Sunday Dinners at the Aay's

Here's a little glimpse into something that has been going on the entire semester but I have just now captured with photographic evidence! On the Sunday nights that we are not recovering from an excursion or some other outing, the Aays will have our little clan of Calvin students over for dinner. I always, always appreciate the chance to 1) eat a delicious home-cooked (apartment-cooked?) meal, 2) eat in what feels like a real living room, not just the bedroom/living roomkitchen that is my own room or the kitchen/community space/cesspit that is my floor's kitchen. And the dinner company is pretty enjoyable, too :)
We have been led through a grand tour of Dutch cuisine at these dinners. We have had hutspot, pea soup, boerenkool, and even the "Dutch" favorite, Indonesian food. For dessert, we have tried mergpijpjes, negerzoenen, bokkepootjes, and dubbelvla (yum!). As you can tell, we have eaten well!

Yesterday we enjoyed soup after a wet, dreary day. Sarah dishing up a bowl:







































Yum!


























Sometimes the conversation turns to some shocking topics...



















Nah, I'm kidding. Those are just the looks you get when you pull out a camera. We are a happy bunch. Especially when dessert is brought out. Action shot of the dubbelvla!



















What a good looking bunch!




















Dinner at the Aay's is one of those great little things that happens here a lot but I don't necessarily take the time to document because it is just an "ordinary" thing. But since I have only slightly more than a month left here (yikes!), I want to get these things down in writing, because they matter as much as a trip to Rome or a crazy orange holiday. So, here's to the small things, like Sunday dinner with friends, that make ordinary days in Amsterdam brighter! And thank you, Prof. and Mrs. Aay, for feeding hungry college students many times in the past few months. We appreciate it!




















-- I told you this picture might show up on here ;) --

Welcome to Uilenstede

Today I thought I'd show you what I walk through every day on the way to/from...anywhere, really. So, close your eyes and imagine that you are about to enter a 1960's-era housing complex lying directly under a flight path to Schipol in a suburb south of Amsterdam. Ok, now open your eyes because you will need them to see the pictures.

We are walking down the sidewalk on the way back from the VU. The path on the left is for people walking, and the reddish path on the right is for bikers, both those on bicycles and on mopeds/scooters. Yeah, watch out for scooters.



















The tram stop is up there on the right, but we don't need to go there now. At the signposts, take a left.



















Good job. Now you can see the austere buildings of Uilenstede rising majestically from behind the trees. That little bridge will be taking us to the magical land where birds sing and students live.



















Before we cross the bridge, you can see the tree-lined path that runs along the non-Uilenstede side of the canal. Spring will do wonderful things to these trees.



















Now we are on the bridge over the canal. The ice finally melted in the canal last week Friday and revealed all sorts of interesting sights and smells -- like dead fish. HUGE fish that look like goldfish or koi, and that smelled like the bad end of a geyser in Yellowstone. I can only imagine how they got into a canal, how long they were stuck in the ice, and a thousand other things, but I try not to think about it. Look closely along the left bank of the canal, and you can see the dead fish, too!



















Once across the bridge, we follow this path to my area of the Uilenstede campus. It's quite a nice path, especially since they added fresh dirt along the edges last week. Then I saw a small child on a big wheels-type bicycle add that track on the left.



















Since we are on the topic of stuff found in canals, here's a computer monitor that has been in this canal for a while.



















We're getting close now to my home base. I live in the "green building" up there. A lot of the buildings in Uilenstede look exactly the same except for the colored railings on the balconies. For example, in the foreground you see the "yellow building."



















Look to your right and see some of the rest of the Uilenstede campus, like the "red building" and the "purple building" in the background.



















Oh, look! A plane! Hearing planes go overhead is a common occurrence at Uilenstede, an occurrence made more fun by trying to see what airline the plane is from. I didn't have such luck with this one.


























Right, onward to the green building. Home sweet home!


























Welcome to the green building! Thank you for sticking with me for the entire (5 minute) journey that I typically make several times a day. Coming up tomorrow: class at the VU!

Oliebollen!

I don't know about you, but before coming to Amsterdam, I had only ever heard of oliebollen and never eaten them. I knew that their name means oil or fat balls (what a name!), and that they were supposedly delicious.

I can now say from experience that, yes, delicious they are.

Last Saturday Eric, Anna, and I decided to make oliebollen. Anna's kitchen conveniently has a deep fryer, and Super deBoer conveniently has a just-add-water oliebollen mix. Actually, most of their mixes are just-add-water, which is great for poor exchange students who don't have many kitchen supplies. Anyway, here is a tale through pictures of how our oliebollen-making adventures took the better part of two-and-a-half hours.

Step One:
Make the oliebollen mix, and allow to rise for 45 minutes. Done.


















Step Two:
Realize that the fryer in the kitchen is filled with disgusting oil from who-knows-when. Spend 45 minutes or so cleaning it out and figuring out how to dispose of the oil.


















Step Three:
Realize that the liter of oil you bought is woefully inadequate at filling the fryer. Send Anna on a return trip to Super deBoer.
























Step Four:
The fryer is now filled and heated, and the oliebollen dough has now expanded incredibly after being given so much extra time to rise. Realize that this will make especially fluffy oliebollen, and that this is a good thing. Begin the frying process.




















































Step Five:
When the oliebollen look like this


















remove them from the fryer and dust with powdered sugar.


























Step Six:
Enjoy this:



































Look at that fluffy texture!

Step Seven:
Open a few windows, because you just realized that you made the entire kitchen smell like a McDonald's. Also, learn from the Dutch students sharing the kitchen that oliebollen are traditionally made only for New Year's Eve. Oops. That doesn't make them any less tasty, though.

Stoopwafels, pannekoeken, oliebollen...I'm beginning to think the Dutch got at least one thing right!

Eenentwintig jaar

I am 21! Actually, now I am 21-and-one-day, but yesterday I was just 21, and we did some pretty sweet things to celebrate.

To start, I have heard that the Indonesian food in Amsterdam is amazing, mostly due to the large number of Indonesian immigrants. We decided to go out for lunch at an Indonesian restaurant near Leidseplein, and the restaurant turned out to be not too busy, not too expensive, and very, very tasty!
Here we are:



































Since we (actually, just Anna) are smart people who come prepared, we used two coupons to get free appetizers! Here my traveling friend shows you one of the plates:



















For lunch, Deborah and I split a mini-rijsttafel, or rice-table, which Wikipedia tells me is the Dutch-ified version of a traditional Indonesian feast. LOTS of delicious food!



















It was truly one of those I-don't-know-what-this-is-but-it's-delicious types of experiences, which is what I love about trying ethnic foods. Me, the kid who thought salad was scary until 5th grade. Go figure.

The street that the restaurant was one is one I'd like to go back to again -- and again -- and again. Just look at all of these restaurants! Can you spot the Thai...and Italian...and Greek...and Indonesian...and...


















After that, we spent some glorious time walking the canals of Amsterdam. We managed to find our way to -- wait for it -- the Bible Museum. We got in for free with our museum cards, so we figured, why not?

Now, if you are only going to be in Amsterdam for a few days, I would recommend NOT going to the Bible Museum. There are other more valuable uses of your time. But for some college students who have four months to use up, it was worth a try.

Let me try describe for you the randomness that was this museum. In the top floor, we saw a scale model of the Tabernacle that a minister spent his entire life constructing. We also saw his collection of Egyptian artifacts, like a mummy. We saw souvenirs from the Holy Land, and spent quite a bit of time in the kids' area, coloring and writing our names in Hebrew. Oh, and we saw some Bibles, too.

At the end of the museum, I was in need of some sugar. We saw earlier that McDonald's is currently selling nothing less than a STROOPWAFEL MCFLURRY. Yes. Since this is not something you can get at home, we felt it justified our shameful going to a McDonald's. Sadly, the first Golden Starches we went to was out of ice cream, so no McFlurries. We went to the next closest McDonald's, thinking they would have ice cream, but same deal. Amsterdam McD's must be having a serious ice cream shortage right now. Our quest for the stroopwafel McFlurry has been postponed to another day.

Funny story: on the way from the second McD's to the tram stop, we walked through the floating flower market. Sarah wondered outloud to herself, when do you plant tulip bulbs? And a man selling bulbs in a stall said "Right now!" Ok, end of story.

Fast forward to later in the day, when I was planning on heading down to the Cafe Uilenstede to buy a drink and pretend that being 21 affected that process at all. For some reason, the girls convinced me that "going to the cafe" involved swinging by Anna's room first. Surprise! She made me a cake! Which takes some skill when you have limited materials and a toaster oven to work with. The cake was delicious, so delicious in fact that we forgot to take any pictures of it before we ate it all. You will just have to imagine a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, in the shape of a fish, with candy decorations. Mmmm! Helpful tip: melted chocolate bars make very good frosting.

We watched some Olympic coverage, ate up some cake, and then went down to Cafe Uilenstede so I could pretend to get carded and all that.
























It was a fun, fabulous day, thanks in part to some pretty cool people:
























And, of course, thanks to YOU! It was weird being away from so many people that I love on my birthday, but tools like Facebook and Skype made the world feel a lot smaller. And, if you are reading this blog right now, know that I am always grateful that you are keeping up with me and thankful that you care! Your love and support is what keeps me going through the week. I look forward to "talking" with you all soon!

Welcome to week #3

I'm back, I'm back, I'm really back!

Sorry for the long delay in posting. I have an excuse to cover a couple days, but not an entire week. Forget excuses, though, I just have a great deal of catching up to do on this blogging thing! I'm going to split things up into a couple different posts to try avoid anything of an overwhelming length. Sound good? Great.

So traveling back in time now to...Thursday. Sometimes in the course of human events, one finds it necessary to 1) eat something hearty and somewhat American, and 2) not worry about making a dinner in a portion small enough for only yourself. A few of us Calvinites decided it would be fun to have a group dinner. Everyone pitches in a few euros to cover costs, a few of us cook, we all get to enjoy a delicious meal and each other's company. It's what Michael Scott would call a win-win-win situation.

Deborah, Anna, and I decided to make that crowd-favorite, chili. The best part about chili is that you can throw almost anything in (such as Heineken) and it will always taste delicious. Here you can see a little of our party in my kitchen:






































The guys DID show up, just after I stopped taking pictures (coincidence?). And sorry once again to Peter and Ed, since we ate almost all of the bread before they came!

In case I haven't explained it before: We all have our own rooms/bathrooms, and our own fridges, but on each floor everyone shares a common kitchen, which is where this chili-fest went down. Downsides of the kitchen include no ovens (goodbye, baking), and a general sense of messiness a lot of the time. Upsides include meeting and talking to people on my floor, actually having a working kitchen (which was not true in Calvin's dorms!), and the fact that, from what I've heard, my kitchen is one of the nicer ones out there. That is, it doesn't have any...X-rated posters, like some other kitchens may or may not have.

On that light note, you've reached the end of this post!

Church & Class

Welcome to the start of another week, everyone!

This weekend was fun. Saturday was spent traveling to Delft and Den Haag. The pictures on Facebook tell that story well.

On Sunday some of our group went with Prof. Aay to the English Reformed Church. Some fun facts:

1)The church building has housed the English-speaking congregation since 1607!

2)Some English Protestants who moved to Amsterdam attended the church briefly, but then later moved to Leiden because of religious differences. You may have heard of them...they went on to sail on the Mayflower...

3)The church is in an old, somewhat hidden courtyard called the Begijnhof. A relatively unmarked door off the main street leads you to this:



The service itself was pretty long but enjoyable, and the people there were very friendly!

But, alas, it is Monday and that means time to go off to class. My class last week was packed and I didn't get a very good seat, so I thought that by showing up at 1:15 today (for a 1:30 class), I would get a good spot. I got there and only one seat was left in the FRONT ROW! I was happy to get a seat, though, since the people who came after me sat on the floor or the windowsills. I guess next week Monday I will try getting there at 1:00?!?!

I think the class is going well, even though I've only had it twice. We get a 15 minute break in the middle of the two hour class, which is nice. I spent the break today getting to know some people in my class, and we talked about some interesting things:

(I'm beginning to think I have a thing for numbered lists)

1)Guy-who-didn't-tell-me-his-name said that the housing complex that I live in, Uilenstede, means Owl City in Dutch! I knew I liked this band for a reason:
























2)One girl I met, Eva, remembered from last week that I was from Seattle. I tried to teach her where Michigan is, and how it looks like a hand. This is the point in the conversation where GWDTMHN came over and revealed that he knows about Calvin. Apparently one of his favorite profs ever has taught/teaches at Hope College, and GWDTMHN knew all about the Calvin-Hope rivalry! His words: "I have looked at pictures of Hope College, and I love that place." I told him maybe he should study abroad at Hope someday!?

3)Both Eva and GWDTMHN think it's "crazy" to have Americans in a class where they talk about American politics so much. I think it's great! I love getting a different perspective on our system, and I'm constantly impressed by how much they know about our history and current events. For example, the prof threw out a reference in his lecture to Woodrow Wilson, and no one got lost. Then during our discussion time, someone brought up the recent tea party coalition! These people are on the ball!

I could talk about a thousand more little things, but I don't want to bore you too much. As always, thanks for reading!

Mijn kamer

I realized that I haven't put up pictures of my room yet, so I just finished some general cleaning-up to get things picture-ready. As I looked around, I also realized that someone has not been getting a lot of screen time lately. He desperately wanted to get off my bookshelf, and so here to give you a brief tour is the man himself:

Obama was happy to be back in Europe again, and eager to begin forging relationships with the Dutch community. He was generally happy with the housing arrangements made for him. Sure, it's not the East Room, but it will do. Here is is in the entryway; closets are to the viewer's right, and the bathroom to the left.



























A good thing about this room is that the closets are quite spacious.





























Now for a quick spin-around look at the entire room:






































































Obama shows where the door is to the balcony, which would have a nice view if it weren't dark. Maybe another time.


















The lovely green chair in the corner:


























Here Obama displays some of the foodstuffs available at the Super deBoer, such as pindakaas, goudse kaas, roomboter, and Special Flakes.


















Obama appreciates the Super deBoer, and all other grocery stores in Amsterdam, for practicing the green habit of using only reusable bags.


















Obama hopes that the pindakaas will be eaten up very soon so that these office supplies will have a jar to be stored in.


















Yes, the calendar really does say that Tacoma is the London of the West! Obama will have to visit Tacoma to make the comparison.


















Finally, the bathroom. The shower curtain is partially drawn to fully emphasize the fact that, yes, the toilet is in the shower.


























Obama with a few more items from Super deBoer!



























So there you go! I hope you enjoyed this short trip around my room. It's really very nice, and I am finally feeling settled in after six or so days of putting stuff up, putting stuff away, etc.

Obama enjoyed the tour as well, even if it wasn't in a very exciting location. Don't worry, though, he will have plenty to look forward to this weekend ;)