Group Trip: Prague and Berlin

This past week, the entire N-Spice group was taken on a weeklong trip to Prague and Berlin. We left at 8 am on Monday morning and on a tour bus with a crazy but talented ecentric at the helm we rode all day Monday.

Not counting our arrival at 10 pm on Monday night, Tuesday was our first day in Prague. As with any major city, we needed to see the important sights, so Aloisa had hired a tour guide for us. The tour guide walked us all over the city and we saw some historical sights and the high points of the city. One of them was a huge gothic church, which was very impressive. At this point I'll insight the Cathedral Idea and not even try to describe it.

Wednesday morning we were taken to Melnik castle. I think Europeans like to use the word "castle" freely, because it didn't look like what I think of when somebody says "castle," but it was still interesting.

Wednesday evening we attended a Black Light Theatre. It was really entertaining, and since it was pantomime there wasn't a language barrier to overcome. The idea was that the show alternated between a funny story that played out between two crooks and a cop, and crazy dancing and effects that were made by bright clothing and black lights.

Thursday we went to Terezin, a Nazi concentration camp, and we went on another tour. It was just like what you see in pictures if you've seen pictures of concentration camps, so I don't need to elaborate much. Then we travelled to Berlin.

Friday was spent in Berlin. First, we went on yet another tour, but this tour was really good for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that the tour guide came onto our bus, and we took the bus all over the place, so there was far less walking - I don't mind walking but at that point I had walked quite a bit in the previous week, and was happy to not have to walk between all of the sights. The other reason is that our tour guide was incredible; he had plenty of information, none of which was overwhelmingly useless like other guides, and his enthusiasm and wit made the tour very enjoyable. After the tour we had the chance to walk around for about eight hours to do whatever we wanted to do, so with a group I went to see cool sights like the Reichstag (the German Parliment building), Checkpoint Charlie (place where Soviet and U.S. tanks had a long, tense staredown), and the wall that seperated East and West Germany. I also saw the only thing that I really wanted to see in Berlin: the Brandenburg Gate. The Brandenburg Gate is the really big gate with the chariot statue on the top. It stood in the no-man's-land between East and West Berlin during the division, although it was built far earlier and for a much different reason. I think in 1989 the big party after the reunification was held at the Gate, and it is the location of the yearly New Year's Eve party in Berlin. And I just have to include this quote about it because I laughed so hard when I heard it. My brother, who likes to take pictures of him riding on various statues, said to me the about the chariot on top of the Brandenburg Gate, "That would be the big prize."

My description of the trip certainly doesn't do justice to the trip, but I had so much fun and as an added bonus I didn't have to go to school for a whole week.

Belgium: Mmm... Waffles

Firstly, I'd like to finish my story from last time since so many people asked. The rest of the story was unfinished because it was unexciting: we said, "no, thanks," and he said, "okay," and then walked away.

Secondly, this post seems like it is a week late. That's because the N-Spice group went on a week long trip, so I couldn't post. More about that in the next post. Okay, on with my Belgium story.

On Saturday, we - we being Jen, Tymonna, Nicole, and I - set out to Antwerp, Belgium. Or Antwerpen as the locals say. We pulled out our classic travelling style again: have a few plans and wander around the city until we find things. Yep, so that's what we did; we made a few educated guesses on a general direction, and we started walking. At some point during our meandering, we came across the big cathedral that we had intended to attend. I'm not exactly sure what the real name of the cathedral is, but there is only one big one in Antwerp, and trust me, it's big. After standing in awe of this mammoth gothic structure for a few minutes, we entered and were even more awestruck. I'm writing this while in Prague and have already seen another huge cathedral, but this upcoming thought started growing when I was in Antwerp.

The cathedrals that I have seen so far are amazing. They are gigantic and full of all sorts of intricate detail and incredible artwork. No picture can fully show the cathedral. Writing everything about the cathedral would take years or decades and yield a book that would be quite large and heavy. Even walking around the cathedral for an hour, I feel like there's so much more I could have seen; so much more detail I could have discovered. Cathedrals are incredible buildings, and they do inspire awe, but I think that I would rather worship in a contemporary, humble, warm (both in heat and in company) church building than in one of these famous artist decorated halls.

Saturday evening as we were meandering around the center we passed a man clad in red and white checkers calling for us to eat in his restaurant. We felt hungry and were actually looking for a place to eat anyway, so we took the neo-italian's offer and entered the restaurant. While we were consuming our large yet cheap pizzas, two other N-Spicers, Laurie and Rachel, entered the cafe.

Since we didn't have reservations at any hostel, and the hostel we tried was full, we followed Laurie and Rachel to their hostel hoping to find a place to sleep, and indeed the "New International Youth Hotel" had a place for us to stay. The rest of the night the six of us played some cards and then went to a coffee house - not the Amsterdam type of coffee house, rather one where they really serve coffee.

Sunday morning we awoke rather early and ate some free breakfast at the "Youth Hotel." The breakfast room was packed with older folks so I had a hard time determining why "youth" was in the name. Later that morning, the four of us were on a train to Brussel.

We approached Brussel with the same plan as Antwerpen: meander around in a generally correct direction until we find what we want. Through the help of some well labeled tourist street signs, we made our way to what is called the "Grand Place," which is a large square surrounded by large, intricate, historic buildings. The place was pretty nice; I was amazed at all of the statues that stood on the buildings and all of the stone carved extras that adorned the buildings. European people of the past sure thought it was important to make their buildings look nice, and they sure succeded as well.

We set out on our quest to find the "Manneken Piss." This heralded tourist attraction is merely a small fountain on the corner of some meaningless intersection. The fountain is formed as a very small child that is peeing. I found it quite unimpressive, but in a way I'm still glad that I saw it.

The Justice Palace was our next quarry, so we followed the trail of randomly placed maps and the tourist signs until we finally hunted it down. The place is a huge structure with a huge doorway opening, and it's just really big and really intrictate. If you haven't figured it out yet, pretty much everything there is to see in Europe is either really big and really intricate, or a piece of art.

On the way back to the train station, we had to stop at another Belgian Waffle shop. We all took the time to eat a waffle in Antwerpen and the waffles definitely are as good as everybody says, so since we were leaving Belgium, we figured we had better get another one to savour the taste one last time.

A Not So Regular Wednesday

The coordinators of N-Spice have organized a fair amount of excursions for the students of the program. This makes sense, because since we're here in the Netherlands, we might as well see the important things in the Netherlands instead of just studying them in school. Many of you may have heard of a guy named Rembrandt; he was supposedly pretty good at throwing some paint onto a big piece of canvas and then selling the paint-canvas combination. Since he was so good at that, we decided to see a little of what he did, first by going to his house and then by going to the Rijksmuseum (where we could also see some paint-canvas combinations by other brush-wielders, as well as big hunks of stone that people altered with small pieces of iron, and other things that our teacher told us fell under the category of some Dutch word that I think is spelled "art"). But before that, we were also scheduled to visit a place called the "Scarlet Cord." It's not actually called that; there's a Dutch name for it, but that's what the name translated into English is; but anyway more on that place later. All of these sights were really amazing, especially the World-Renouned Rijksmuseum, but my blog entry today is not about any of those places. Rather, my blog entry is about the things that happened among these events that really made the day exciting.

1. Bryan got lost... again.

In Zwolle, Dustin and I boarded the train to Amsterdam Centraal. Since the train was already quite full, our walk down the aisles didn't yield any seats that were together, so we walked through the next train car. Here, we found some pretty descent seats and settled in for the one-and-a-half hour ride. About thirty minutes into the trip, right around Amesfoort, we noticed that our train had split apart; one half was headed for Amsterdam Centraal, our half for Utrecht Centraal. See, we had been told that sometimes you need to be on the correct part of the train because only part of the train will go where you want to go, but I had long forgotten this important fact, and apparently it had slipped Dustin's mind as well. So we were on a train to Utrecht, and the entire rest of our class, since nobody followed us into the second car, was on their way to Amsterdam.

At that point, Dustin and I had to figure out what we were going to do. The obvious first step was to board the first train to Amsterdam upon arriving in Utrecht. As we were both becoming comfortable reading the Netherlands train schedules, this really wasn't a problem, and soon enough we were on a high-speed "Inter City Express" train (the type that are shaped like bullets), to Amsterdam. Ahh, but the problem of what to do when we arrived in Amsterdam was the real problem that needed to be solved. At the beginning of the N-Spice trip, Aloisa, the lady that seems to be in charge of pretty much everything, gave every student her business card and had us write down her cell-phone and home-phone numbers on it. Thankfully, mine was still in my bag, so I dug it out and we had our plan. Glazing over this unimportant part of the story: after a bit of difficulty with the phones and a small process of trying to make change, Aloisa was answered neither her cell nor home phones, and we were left having to make up a new plan.

Neither Dustin nor I had the trip itinerary for the day's events in Amsterdam, so we had to try to remember the event order. We decided that the second sight the group was visiting was the "Scarlet Cord," a Christian organization in the heart of the Red Light District that helps girls get out of prostitution and begin a normal life. We figured that since it was the second sight, we would just wait there until the group showed up, and we'd be united with our long-lost friends. However, not quite being brave enough to walk right into the Red Light District unprepared, we decided to stop at the tourist information office across the street from the now familiar Amsterdam Centraal Station on the off chance that they might know where this "Scarlet Cord" organization was. And it's a great thing we made this decision, because as we walked into the building that is such a welcome haven to tourists, we spotted Jen and Tymona, two fellow N-Spicers who had apparently missed the train to Amsterdam alltogether. We were thankful to see them and they were thankful to see us, so it was a very joyous occasion for all involved. With uplifted spirits, we decided to head into the Red Light District.

It should be noted that in the excitement of finding two other lost classmates, we never actually asked the tourist information workers if they knew where our destination was, so we were walking into the infamous Red Light District basically blind. We walked straight in, crossing a few canals, and then took a right and walked along one canal right through the district (thankfully it was ten in the morning and there isn't much action so early). As we were walking and discussing that we should probably ask the first descent-looking stranger where our target building was located, something caught my eye in a nearby window. There, in the lower part of the building we were passing was a gold-lettered black sign that read "A light shines in the darkness." To me, that was as close to a bible verse as I needed, so I stopped the group. Right as we stopped, a young man was unlocking the door to this exact building, so we asked him if he knew where the Scarlet Cord was located. He didn't, but he led us to a lady who did know, and she gave us a rough outline of how to get to the location, a mere two blocks away. "Right past the hostel," she told us, "on your left you'll see a sign for it." Elated, we set off to continue our journey through the streets. We found the hostel easily; the hostel was some sort of Christian organization as well, at least according to the sign that advertised it. As instructed, we walked past it and kept our eyes to the left looking for any indication of where we were supposed to be, and we kept walking until we got to a major road. We all had the impression that we were too far, and we were all quite confused, so we decided to keep with the system of asking places that looked descent and we returned to the Christian hostel. Apparently, the organization was next door to the hostel and had a sign about the size of my fist, so it is no surprise that we missed it the first time. But, we were there, and as we found out, so was the rest of the group, so we partook in much merriment and drinking of coffee.

2. Free Marijuana?

After the day's events were through and everybody was on their way home, Dustin and I were standing in front of the train station waiting for our tram to Elize's apartment. (Elize, our host sister, lives in Amsterdam during the week and comes home on the weekends. We had planned that since we were in Amsterdam that day anyway, we would hang out with her in the evening and head back to Zwolle in the morning.) We had been standing there, near the trams, for quite a while, because apparently lucky number 26 tram isn't nearly as frequent as the number 16 tram, which had passed by at least three times since we had arrived. As usual, Dustin and I were talking about something that is quite unimportant, but it is important to note that since we both know only one language, it should come as no surprise that we were speaking together in English. (You may think nothing of this fact in the United States, but I recently heard one man answer questions in four different languages.) As we were chatting, a young man, I'd say about in his mid-twenty's, approached us, saying "Excuse me, you guys speak English?" As we were right in front of the train station where all of the tourists tend to end up at some point, and since I had already done the same thing many times since arriving in the Netherlands, I assumed that this slightly scruffy looking young adult was looking for directions and I told him that we weren't from around the area. Apparently, however, he wasn't looking for directions because he was still interested in talking to us. He asked us what we were doing in Amsterdam, and told us he was Irish and was at the end of a three day vacation, and we continued with a grand casual conversation with a native English speaker, how swell. Then, he reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a small, see-through bag, showed it to us, and explained that he had visited one of Amsterdam's many coffee shops, which, despite their name, sell marijuana. As he was going back to Ireland soon, he really couldn't keep the drug with him, so he was getting rid of it. He wasn't even trying to sell it to us, he was just trying to give it away so that he could pass through customs, but he didn't want to "waste it by throwing it away."

All of this was a little bit strange for me. Firstly, I have never seen marijuana in my life. He could have had dried, crushed lettuce in the bag, and I wouldn't've had a clue. So you can probably assume that I have also never been approached about buying marijuana, or any drugs for that matter. So this was all quite new to me. Secondly, he was giving it away. From what I understand, not many people try to give away drugs. In fact, there are plenty of people who make plenty of money selling drugs for that same reason: people want it and nobody gives it away. So, yes, I found it a very strange encounter.

Apology

Wow, this post ended up being so much longer than originally, so for all of you who suffered through the more than sixteen hundred words, you have my sympathy. As Dustin said, I really did have a lot of time to write today. Thursday wonderful Thursday.

Germany: We'll get there... somehow

Traveling to Germany

Armed with our backpacks and a train itinerary that contained all of the necessary information about times, trains, stopovers, and platforms, Jennifer Alkema (from here on out known only as "Pug") and I departed the familiar Zwolle Train Station to go out into the unknown of Germany. The itinery was exact, and the trip from Zwolle to Heidelburg went as expected.

We arrived in the fine city of Heidelburg around 7 o'clock in the evening. Pug was in charge of the reservations for the youth hostel we were staying at, so she looked at the instructions that would get us to the place of our weekend residence. "Take bus line 33 to ..." I didn't catch the name of the bus stop, but from what we could see from our vantage, there was only one bus stop. The sign at the bus stop definitely did not say "33," and it didn't mention the stop where we were supposed to get off the bus either; basically, we were lost. And because we were lost I started to panic just a bit, but then I realized that 1) it would do no good, and 2) we have to get to, and will get to, our hostel, somehow. After walking around a bit, studying a map (which didn't help us much) and a tourist information board (which had information about hotels but not hostels), we stopped to contemplate our next move. I was a bit worried because I had heard that Germans don't speak English, but we decided to ask a nearby police officer if he could help us. "Excuse me, sir, do you possibly speak English?" I realized right after I said it that I probably should have dropped the "possibly" and all the other superfluous words, but he managed to comprehend my question anyway. "Uh.... a little" was his heavily accented reply. So we showed him the street address of the hostel and asked if he could tell us how to get there, and surprisingly, he pointed us in the right direction and even told us an approximate distance: about 1.5 kilometers (I think, judging that the 1600 meter run is usually considered a mile, that 1.5 kilometers is a little less than one mile. I also think, judging by how long we walked, that the officer's estimate was a bit on the short side). With the aid of a map about half way to the hostel and after walking right past the entrance, we arrived safely at our very spacious and impeccably clean living quarters.

Travelling to Hohenzollern Castle

Like a pair of crazy sight-seers, we awoke bright and early on Saturday morning to get a good start on our travel to Hohenzollern Castle. But of course, any time a hostel offers complimentary breakfast, one has to take advantage of their hospitality and gorge on the vast array of food. And it was a good thing we ate our fill of strawberry yogurt covered Corn Flakes, because that was almost all of the sustanance we would have for the day.

After filling our bellies with the almost-like-home combination of cereal and milk product, we started walking the "1.5 kilometers" to the train station. The night before we had the young and eager staff at the hostel print for us a train route to a small town called Hechingen (your guess at pronunciation is probably as good as mine), where we wanted to board a bus at 11:20 am. This itinerary had us boarding a train in Heidelburg at 8:10 headed for Mannheim, and seven minutes after arriving in Mannheim we would be on our way to Stuttgart. So far, it had been my experience that European trains are incredibly accurate with their schedules (in fact one train we had ridden earlier stopped at the platform exactly as the clock changed to the minute it was scheduled to arrive) so we thought we would be just fine. Well, for once the train schedule wasn't so accurate, and the train to Mannheim left ten minutes late. Because of this uncommon unpuntuality, we missed our connection to Stuttgart; we figured it wasn't a big deal, and we looked at the train schedule for another train to our intermediate destination.

To glaze over much of the story, we found every place we needed to go by the posted train schedules, but we had plenty of layover time so we had time to walk around Mannheim and Stuttgart (where I purchased a nice red VfB Stuttgart Flag), and we arrived in Hechingen exactly two hours after we were scheduled to arrive.

So Pug and I excitedly hopped off the train in this nearly deserted small town called Hechingen, ready to explore Hohenzollern Castle. The only problem was that, as far as we knew, the only bus to the Castle left nearly two hours ago; to add to the problem, there was nobody around. Again, we were needed to get to the castle (which was basically the only reason we came to Germany), so again we contemplated our next move as we stood in front of the lifeless train-station. We could see from our pondering place the castle through the fog atop a far-away hill, but we certainly couldn't walk there and there were no buses in the bus station that at this time resembelled a ghost town. We had contemplated a few different strategies, one including hitch-hiking which neither of us had ever attempted before, when a taxi pulled up and waited for its passenger. Figuring that a taxi might be our best bet, I walked up to the taxi, knocked on the window, and asked the large German at the wheel if he spoke English. "Uh... a little" was his response, which by this time I was beginning to suspect that all Germans are taught to say upon hearing this question. He told us that if we would call the taxi company, we could get to the castle for €11. We were so close, and finally after all of our trouble we might get to the castle! Hating phones, and especially the foreign type that have foreign language on the other end, I passed the responsibility of calling the taxi company on to Pug. Ironically, "Uh... a little" was the response she was given upon asking if there was anybody who spoke English available, but we later determined that the "taxi company" was just the one driver who answered the phone while he was driving. And, to get to the point, he eventually drove us to Hohenzollern Castle.

It seems that this account is getting quite long, so I'll gloss over the castle by saying that we went on a tour of the castle given in English, we walked around the castle for a while, and then we left the castle to board the shuttle that would bring us to the base of the hill. As we were waiting for the shuttle, a family of four approached us and explained that the father, mother, and I'd say about late-20's son wanted to walk down the hill, but their young girl wasn't up to the hike, so she was going to ride the shuttle; they wanted us to keep an eye on her. Being the nice people that we are (and assuming this wouldn't require any work unless an insiduous stalker suddenly came out from the middle of nowhere), we consented then struck up conversation with these people. We asked if they knew when the bus that would get us back to the train station would come, and for some reason they decided that they would drive us to the train station. Well, what a good deal that was!

The rest of the day was uninteresting: we got back to Heidelburg easily, walked back to the hostel, planned to go to a disco, decided we were too exhausted to go the the disco, then went to sleep.

Sunday Morning

We awoke late Sunday morning, again stuffed our bellies with food, and again suckered the overly-nice staff at the hostel into providing us with an itinerary back to Zwolle. But before we headed back, we decided to see what Heidelburg had to offer a couple of sight-seers. There were a few other English speaking youth at the hostel who explained how to use the bus system, so we decided to give it a shot, and we somehow made it to "Schloss Heidelburg," Heidelburg Castle. In my opinion, it was more interesting than Hohenzollern Castle, but oddly it reminded me a little bit of the Queen Bee Mill in Sioux Falls because the castle was built almost entirely out of a pinkish stone.

Oh, and we made it back to Zwolle (and then I made it back to Hattem) safely.

So basically we went to Germany and we saw a couple of really nice castles. But I would have to say that the excitement of travelling and getting lost in foreign cities, yet still managing to get to finally arrive at our destinations, was more exciting then the sights we actually saw.

she is my evil foe

There is a bane that haunts me
as many of you may well know
she is my mortal enemy
she is my evil foe

She plagued me when I lived at Dordt
she tortured me back at home
and she followed me across the Atlantic
which is why I write this poem

I tried to flee her dominion
and get away from her treacherous reign
so I schemed to cross the Atlantic
then I boarded my getaway plane

I thought I was free of her power
I thought I had accomplished a feat
I had escaped from the evil queen's clutches
had found haven in my safe retreat

But two days ago she found my recluse
her minions told her that I came
I was biking across the river
when she decided to play her game

Her might nearly halted my progress
I grew faint as I fought this witch
for her powers were strong with her fury
then she screamed at a deafening pitch:

"I was born at the time of creation
no mortal can put up a fight
I've brought havoc to N'Orleans and India
and am almost as old as light

"You're only hope is to love me
like the sailors of a time long past
who used me to cross the oceans
by putting thick cloth on their mast

"The Netherland dwellers embrace me
for I bring the heat and the rain
to me they construct four-fanned idols
that they use to grind their grain

"and some of these idols they've used
to recover the land from the sea
and others the Dutch have built
to generate power for free

"so as you can see you're a fool
to run to the Dutch out of fear
for though I am omni-present
my power is greatest right here

"My name is known as 'Wind'
and your foe I will always be
you might as well get used to my strength
because you never will escape from me"

You can thank a recent streak of windy weather, and the near impossibility to cross the Hattem/Zwolle bridge in this wind, for my inspiration to write this poem. (I doubt the bridge is called the Hattem/Zwolle bridge, but to me it connects Hattem and Zwolle, so to me it's the Hattem/Zwolle bridge.)

Netherlandic Day Tour

After hearing our host parents rave about the Netherlandic sights - you have to love nationalism - we convinced them to show us a few of these sights. So today, Dustin and I headed out with Freddy and Gerda, our host parents, to witness the Netherlands in all of its glory.

First we went to this small town, the name of which I frankly don't remember. It's one of a few towns in the Netherlands that has canals between houses; a similar town is nicknamed "Little Venice." The town was pretty cool, but there's not much to say about it. Basically we walked on a path by the canal and saw the houses on the canal.

Then we went to some place called Old Emmesfort. Once there was a little 600 citizen harbor town located on a little island in the middle of the sea. At some point during this fine town's history, the Dutch people decided they wanted to drain the sea to create farmland, so they did their thing involving dikes and windmills and voila, land appeared. Now, the island is just a raised piece of land surrounded by farmland, and let me tell you, that makes the harbor pretty useless. So now there a hill with some places to tie boats, some ice-breakers and a water wall, and even a small foghorn building, all basically in the middle of farmland with no water within 50 kilometers (no, I won't calculate miles for you, deal with it). It was really an incredible sight. It also reminded me of a saying that I'd like to share with you - I read it on the internet while learning about the Dutch culture - here it is: God created the world, but the Dutch created the Netherlands.

After the island in the fields, we traveled to a small fishing town called Urk. Quaint and bitterly cold. That's probably the best way to describe it. It fit my mental representation of what I think of when I read about small harbor towns in pirate books: a small town with nice buildings, not much activity, and cold wind coming off of the water. The damp, foggy weather definitely added to the image. Once again, I thought this place was really cool; the buildings were what I've come to expect from a Dutch town: small, brick, close together, and ornate. There was great prototypical, red and white, three story light-house that one would expect to see in a town like this. We eventually found a fish shop and ordered some "Kibbeling," I'm not really the biggest fan of fish and I thought this stuff was really good, so, um, it must have been really good. By the way, how can you not order fish in a fishing town? It would be like not ordering a Gyro at Nick's Gyros or not having waffles when you're in Belgium; it's just something you have to do, whether you like fish or not - you need to give it a shot if the town exists solely to produce that food.

Filled up on Kibbeling, we headed to Bataviastad. I'm pretty sure the main reason this town existed was the outlet stores, but we went on the pretense of seeing some famous boat called Batavia. We hit up the outlet stores first, and I couldn't resist the urge to splurge on some sweet Puma kicks, but that's beside the point. After the outlet store, we did end up going to the ship; we looked at it from a nearby dock. It basically looked like your common pirate ship - I think that because all boats of that time look like pirate ships to me, in what other context have I seen old ships? The story on why the ship was famous never came out, so I decided that either it was the greatest pirate ship ever (short of Blackbeard's ship, but we all know he's just a fabrication) or the Batavia single handedly defeated the world's most famous fleet, the Spanish Armada, and ruled the Atlantic waters until a German submarine attacked it while it incidentally was carrying United States citizens, causing the United States to react against the Germans, and well, we all know what happened after that. Even if neither of those stories turn out to be true, I liked the boat.

Back to Hattem we headed, that was the end of our day tour.

Dutch Influence

We've only been in The Netherlands for two weeks, and already the people here are changing us.

One thing I have noticed since I arrived in this fine country is that the pace of life in the Netherlands is far slower than my college life back at home. I would also venture to say that it is a slower pace of life than Midwest United States life in general. For example, every evening we eat dinner as a family; everybody sits down at the table, we have devotions, and we eat. After eating a large, wonderful meal at a leisurely pace, we sit at the table and chat for a while longer (this chatting usually takes place in Dutch though, so Dustin and I just sit in our chairs and listen to the changing voice inflections, and from time to time catch one or two words out of the conversation). Then, our family usually sings wonderful Dutch songs, some of which the tune I recognize. Some time later we usually come together again and drink a glass of wine or a cup of cappuccino, and just sit and chat once again (this time commonly in English).

So, Dustin and I were coming home from school today, passing the myriads of people who were taking their bike rides at a much more leisurely pace than we were, and we decided that we were going to ride to the local grocery store to purchase for ourselves some more scrumtious Swiss chocolate. Thanks to one Aaron Faber, I obtained a large bar of "Hazelnuss" chocolate before heading to the house. As I threw my coat into my bedroom after arriving at the house, Dustin asked me if I wanted a glass of cappuccino. Well, the cappuccino that we have in the house is glorious, so of course I consented. Before I knew it, we were sitting in the living room enjoying our chocolate and sipping on our cappuccinos. That's when it hit me, the dutch are getting to me. Here we were, taking a break from our already unhectic day to take a break, slowing down our own pace of life. But really, this is life; it was like being at one of my Grandparents' houses, taking a coffee break and sitting down to chat.

But then I was faced with a huge dillema, either I could remain sitting on my chair, sipping my drink and enjoying the company, or I could go do my Dutch homework which is due tomorrow. That's when the answer to my question walked in the room; it was Steven, my fourteen-year-old host brother who had just come home from his school. He's alright at Dutch I think, so I sweet-talked him into doing my Dutch homework for me. Brilliant, my homework was being finished and I was still just sitting around, relaxing. This is the life.