Update: Wednesday 26 Dec

Hi!

Today I want to tell you about my Christmas.

I mean, really there isn't much to tell. But I had a lot of fun anyway so here you have it.

So I guess at midnight on Christmas eve (or I suppose then that is very early Christmas morning), it is Dutch tradition (for those who are still religious) to go to midnight mass, and then go home and have breakfast (yes, at one or two in the morning) and open gifts. I was not there for that part, though Tessa's mom thought I would be. I wasn't. It's okay. I got Tessa's house at about half past noon Christmas day, we would have sat around and watched movies but Tessa and I had planned to go to the cinema. We went and saw a movie in Dutch, I was so proud of how much I understood. I'm making progress. Then we went back to Tessa's house, and we had dinner. Just me, Tessa, her sister and her parents. Nothing fancy, it was still a good dinner though.

After dinner, we played Monopoly and ate Dutch apple pie. You know I hate Monopoly, but I was trying to be a good sport. When Tessa's sister said let's play Monopoly and Tessa said "no, no, no, no, no!" I said sure. So we played Monopoly. In Dutch, of course. It wasn't too bad, but when Tessa was the first to run out of money, I lost interest in the game and it was harder for me to pay attention to the amounts of money they were demanding from me, so I did my best to also run out of money so I could join Tessa. Tessa who was cooking appelflappen and peerflappen. They are… these little pastries… Like this: flat sheet of dough, put apples/pears in the middle, fold it in half so it is a triangle stuffed with apples/pears, press the edges with forks. Bake. They puffed up nice and pretty. The pears were an experiment. Usually they only make them with apples.

This morning, Second Christmas day, was the more extended-family Christmas day. Yes, all Dutch people celebrate two Christmas days. The 25th and the 26th. We watched movies on TV all day. Tessa told me they do that every Christmas. Her family started arriving around three in the afternoon. I had met her grandmother before, but couldn't remember if I had met any of the others. Either way, every one of them came in and gave me an enormous hug. I may have met them at Tessa's graduation party, I don't know. I was drowning that day. I had only been in the country for 2 weeks and my ears were completely untrained to Dutch.

Probably around four or five, we all got ready to sit down to dinner. The fun part was that the electricity kept blowing. On the second Christmas day, they do this thing with a special kind of grill that sits in the middle of the table, and then a bunch of raw meats that you can cook and eat yourself throughout the meal. It was really cool. The problem was that there were 10 of us, so we had one traditional grill thing and two of those kind of grills that have a grill lid that—well I'm not very good at describing any of this. Here is a link to the one grill (I managed to find the exact grill for that one) and the others were kind of like this, except probably bigger and… nicer. Anyway, all three of those were plugged in and the power kept going out so we turned off everything except for one small light and the grills and ate mostly by candlelight. It was pretty cool.

Aside from the raw meats they had made salad and fries and boiled potatoes and some other things that didn't interest me like cabbage and such. And they had bread. I always like bread. I just ate a lot of meat. You know what, I don't buy meat. If I want to eat a big meal of meats that I can cook myself on the spot, then leave me be and let me eat. So… beef, chicken, these skewers (which I first thought were chicken but when I cooked one and tried it, the texture was more like pork so basically I have no idea what those were), little sausages, and some kind of breaded meat patties that were probably like Dutch kroketten or something similar. I really have no idea. I just know that I ate way too much. And in the end, Tessa's aunt and I took care of cooking the rest of the beef that was left over so that it could go in the fridge, and when we stacked it all on the tray after it was cooked I kept sneaking pieces of that. It was all pretty good. Horribly indulgent. But good.

Then, of course, ice cream for dessert. Ice cream and pudding and lots of whipped cream because whipped cream is good.

Tessa's grandmother sat next to me at dinner and she doesn't speak any English. She kept asking me all of these questions, the first one being (roughly) can you understand much of what people are saying? She is a very nice lady.

I was not expecting gifts, because I just wanted to go for the company and the experience. But Tessa's parents brought me some really delicious chocolate from Belgium, and Tessa bought me some really smelly bath set.

All in all, it was really nice and I'm very thankful that they allowed me to join them for Christmas.

It was also really nice to realize how much I could really understand of everything they were saying over the last two days. It makes me feel kind of really proud. Now if only I wasn't too chicken to ever respond to anyone in Dutch… I have to do some studying for my Dutch exam the second week of January anyway, maybe I'll learn a little something and stop being so chicken. Also, going to the movies so often really helps me too. Every movie has Dutch subtitles. Yet another opportunity to learn. I'll get there some day.

Okay, I lied. There was a lot to tell.

Update: Saturday 15 Dec

I wish I had an oven. Really, I do. I want homemade Christmas cookies. Or fudge. Or both. And other baked things. Like potatoes. And pasta things. And… Well you probably get the point.

Yesterday, Sara needed to use up her eggs before she left for Italy for Christmas next week, so she came into the kitchen just as I finished making my dinner and she started cooking. She made these little fried dough balls covered in sugar, she said it was a recipe from her grandmother. She asked if I had anything to put in the middle of them and I told her all I have is bananas so she mashed up one of my bananas and put it in the dough… Man, those things were delicious. They made my tummy feel awful for the rest of the night, so I probably will never eat them again, but they were still pretty good. There are some left over but like I said, I’m not touching them. It was probably the whole “deep-fried" part that was the tummy problem…

One more week of classes. And then Christmas break. I can’t wait. I’m tired. I don’t get enough sleep. I go to bed early and then lay in bed trying to sleep for hours. Before I left the US I got some Tylenol PM and only this week I’ve been taking those every night because I had this horrible cold and I’d wake up in the morning with a headache and feeling exhausted still, and it was impossible to get through the day... and those pills completely got rid of that problem. But there aren’t very many of them… So I can’t keep taking them every night.

I don’t really have much to say. I just haven’t posted in 10 days and it made me feel bad. I can’t wait for Christmas, but it doesn’t really feel like Christmas anyway because I’m not willing to go spend money on Christmas decorations, and I’ll be virtually alone during Christmas break except on Christmas day, and the 4 days that I go to the UK with Jenn. Tessa invited me to spend Christmas with her family, and for that I am very thankful.

That’s about it I guess. It’s snowed twice in the last couple weeks, really wet snow that didn’t stay. I want real snow. That super fluffy stuff. Maybe we’ll get some eventually… Oh well!

Update: Wednesday 5 Dec

Seeing a movie in the Netherlands is very different. I've been going a lot lately, I should know.

Ever since Jenn and I got these Unlimited cards for the local theater chain, we've been trying to make at least one movie a week, to make the card more than worth the money we spend on it.

I think I posted here before about how in the movie theaters in the Netherlands they have assigned seating. Jenn and I can buy our movie tickets from machines at the entrance to the cinema by scanning the barcode on the card, and it pulls up a map of the theater so you can pick your seats. That's nice. We've learned we don't like sitting at the very top row... Not big fans of the front rows either. We're getting rather picky.

We bought our unlimited cards a few days before I left for the States, probably the 14th or 15th of November. So for that month we only paid 10 euros for the remainder of the month. Even with me gone for 7 days, we managed to go to five movies.

Two of them were 3D. In the Netherlands, they make you pay one or two euros for the 3D glasses. I get them free with my unlimited card, thankfully. Those 3D glasses make me disoriented. Everything gets blurry and I have to take the glasses off to keep my eyes from crossing. I can't focus on things on the screen. Unless, of course, they are holding still. Then the screen spins off to look at something else in the movie and I go cross-eyed again. I don't like it. It also makes me feel very sleepy, even when I'm not tired. It messes with my brain and I wish all the good movies didn't have to come out in 3D. The Hobbit is out on the 12th and it's in 3D. Why?! Oh well, I must go.

Also, it took me a while to realize but of course they don't have those green screens that tell the movie rating. Why would they? It's an American thing. You're just so used to seeing it though...

They also don't have previews that are attached to movies. You know how when you go to a movie when it first comes out, or go to it 5 months later in the cheap theater, or buy it as a DVD, it always has the same previews no matter what? Not the case for the Netherlands. It makes sense that it wouldn't be, half the previews they play are for Dutch movies, and even the American movies have different release dates here (it's usually earlier, yay). They change the previews depending on what movies are coming out soon. That said, usually in the US they give each movie previews for movies with genres related to the movie it is attached to. Also can see why they do that, attract the viewers to movies that are similar to their interests based on what movies they are already seeing.

And those previews for Dutch movies? I wouldn't mind going to see one. I would have no one to go with though. No one wants to see movies in Dutch. Such a sad story for me. I guess I don't have enough control of Dutch to go see a movie in Dutch anyway, but still. I want to. I always get distracted by the Dutch subtitles on English movies. I have to force myself not to watch the subtitles, because I miss important information.

P.S. Almost forgot. When my teacher said I "make my own sentences" that's just what she means. I put the sentences together myself rather than copying and memorizing something I read on the internet, or Google translate.

Update: Monday 3 Dec

I'm getting mixed signals from something my French teacher said today. I can't decide whether or not to be offended. Every Monday we have to give a sort of presentation in French, no more than two or three minutes long. I usually don't say much because somehow I always get cowed into doing the topics that no one wants, because I wait 'til everyone else takes their pick before I choose. There's a reason no one wants those topics though... They are impossible to research.

So today I talked my full two minutes and for feedback, my teacher said that it's good that I make my own sentences, that I really have the French base down well.

Wait. So does no one else make their own sentences? I find that hard to believe. So are you saying this because you are shocked that I actually know how to make my own sentences? Do you think I am really bad at French or something, just because I don't talk much? I realize that if I don't say anything, she has nothing off of which to base her opinions on how well I can speak. But... what?

Oh come on. I'm good at French. Most of my classmates hate our class, that was a well-known fact to me. Last week it came out that they hate it because they find it too difficult. Well gee, and here I was finding it too simple. Things I learned six years ago.

She did, however, say that my grammar was perfect. I'm a bit confused... I guess it doesn't matter though. Apparently we are graded simply on whether or not we show up to class. Miss more than three classes out of twelve and you fail.

Today, I bought an advent calendar for one euro, it's purple and has Tinkerbell's face on it. I don't care if it's childish, sometimes I like to be a child. And I wanted to eat all the chocolate at once but Jenn told me I couldn't. She's no fun.

This week is Sinterklaas, the Dutch holiday celebrating Santa Claus. The Santa Claus that is popular in North America originated from Sinterklaas.

To celebrate, my class is doing a sort of secret-Santa type thing, Dutch style. Everyone has to write a short (2-line-ish) poem for their person, and buy a small gift (5-euros-ish) and on Thursday during our project meeting we're going to do our little exchange.

I don't know what to write. I don't want it to be too personal, or be too impersonal. I hate things like this, I hate people reading my writing too. Well, I hate writing things that are meant for just one person, that everyone is going to see (because of course we'll have to read the poem we receive out loud to the class). I am so not looking forward to this.