When I first landed in the country it was 9 am, I had traveled for a day (flights went ok, other than having contracted a cold two days prior, I made it with no issues) and my host dad was there to pick me up. From there I went to the house, which is a 20 minute drive from the Amsterdam airport in a city called Haarlem. My host mom greeted me and we chatted for a bit, then I set about getting unpacked. The rest of the day and even the next was mostly uneventful, but I did make a few observations about the neighborhood, my situation, and the Dutch people in general. I am writing now on the night of my third day, relaxing in my new room.
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| Relaxing in my new room. |
So!
About my host family and new family life:
Bas (pronounced like "Boss" and is short for "Sebastian", but no one calls him that) is Dutch, he grew up here, and he met Kripa (pronounced Crip-uh) at university in the U.K.. Kripa is from South Africa, but she is of Indian ethnicity. They are both very welcoming and accomodating so far! I have my own room and bathroom and they've given me more than enough privacy and dominion over that space. This week I am sharing the bathroom with Ashton, who has been the Au Pair for the last year.
Ashton is American, she is from Minnesota but she's been living abroad for some time now. Before living in the Netherlands, she lived in Finland and then a hostel in Croatia or something like that. She's actually staying in the Netherlands and changing her visa from Au Pair to a type of expat visa. Expat is short for Ex-Patriot, which is a term (not a derogatory one) they use here to describe people that are from other countries. It's different from the term Immigrant, which describes someone who is a more permanent fixture here, like someone who might apply for citizenship or already has. For pretty much anything you wanna do, there's probably a group of expats that get together for that activity. Last night I went to a yoga class with three other expat participants and an expat instructor. It's a good thing that the class wasn't led in Dutch, because I had a hard enough time keeping up in English! It was very challenging.
Anyway! About the boys! Dhruv (Drew-v) is 10. He's an Aquarius, like me, and so I have hit it off with him pretty quickly. He's more serious, he's always reading these Donald Duck comic books which are apparently very popular here. He says things like, "I don't like to have friends over every day because I need to have my rest days." He's into Harry Potter, chess, football (soccer for us Americans), playing guitar, and loves the English. On my first day we jumped on the trampoline, he showed me his room, taught me some football maneuvers, and used his Harry Potter Sorting Hat to see if I was a good egg or a bad one. I got Huffelpuff, so I guess I'm in the clear.
Ruhan (Rue- soft "h" -ahn, sometimes it almost sounds like "Rue-ahn") is 7 years old. He is more social than his brother, very wild and loud and active. He speaks mostly in gibberish or fast Dutch, but he can speak English, like 95% of the country. He plays football as well and gets competitive with his brother. Yesterday they each had a friend over and hosted a football tournament in the back yard (or back garden, as they say here), for which the trophy was one sweet.
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| The boys and their friends, playing the football tournament. |
Both boys are clever, they go to a school with a certain curriculum structure called Montessori. It was developed by Maria Montessori in the early 1900's and is much less centered around a teacher at the front of the class leading the students through lessons and more centered around the child discovering and learning for him or herself. As far as I understand, they have stations around the classroom for math, reading, writing, science, and the likes, and the children are free to move about the room completing lessons they're interested in and can get help or support from the teacher when they need it. You can read more about Montessori on the Wikipedia page here. They have lessons in Dutch and English, so nearly all of the kids are bilingual even at five and six years old. Dhruv made this paper at school with an American Christmas carol on it (Santa Claus is Coming to Town) and he's written the entire thing in cursive. He made it when he was six, he tells me. My 15 year old sister can't even read cursive, much less write it.
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| Montessori School |
Both boys are also very impressed with my skateboard. My first day here we went around the block a couple of times, they on their bikes and me on my board, so they could see my "skills". I performed some silly skateboard yoga for them which they were delighted about. They were sure to tell me before I left for yoga last night that I should take my skateboard. They're also both... pretty wild. Dutch kids in general are pretty wild. The culture here is very relaxed. Very opposite of American culture. It spills over into their parenting. In general, Dutch parents let their kids be. It was very obvious to me yesterday when I went to pick the kids up from school. There is a huge sculpture out front where a golden metal globe sits atop a rock precipice. The whole thing is probably 15 to 20 feet tall, and a few kids were actually scaling it like little monkeys. This is not even the abnormal thing, as kids do this; nee, the weird part was, a bunch of parents were standing around and none of the children were scolded or asked to come down. A couple of them almost fell, and none of the adults looked twice. Then, the director of the school came out and even he didn't tell them to stop. Instead he said, "Wow! Do you see this? < to Ashton and I > Wow, boys! You are up high!" Or something along those lines. Again, so opposite of home, where they would probably have a fence around it and a little sign saying FOR YOUR SAFETY, PLEASE DO NOT CLIMB ON STRUCTURE.
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| America could never! |
Which brings me to my next topic: general observations.
People here generally don't care what you do, how you act, etc. They keep to themselves and don't take personal offense to your behavior unless it directly involves them. If another person acts standoffish, short, overly nice, drunk in the middle of the day... no one really says anything. They just carry on. What a concept! It feels like you have room to be. I'm sure that comes with its downsides; the other side of that coin (I can only guess) is that they also don't care how they come off to others, and can be brutally honest, ruthless, or right to the point, but for now it's quite nice. Who has use for politeness anyway?
Another funny little thing might be less Dutch and more European in general, or even worldwide in urban environments, I don't know. There aren't many stores like we would have in the US. I mean, for one, they call them "shops" here, and shops they are. There is a bakery where you get bread, an Italian specialty store where you get pasta, a sweet shop where you buy, you guessed it, sweets, florist, butcher shop, bike shop, a place for home appliances, and many more. There is a store called Hema (pronounced Hay-muh) which is like a small Target, and a big grocery store called Albert Hein which has a large selection of items, but no where near what Walmart would have. They also have shops which are like drugstores, i.e. a Walgreens, Rite-Aid, or CVS, but I forget now what any of them are called. For the most part each shop just sells whatever its specialty is.
I keep getting reminded of how wasteful and unnecessary we are in America. Not that people outright say that, but it's with little things like how their glasses or cups aren't very big. They don't take more than they need. They bring a 16 oz glass of water to the dinner table (usually without ice) and they drink it all, and that's it. I haven't seen a 32 oz cup since I got here. It's just not necessary. Even their water bottles are just regular sized. And I don't think I've seen styrofoam one time, or a plastic Walmart bag. Ashton tells me that people are getting upset with Albert Hein because they wrap a lot of veggies with plastic saran wrap, or they double wrap the prepped food that you heat up, and it's wasteful. Today, Dhruv got a sweet from the store which was a gummy pizza with various toppings. It was in a tiny cardboard pizza box, inside a loose plastic wrap, and then a tighter plastic wrap inside of that. When he got to the second layer of plastic he remarked that it was bad for the environment and wasteful for them to wrap it twice. He's 10.
I also wanted to add in a couple curious facts. Little stuff that I know some people are wondering. The toilets flush the same way, but they're not attached to the ground like our toilets in the US. They come out of the wall, and they don't have the plunger or handle on the side, you flush using two buttons above the toilet. One is smaller and uses less water and the larger is for solid waste, as you can guess, and uses more water.
They drive on the right side of the road, like we do. A lot of the streets, at least the residential ones in my area, are made out of brick instead of black top. The highways are still paved, but not so with lower traffic areas. Also, these places don't need to be repainted ever because instead of painted-on crosswalks, they just use white bricks, which I think is pretty clever.
I was also surprised tonight to see quite a few stars. Less than home, but more than Jersey!
My ass hurts from riding the bike, but I'll get accustomed to it. Dutch people cycle everywhere, rain or shine, old or young, with three small children or one. Yesterday I saw a girl who looked to be four years old cycling next to her mom, who had a baby strapped to her chest. Of course, this four-year-old didn't have training wheels on, and she also rode in the road, as is customary. Drivers are quite used to it. There are more bikes in the Netherlands than people, which makes for a very quiet experience and easy accessibility, even in a large city, and its interesting to see people that are so completely adapted to it.
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| Following Ashton everywhere on the bike. |
Anyway, dat is alles vor nu / that's all for now!
(Click here to listen to the podcast episode I released after week one.)
Cheers,
Alison
