Whew! It's been a bit busy and exhausting lately! It's been a week and a half since our Dutch wedding reception, and I haven't had a minute to spare to write about it!
The reception was quite lovely. It was in an old monastery in Boxmeer, and the weather was beautiful and (amazingly) warm enough to have it outside in the courtyard. We started with a cold/warm lunch buffet for Rene's immediate family and aunts and uncles. It was fun meeting them all again, fore I had already met them when I was here in March. But this time I was able to learn all their names and figure out who is married to whom! Some of Rene's aunts speak a bit of English, and one of his aunts speaks very good English, so we were able to talk about the wedding and how I find living in Holland. I got up the guts to try a few phrases in Dutch, to many people's amusement. What was more amusing and sympathy-inducing was my acute attack of hay fever that day. I couldn't stop sneezing, and I mean 8 or 10 sneezes in a row! By the end of the day my eyes were itchy, my nose was all red, and my throat hurt from all the irritation. But thankfully Rene's dad ran out in the middle of the reception to get me some nose spray, and by nighttime it had taken affect and I was able to sleep.
In any case, after lunch we had a cocktail reception for Rene's extended family and friends. It was really nice meeting everybody, and everyone was so nice. Of course I don't think I've ever kissed as many people as I did that day, as the Dutch way of greeting consists of three kisses (alternating cheeks), and with all those people at three kisses a piece, both coming and going, there was quite a lot of kissing going on! Everyone loved the dress that I borrowed from Emma, even though by the end of the afternoon the sun had gone down and I was wearing Rene's suit jacket so you couldn't see much of the dress anymore.
So life resumed on Monday and I can't figure out for the life of me what has been keeping me so busy all this time, but I know I've been very productive and quite exhausted. I'm finding a new balance between the added responsibility of my Dutch classes in the morning and studying in the afternoon/evening, trying to get more and more settled into our new apartment, and doing the normal everyday chores of cleaning, cooking, laundry, grocery shopping, dish washing, etc.
We got more furniture last Thursday! It's the last of the big stuff that we need! We finally have storage space in the kitchen with a new cupboard and a new set of drawers (a dresser that looks ok in the kitchen too). We also FINALLY have a place to put our clothes now that we have two dressers and a rod on which to hang our clothes! Things are no longer all in boxes or all over the floor! It's such a good feeling now to walk into the bedroom and have a place to put things!
We also have a new coffee table, which was part of the reason why we wanted to get the furniture here and put together before Saturday. We had our Bible study group over for a game night Saturday night, and it forced us to make decisions about our furniture so that our apartment wouldn't still be in shambles when our company came over. It was quite stressful, however, to get everything put together and cleaned up in time, and still get everything ready for the party. We got it done, and I made my chocolate chip cookies (which didn't come out exactly as I had hoped or am used to, but they were good all the same!), and we played a rousing game of Mafia after a not-quite-so rousing game of Cranium. It was fun, but I know I have a more enjoyable time being a hostess when I am able to feel totally prepared for company.
Another reason why I was so exhausted this past weekend was because we had an 8am appointment with the immigration department on Thursday in the Hague, and I didn't really get a chance to make up the sleep that I lost from waking up at 5:45 to get there in time. The annoying thing is that I wanted to make sure we wouldn't be late, so we got there at 7:30, but the building didn't open until 8am so we had to stand outside in the bitter cold for half an hour! There were people inside, but they wouldn't let us in!!! The interview turned out ok, but it was a little iffy there for a bit when the lady processing our paperwork said that Rene's work contract wasn't long enough. The guidelines say that his contract needs to be for a year or longer, and Rene had a 14 month contract, but she said it wasn't good enough until another lady came over and said that his contract was in fact fine. So we ended up filing the application and paying the €830 application fee (cough cough). We're praying that the person who reviews the application to determine if it's acceptable will be of the same mind as the second lady, not the first! I will know if I have been approved in by January 1, at which time I will hopefully get a work permit and can start working myself.
Lisa is coming to visit me on this weekend! I'm very excited, but I realize that we've been so busy with getting settled and traveling and such that I don't really know Leiden that well, and I don't know where to take her! But Rosie has had more time to explore so I've asked her to show us around a bit. It will be nice to enjoy Leiden- it's really beautiful here and there are quite lovely museums and such to be enjoyed.
Dutch lessons are going well. Yesterday I ordered a sandwich at a deli completely in Dutch (simple questions and answers, but I didn't get flustered and I knew what the guy was asking me!) Today I wrote an email to Rene all in Dutch telling him about my plans for the day. As usual, my writing is a lot better than my talking, but I'm on a mission to talk more with Rene so I get more used to the phrases.
That's all for now! Sorry to have taken so long to write, and then dumped everything into one post!
No comments:
Post a Comment