First, a confession; you know how I said how honest Dutchies are? I have ranted and raved about dishonest Americans that come take advantage of systems here because they can get away with it, and then I turned into one. Christoph dropped me off at the station (my car is currently having an exhaust problem) in Boxtel, and then I realized after he drove away that the office with the real live person to buy a ticket from was closed. There are these kiosks where you buy your ticket, and I know how to use them-- but they don't take my credit cards or cash. I didn't have enough coins to get even a one way ticket. I kept walking back and forth trying to solve the problem/find coins/ask friendly people to help, but eventually I just panicked and got on the platform. Stupid, stupid American. When I got on the train, there was actually a guy checking tickets, so I just put my sunglasses on and pretended to be asleep. Thankfully, unexpectedly, this worked. It was the most horrible feeling ever and I will never do it again.
After some confusion at the Eindhoven Station, Renee found me and we drove back to her apartment with her friend Gosha and her 2 1/2 year old son. Once we got to her apartment, I also got to meet her husband and her youngest son, who will be 1 in September. It was nice to just sit and speak in English quickly and talk about yinzers and have eggs in a basket for breakfast. This is also when her husband recounted his culture shock in seeing someone eat hagelslag and exclaiming there was "a grown ass man eating a sprinkle sandwich!"
They took me to a market where they get fresh fruit and veggies, and I got to experience how a real life adult would live here. There is something to be said for seeing someone else be well-adjusted when you have not quite made it there. I also learned that if you are looking for weird American food that is generally unavailable, Asian stores are where to look. At this same Asian store I also experienced the wall of Ramen.
Then we picked up another friend (both of these women were Polish, so that was fun. We talked about perogis and I learned some things about my heritage.) and went shopping into the city center. By now I was getting tired, which is the horrible paradox I've been experiencing which makes me feel like I'm too introverted to do this; when you are homesick, you are supposed to go out and make friends, but when I go out to make friends I just get exhausted and more homesick. I'm just going to keep working at it and hope that something clicks. They also were all a little older than me and have real jobs, so I just can't financially keep up with that kind of shopping. It was fun to window shop, but I also just don't have a need for business attire while I'm here and I can't afford more than one pair of shoes a month (and that's my travel money, anyway).
I did learn about wall snacks, which are these vending machines that have hot snacks in them that are just little boxes on the wall that you put your euro in. I tried a croquette, which is kind of like a cheese stick only instead of cheese inside, it's like a gravy/pureed sausage blend. I didn't love it, but I'm a texture person (and a day later typing this, my tongue still feels weird from burning it on the stupid thing).
I came home (with a ticket, this time) and had a nice meal with the family. They had to leave to take Lola to the vet because she had a 5th puppy that wouldn't come out, so I stayed up with the kids and Oma and watched the futbol game. We got the text that the last puppy had died, and so then Oma and I had a bilingual talk with the girls about life and death. This life that I chose is strange.
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