaxing, nice time. Maybe we just don't know what to call it, or don't do it often enough.

Sorry that you had to read through all that philosophical-ness! The stoopwafels are getting to my head. Either that or I've watched too much "bobsleighing" on EuroSport. Side note on the Olympics: I have not heard a word about Sven after his latest mishap. Maybe everyone is too embarrassed to talk about it? Or they are all thinking about their collapsed government? I will try to find out.