Birthday Parties, Kermis, and Probably not Typical Dutch

Yesterday I met up with the fairy god mothers of au pairs to hang out for a while before going to a birthday party and then seeing the Kermis. The Kermis is this huge traveling fair in Holland, but more on that later. 

Shopping: was a bust. She took me to a few stores, but on Saturday, everything closes at 5. Very different then in America. All the stores closed, the cafés were closed, so there wasn't much to do. It's also been really hot here, around 90 degrees, so I was over walking around in the sun anyway. 

Birthday party: it was a group of old au pairs who now have different jobs but get together when they can. The girls were all from the Philippines with Dutch boyfriends, but everyone spoke English. The highlight of the dinner was when they asked me about how american citizenship works, and if it was really true you could become a citizen just by marrying one, and the only frame of reference I had was having watched The Proposal. Also, they made stuffed peppers, which made me miss Ryan and Kayse. 

Kermis: I wouldn't want people to judge America based on what they saw at the fireman's fair.  There was a lot of littering, a lot of rude people shoving, and I have no reason to assume it was Dutch culture over trashy culture. Not a good way to start your introduction to a new society, though. People like to say "oh that is typical Dutch" here, and I don't think it's fair to assume what I saw was so typical. 

- I tried oillyballen, which is just fried dough with raisins in it. It's their version of an elephant ear, and translates to "oily ball" which sounds awful but really isn't anything different than what we would eat at a fair. I have not done the raw herring with onions. 

- I rode a Ferris wheel and will post pictures of that later (the pictures are on my iPhone, and I'm writing this from my iPad)

- I have been disappointed with the lack of proud LGBT couples in this country, since I was expecting a lot more, but I did find "De Lolli Pop" which was a gay bar that made it seem like maybe this could be the liberal country people kept telling me it was. Also, Monday is Pink Monday, where proud lesbians parade around wearing all pink. It does not mean breast cancer awareness here.

- The best communication malfunction to happen so far: one of the guys we were with told me that there were a lot of "hookahs" on the streets here, and I told him I could definitely smell them, because there was some weed smell going on. But what he meant was "hookers," so he looked at me like I was the weirdest person he had met. I will never live that down.