Not Flattering, but at least I'm in Amsterdam.

Going to Amsterdam

On Saturday I had my first trip to Amsterdam (I flew into the Schipol airport, but didn't really see anything when I was there). I was meeting my friend Matt, who is studying in Spain, but first I had to take the train from Den Bosch. It takes about 15 minutes to drive to the station from home, and I was nervous about the interstate and the traffic circles in the middle. My host mom ended up taking me so she could go shopping with Marie-Louise in the same area.

I took the train without any issues (it takes about an hour to get to Amsterdam, and I didn't have to make any connections) and then Matt and I wandered around the Amsterdam Centraal Station trying to find each other. The machines don't take American cards sometimes, so we had trouble getting him a ticket to come back with me. The lockers were easy to figure out, so he didn't have to take his backpack with us. Then we were off in the rain to find the Anne Frank Huis.

I have no idea how to use busses. I know I can work out trains, and I'm not afraid of metro or tube stations, but everything is busses in Amsterdam and those still intimidate me. Realistically the Anne Frank Huis was only a 20 minute walk, but I still don't have a phone and I didn't want to get lost without a map when we only had a short time to be in the city. I decided the most fun way to travel would be to get hop on hop off tickets for the canal tours, and that way we would travel out of the rain but see more than if we were on a bus (and I didn't have to figure out how to use the bus). All that turned out to work just fine.

We went to the Anne Frank Huis and waited in line for around 2 hours to get in, which I felt inspired by. I didn't end up going to the red light district, but I know there isn't a line to get in. Having to wait because so many other people wanted to hear her story and remember what happened didn't bother me. The house itself is a fairly cheap tour, pretty short to get through, and very well organized. It's pretty emotional (although Saturday also marks the first day without any tears, so there's an exciting development!) but I think having been to a concentration camp this was more a place of hope than anything. At the end, they had an exhibit called "All her Would Haves are Our Possibilities" and there was a loop of video clips from famous people talking about the museum or the history. My favorite was John Green (duh) reading an excerpt from The Fault in Our Stars (about the book with a list of names of Jewish people taken from Holland):

“The book was turned to the page with Anne Frank's name, but what got me about it was the fact that right beneath her name there were four Aron Franks. FOUR. Four Aron Franks without museums, without historical markers, without anyone to mourn them. I silently resolved to remember and pray for the four Aron Franks as long as I was around.” 

      After that, we just walked around the city-- I was just there to get a taste of what to come back for, so I wanted to make sure Matt saw everything he wanted to. We came back to Oirschot together and he got to meet my family, then we had schwarma (which was delicious) and watched the game (which took forever, but we won!). The next morning Vanessa and I took him back to the train station, and I got a chance to look around Den Bosch-- it will really be worth it to learn to drive there, it's so nice. There are lots of cute cafes and shops and the train station will get you anywhere. This week I am driving into town to pick the girls up from school and hopefully also driving to Boxtel, but Thursday we're going back to Den Bosch to shop so I'll be paying very close attention. It's time to start going places, I think.

Horseback Riding!

This is me leading the parade. The hard part is getting your rhythm between steering/kicking with your legs, and when you trot you also have to stand up and sit down while kicking in the rhythm of the horse's pace. I only trotted a few times, and there aren't videos of it, but this is me steering the horse (Tiemen) with the girls following behind me. 

Nope. No. Everything I said was a lie. I uploaded the wrong video. It took so long though, you will just have to imagine that this is the one of me leading the parade, and instead enjoy watching how uncomfortable I am kicking the horse. Really, there should be more polite ways to ask an animal to move. 

My parents also think it is hilarious that on top of my being unable to speak Dutch to people, I also can't communicate with the animals. I am pretty sure their chocolate lab thinks I'm an asshole that just makes sounds at it when I won't let him inside. It is a pretty silly situation.

Missing Holidays

When I was in Europe last time, I ended up having Easter in Paris and going to Notre Dame cathedral for morning mass before quietly having chicken nuggets by myself for Easter dinner. This year I'll be missing every holiday except Christmas, so it seems appropriate that I hurry up and figure out how to best get it done.

The hard part about 4th of July is that where Easter in France was different, 4th of July in the Netherlands doesn't exist. There are some expats bars a ways away, but for the most part, no one even has it on the radar. Granted, this year I will get to celebrate some holidays that were never on MY radar before, so that is exciting, but to not even be here for two weeks and miss something big is slightly hard. Harder still when people remind me that there will be another 4th of July, but I will miss next year's too, so that means my next 4th of July will be 2016, when I am 24. Weirdness. Not impossible to deal with, but weird.

So how did I celebrate this year? First, I cried to my host mom, who was really helpful. I played videos of the Bully Hill Brass Band. For lunch my host mom bought me these prepackaged cheeseburgers that you heat up in the microwave. They were not good, but having someone remember and acknowledge the holiday helped a lot. Then for dinner we want to this Dutch snack bar, where I had chicken nuggets and a milkshake (I didn't realize how different it would taste, but it did, and that made me little sad again) and then came home and watched tv. Somewhere in there I also went horseback riding, which Vanessa took video of that I will post later.

I don't love Thanksgiving, so I won't miss it hopefully. That's what I'm telling myself, at least. In the meantime, just taking each week and each day as it comes.

Tina Fey Inspiration for Next Week:

“I was a little excited but mostly blorft. "Blorft" is an adjective I just made up that means 'Completely overwhelmed but proceeding as if everything is fine and reacting to the stress with the torpor of a possum.' I have been blorft every day for the past seven years.”

Pictures of my Town

I took these while I was riding my bike, so if some of them are fuzzy or you can't see what you want to, I'll take more later.

The town is called "Liempde" if you want to look it up on google maps; it takes us about 15 minutes to ride our bikes to school every morning. I didn't take pictures of the first 10 minutes, which are just farms.

I still haven't gotten comfortable enough to take more touristy pictures, so these were all sneaky. This isn't really a tourist area, and even though apparently everyone recognizes me as the new American Au Pair, I still try to keep a low profile. 

The orange is in support of The World Cup, which has also helped with trying to find things to do with new friends; everyone is going somewhere to watch the games. 

I don't think you can see any in these pictures, but people also hang bags or backpacks off of their flag poles as a sign that someone in the house graduated. It's a cute tradition. 

This is the picture outside of their school: basically everyone shows up on bicycle and waits for the kids to rush out. It's a lot to absorb the first few times (and this is not even half the amount of parents that will be there by the time the bell rings, and only one of the two sides of the building) but I'm getting more familiar with everything.  

Bad Television

In my week here, I've had a lot of interactions with Dutch television. My options include:

1) English TV with dutch subtitles-- Specifically MTV, TLC, the discovery channel, comedy central, and some of the Bravo trashy shows on a Nederlands channel. They don't dub movies or tv here except the Disney channel, so some of the stuff I would watch at home is available and still familiar. Last night I watched Titanic for the first time (I left before the end-- feeling sad enough without Leo's help).

2) Dutch Disney-- Holy wow is this bad. I'm assuming that these are the same shows that are on American television (I know I've seen H2O on netflix) but the bad acting really stands out when you can't understand what they're saying. There is also a show about a bunch of teenagers that work at a zoo, which I had trouble following; the episode I saw had a guy that seemed like he wasn't making friends because he was a farmer kid, and was lonely without his chickens, and then one night the other kids found him sleep-milking a cow. Like this boy had just sleep-walked (slept-walked?) into the barn and started milking a cow he found. I don't know how the episode was resolved, but the acting is equally as bad.

3) British TV-- There's the news and BBC, but also in this category is British TLC. I discovered "Snog Marry Avoid" the other day, and it's just a robot talking to a girl about what guys think of her and how she should change herself. Weirdness.

4) Dutch Soap Operas- Gold. I saw an episode where the girl in the wheelchair gets pushed out and left in the middle of the park, and then her friend runs dramatically to help her. Wheelchair girl just struggles around and won't let her help, and it's all very emotional. There is also a documentary that keeps getting played about dogs with cancer and the owners taking them to chemo therapy.

Anyways, there's always futbol on and plenty of channels, but I mostly watch when the family has the tv on. Haven't found a show for me yet, but I need to catch up on True Blood.