We have started going to a HOST Bible study on Wednesday nights in addition to our church activities. Ironically, all of the members at the Bible study also go to our church. However, it is not affiliated with our church because the laws here require it to be independent of any church body. There are four HOST Bible studies total in Groningen comprised of 40-50 internationals.

We typically meet at one of our houses for dinner around 6:30pm. Interestingly, internationals never arrive on time, but Nederlanders do. We have dinner, and in true Dutch style, have coffee and dessert before the study. As you can imagine, we don't often get started on the Bible study portion until 8 or 8:30. When we finally wrap up, it is 10:30. Which is quite late by N. American standards especially when you still have to bike home!

Our group consists of ten people from all parts of the world. One couple is newly married from Korea, another is from the Midwestern United States, and the other is an American girl married to a Nederlander. The singles are from Rwanda and Holland.

While language sometimes is a hindrance, we have lively discussions about the Bible, about the Character of God, and about our own convictions. I am often truely amazed at the perspective that the others give about the love of God. The husband from our Korean couple has such insight at times. And while his cute little wife can hardly communicate in English, her prayers are so genuine and sincere.

We have made friends with the couple from the Midwest, John and Suzanne. While they are both quite a bit younger than we are, we admire them because they are so grounded in their faith. John plays professional basketball for the team in Holland. While they’ve only been here in Groningen since August (last season in another city), John has already started a Bible study with the members of his team. I’m always impressed at how open he is about his faith.

Suzanne and I have become fast friends and weekly attend the ladies Bible study through the church. We also go shopping together at least once per week and she has helped me settle into being a wife here in Groningen. I don’t know what I would do without her. We are grateful for their friendship and someone to relate our experiences with.

God has blessed us in many ways here, but so far meeting these great Christian brothers and sisters is the biggest blessing of all.

My conversation with Olivia (my three year old niece) on the phone last night:

Olivia (overheard): “Nana, who are you talking to?”

Nana: “I'm talking to Auntie Mollie.”

Olivia: “Can I talk to her?”

Nana: “Of course.”

Olivia (to me): “Hi”

Me: “Hi sweetie bug, what are you doing?”

Olivia: “I’m just standing here.”

Me (in my head): “If only life were that simple.”

Last Saturday, Brad and I went to the market and purchased sweet potatoes. They were hard to find. You’d think that somewhere in the 8 or 9 produce stands, that they would have sweet potatoes. But no…anyways, we finally found them (at the potato stand, of course).

We needed sweet potatoes because we had volunteered to bring a couple of traditional American dishes to the Thanksgiving dinner put on by HOST – a Christian organization that has an outreach to internationals living in Groningen. It is weird that we are now the “internationals” especially when those leading the group are mostly N. Americans. This is partly because the official HOST language is English, and for many of the internationals from other countries, English is a second (or third, or fourth) language.

There were three of us ladies making food for what we thought would be 20 people (it turned out to be more like 30). We knew that there would be limited cooking facilities so we made the food at our respective homes and brought it to the “banquet hall”. We had to make two trips with a friend’s car and since I went with the first trip, I could get a look at the kitchen to assess our limitations. I immediately called Brad and said “bring the microwave”! Needless to say, the kitchen left a lot to be desired. Thankfully, students have lower expectations about food quality than your average church potluck, so when the food wasn’t exactly hot when we were ready to eat, it didn’t matter.

The evening was quite successful despite a few hitches. Besides the lack of a proper kitchen, the person in charge of the turkey underestimated how much we needed because we were out of turkey after about 10 people. That also meant that we were out of gravy right away too! It was a little embarrassing. To her credit, it is not that easy to find turkey here in Holland, and she had to order it sight unseen. Apparently a “medium sized” turkey in Holland is different than one in America… it looked like a chicken on steroids, maybe 6 or 7 pounds.

Since we needed more gravy, I took the turkey carcass and started getting every last piece of meat off of it to get some sort of gravy drippings. I couldn’t help but think that that was something my mother would do – and I kind of felt a bit proud of myself. Meanwhile, Brad had started frying the pieces in a pan and produced something that resembled gravy in taste if not looks. It sufficed and we were back in business. If only we could’ve produced more turkey.

The other hitch of the night was that we also ran out of dish soap after only a few dishes were done. I should explain that the first of all the kitchen was very dingy and dirty so we had to clean the sink before cleaning the dishes. Secondly, the sink had no drain plug so we were improvising there too. You can imagine that the water was draining out as fast as we were filling the sink. We used whatever we could find for soap (i.e. hand soap from the bathroom) and called it good. I have to admit that I re-washed my own serving dishes again when I got home.

I think we definitely made an impression on the other internationals who never had this kind of meal before. Those from Asian cultures are shocked when they find out that all the Dutch eat are potatoes and meat. So imagine their surprise when they found out that it is also similar with N. Americans. We tried to explain the current and historical trends about Thanksgiving, but they got confused when we mentioned that it is also the biggest shopping weekend before Christmas.

Nonetheless, it was a Happy Thanksgiving had by all!

Today Sinterklaas came to town in Holland. Sinterklaas and Santa Claus are similar fictional characters except that Sinterklaas comes to town by boat about three weeks before he actually gives out the presents (on December 5th). To read the complete story about the tradition and origins of Sinterklaas, click on this link.

Sinterklaas’ arrival is a big deal to children (and their parents) in Holland. Every major city has Sinterklaas "representative" arrive by boat, float up the canal, and dock downtown. Once he has disembarked (a term I learned from cruising), he mounts his horse and parades around the city.

We fully intended to see Sinterklaas arrive on the boat and parade through the streets of Groningen. Unfortunately, Brad and I had different ideas of when and where he was supposed to arrive and almost completely missed it. We were both pretty disappointed since we had planned our whole day around it. However, we did end up catching most of the parade which in the end made us feel somewhat better.

Anyways, the parade was different than anything I’d ever experienced! It is nothing like the big Thanksgiving day parade in America, or the rinky-dink Lopez Island 4th of July parade or even the cutsie-tootsie Lynden parades which all have floats and streamers and sometimes groups of people making political statements. We would have recorded all of this on camera, but alas, our battery was dead! The photo above was "borrowed" from the Groningen city website.

This parade was much shorter and more symbolic. First came (by carriage) what looked like the important people of the town – the mayor perhaps – dressed in official looking outfits from the last century. Then several dozen Zwarte Piets doing tricks and handing out spiced cookies (see the link for a description of Zwarte Piet).

Then there were several rustic carriages (they actually looked like old fashioned sleds – on wheels) carrying brightly wrapped presents with the names of the kids in the town written in big letters. The carriages were pulled by horses of all shapes and sizes. Those miniature horses are sure cute!

And then comes along the animals – an elephant (yes, a real life elephant in Groningen!), two camels (with huge double humps) and a small herd of sheep being herded by sheep dogs. I’m not sure what the elephant, camels or sheep symbolize, but it was interesting to say the least.

Keep in mind that the streets are very narrow here – this street in particular was one lane, so with people lined up on both sides of the road, the parade could barely squeeze through. And we were in the front row. Therefore, I could have touched that elephant if I really wanted to. I don’t know if I’ve ever been that close to an elephant (or camel) even at the zoo.

Anyways, after the animals came Sinterklaas on his horse with his bright red robe and long white beard. And lastly, and seemingly out of place, a complete marching band playing modern, peppy music. A nice touch, but it didn’t fit with the medieval theme.

Interestingly, just before the marching band came the “poop sweeper vehicle” driven by another Zwarte Piet and also carrying presents. This was an important part of the parade because it prevented the marching band from soiling their nice white shoes.

On the whole, it was a fun day. Maybe next year we won't get our wires crossed and we'll get the complete Sinterklaas experience.

My Dutch class is keeping me very busy! If you consider the number of hours of class time that I have, it is actually the equivalent of taking three courses (except that it is only for 5 weeks). Needless to say, I spend a lot of time working on the lessons outside of class.

The course that we took in Vancouver was not as in-depth and did not have any tests – in fact, it didn’t even have a text book. The only requirement was that you knew the material so you wouldn’t feel dumb when it came to class interaction.

This current course also requires me to learn the weekly material and be prepared to participate in the class discussions. However, we also have a text book, online exercises, an audio CD and new vocabulary to memorize each lesson. And of course, tests. Three of them in total.

I spent my free time on Saturday and Sunday preparing for my first test which was on Monday. It has been a very long time since I had a test from a University course. Um, that would be over 6 years! And while I’m not taking this course for credit, I do want to do well.

And after class on Monday, I spent all afternoon preparing the lesson for Wednesday. Today I also spent the afternoon preparing for Wednesday because we have two lessons to cover. My house work is definitely suffering!

And emailing and blogging are being neglected too – my mom keeps emailing me and asking if I’m okay. I keep saying “yes, I’m okay, but all I do all day is go over my Dutch lesson.”

But it is working! I can occasionally understand what people are saying to me – at the store, at the restaurant, at IKEA, on the train – and I can definitely understand what I’m reading if I know all of the vocabulary. So I think this hard work is paying off.

And to those of you who are going to speak to me in Dutch: Alsjeblieft, spreken jullie langzaam en duidelijk.

The outdoor market is something I’ve never experienced. It is like a giant farmer's market with more variety and food. In Groningen, the market is open Tuesday, Friday and Saturday. The vendors bring their own booths and line themselves up in rows in the square. The booths are lined up differently each day, so I wonder if they jockey for the best position or if it is organized so that they regularly rotate.

There are food vendors, of course, but also booths selling fresh fruits and veggies, cheese, raw and cured meats, nuts, flowers (both freshly cut and in pots), olives, spices, bread. Europe has different standards for refrigeration, so it seemed strange to see all of that meat and eggs sitting out in the open. And the smell of the meat almost turned my stomach. A pregnant woman would have to stay away from the market.

There were individual loaves of bread piled in stacks – not in bags – getting stale as the day went on. There are giant wheels of cheese being sold by the chunk. There was so much of everything that each booth seemed like it was overflowing. And there are people standing in line at every one of them waiting to make their purchase. This is completely normal for them.

The fresh fruit and veggies stands seem pretty normal, except that the vendors don’t want you to touch their wares. You have to trust that they aren’t putting rotten apples in the bottom of your bag or giving you the unripe pears. And there were at least seven or eight fruit and veggie stands – several of them right across from each other, which makes me wonder how they can compete with each other.

There were also other booths selling purses, shoes, clothing, scarves, material, wooden toys, statues, watches, carvings, cellphones. I wonder why anyone would want to buy clothing at the market. The prices might be good, but I’m not sure about the quality. And there is nowhere to try anything on. However, the fabric is cheap and the purses are a good price, so there might be some real jewels hidden in that section of the market.

On this day the experience was quite enough -- we didn’t buy anything except a delicious helping of Belgian-style fries. And of course everyone looked at us funny when we ordered ketchup instead of mayonnaise - especially after the two customers prior to us ordered double mayo!

The prices and selection of the food is certainly better than in the grocery store. So in the future, especially as our Dutch gets better, I’m sure we’ll be jostling for position at our favorite vendors!

Today was the first Saturday that Brad was free from his thesis writing. With all of the changes, it is hard to believe that we can live a “normal” life again. It is hard to remember what that might look like.

For the past five months Brad has been working nonstop -- often 12 or 16 hours per day -- and I would hardly see him except at dinner. By September, he was practically living at the lab trying to finish writing his thesis. Since I was finished working at the end of August, I got used to being a “lab widow” and spending all day home alone during that time. We would meet for dinner – usually at a restaurant – and catch up on life before he went back to work for another 5 or 6 hours.

Despite his hard work and long hours, our departure date came too quickly and he had to finish writing here. Well, as of this past week he is finally finished! Now he can concentrate fully on his new research position here in Holland and we can go back to “normal” life.

Of course, now that I’m not working, our expectations for “normal” life have changed. Now Brad is the first out of the bed in the morning, and I sleep in a bit longer. Now I cook dinner and am more familiar with the prices in the grocery store. I even know my way around the city better than he does because I’m often running errands downtown.

So today we spent our first Saturday walking around the city – Brad was enjoying the freedom from the constant pressure and I was enjoying having my husband around during the day. We went for coffee, walked around the outdoor market, and did a little shopping. I think he had such a good time, it wore him out because he’s having a nap on the couch and it is only 6pm!

I started my Dutch language course on Wednesday. I had to bike there of course, but the class started at 9am so there weren’t many people on the road at 8:30 when I left the house. In fact, when I got to the bike parking lot, there were about 4 bikes in the lot that probably holds 200 bikes. Of course, when I went back after my class, the lot was so packed full that I could barely extract my bike from the masses.

It was very windy on the ride to the class. So much so that I almost couldn’t go forward once I turned into the wind. You should see what a good gust of wind does to a biker. I was all bundled up in my rain coat pressing on (which is a good thing too because moments before I got inside, it started to downpour).

The classrooms for each day (Mon/Wed/Fri) are located in three separate locations. Two of them are in the same building, but my first class was in obscure building accessed from a small lane beside the main academic complex. Isn’t that always how it works? My first class in a strange place, and I can’t find it! I walked around for 10 minutes before accidentally stumbling into the right building and there was the classroom. It seemed like a miracle. At one point I wondered what I would do if I didn’t find it.

I was still 10 minutes early by the time I sat down, but only the fourth person to arrive in the classroom. There are 13 students total in the class, so either everyone else knew where it was, or else they were also confused. Two people actually came in quite late – at least 15 minutes after the class started. I learned later that one of those students actually knocked on the door of a stranger (and got him out of bed) thinking it was the classroom – that’s how hard it was to find.

The material that was covered on the first day was a good review of the things I learned in the course that Brad and I took last January. We felt very ignorant on the first day of that class, so it was nice to be a little more confident for this one. At the time, that course seemed so painful and slow, but I now appreciate how much I did actually learn in that course.

Thankfully this course has a text book with some English in it. And the teacher said she’ll teach in English for the first couple of lessons. The Vancouver course started out with the teacher only teaching in Dutch. We started to wonder what we had gotten ourselves into.

Sometimes we still wonder, but really it is “niet zo slecht”.