Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piets

Happy belated Sinterklaas.
After waiting, and waiting, and waiting Sinterklaas finally came! He did already come to Akersloot one time, but that time was just to say hi (or something). He didn't actually have presents with him. Last Saturday though, he came with presents. But, first Thursday.
I went to school... not very exciting. Then I had running practice as usual at the fitness center with strength training circuits. After the strength we always run, which we did in the rain. Did I mention that it rains a lot here? I remember when I was little, like fifth grade or something when the school didn't actually make us where snowpants anymore, but my mom did. Every day we would have this huge argument about whether or not I had to wear snowpants. Finally she decided that if it was colder than 20 degrees I had to wear snowpants, but then it always ended up being a huge discussion about whether I had to wear them or not when it was 18 degrees. I'm pretty sure this went on at least two or three winters long. The point of this story is that the issue at home was snow pants. The issue here is rain pants. Rain pants are in many ways similar to snow pants: 1) they come in horrible gray and black colors 2) they make you look fat 3) they are extremely high waisted 4) you absolutely do not want to be seen in them by anyone you know. I would say that about half the days when I bike to school it's raining, or at least drizzling a little bit, and if Milja's home she always asks me if I want to wear my rain pants and I always say no. Which means that every single one of those days I end up at school in soaking wet pants. So Thursday... it was raining, and I thought of the rain pants because I actually wore them for the first time on Thursday.
After getting rained on at practice, which isn't actually bad, it's nice to run in the rain, I went out with Taiana. I know... it was Thursday night! Usually she doesn't go out on Thursday nights, but it was "Old School Break" at the bar we went to, which means that they played only old music. Also, because the next weekend was Sinterklaas, all of the bar men were dressed up as Zwarte Piets, and there was one dressed up as Sinterklaas. Luckily, it wasn't raining on our way to the bar, or on the way home, so we stayed dry.

Friday morning (after going out) I got up at six to go to Anita's school in Amsterdam again. Fridays at my school aren't that important anyway... what happened at Anita's school on Friday was definitely important. Sinterklaas is celebrated in the Netherlands on December 5th. Friday was December 4th, which meant the day that Sinterklaas came to all of the schools. You can easily compare Sinterklaas to Santa Claus. I mean the name sounds the same, they look kind of the same, and every Dutch person will happily tell you the story about how Sinterklaas was stolen by Coca Cola and is now used in America as Santa Claus. The idea is the same too... a jolly man that brings presents. But, let me tell you, it's completely different. The kids absolutely, completely, believe that Sinterklaas is real. And it's not just a handful of kids that believe, it's practically every single one. Naturally then, when they see Sinterklaas walking towards them on their school playground they are going to go absolutely insane. They did. It was like in a movie, all of the kids screamed and charged him. There was music everywhere, and the Zwarte Piets were running around throwing papernotas and candy to everyone and all over the ground. After Sinterklaas came to the playground where everyone was waiting, all of the kids had to go back inside. This was the hard part. First they got to see Sinterklaas, and now they had to go back to the classroom and wait for him to come to them. For two hours. Anita handled it well though. She turned the Sinterklaas music up really loud, spread candy and papernotas all over the tables, and let the kids just play. When Sinterklaas finally came to our class they all had to sit in a circle, and the Zwarte Piets and Sinterklaas handed out presents to all of the kids.
I'm still not completely convinced if it's morally right to make the kids in the whole country believe that Sinterklaas is real when he actually isn't. But it's definitely a lot of fun, so maybe it's worth how completely devastated they're going to be when they finally find out he's not real.
The kids all went home around noon, and Anita and I were left with a classroom that had crushed papernoten, toys, and wrappers everywhere. We ate lunch first and then started with cleaning up. I finally had the floor all nice and swept up, and then the Zwarte Piets came by. Sinterklaas was still in the school with all of his Zwarte Piets because he had to visit all of the older kids too, and on their way to the gym they saw that our classroom was clean. Of course we ended up with papernoten all over the floor again. And again, and again, and again. Finally at the end of the day everything was clean for the last time, and then we had to decorate for Christmas. All the teachers took down the Sinterklaas decorations and started hanging Christmas things in the hall. I sat in Anita's classroom in a daze of absolute exhaustion and wrapped white paper around old toilet paper rolls to hang in the hallway (remember kindergarten? You use all sorts of cool things!). The evening ended with all of the teachers drinking beer with Sinterklaas and the Zwarte Piets, which was nice too.

Saturday at 4:00 the entire family came to Oma and Opa's house (remember that Oma and Opa is Grandma and Grandpa?). There were fifteen of us all together, and only one true believer left. Joleen is nine, and at the beginning of the holiday season no one really knew if she still believed in Sinterklaas, but then decided that she did. So, everything was hush hush, and we had to be oh-so-careful not to say anything that could make her suspicious. It still wasn't quite dark at 4:00, so everyone sat together eating papernoten, spekulaars, and chocolate until it was dark. Then, when it was dark everyone all of a sudden started singing all of the Sinterklaas songs. I had heard some of them at the school on Friday, but most of them I couldn't really sing a long with (mostly I just hummed... and listened).
Are you ready for the next part?......
All of a sudden there came a knock on the door. Joleen ran to the door followed by the rest of us. After a desperate struggle to get the door open, in which Opa finally had to come help, we saw that there was no one there. "Check upstairs!" someone yelled. We all sprinted up the dangerously steep stairs, and began frantically searching all of the rooms. Finally Joleen opened the door to Opa and Oma's bedroom. She shrieked loudly and we all ran over to look. On the bed was a gigantic pile of presents, and there was candy strewn all throughout the room. The window stood wide open.
So, Sinterklaas did come to us, but we missed seeing him. Everyone helped bring the presents downstairs, and then Taiana gave them out one at a time. After two hours or so we were barely halfway done, so we all ate dinner. Then there were more presents. Around ten or so all of the presents were done, and Sinterklaas was over. The way that it worked with presents was that each person had been sent a name in the mail a month before Sinterklaas. We had to buy a present for the person whose name we got, and write a poem to go with it. I didn't write my poem alone, Oma helped me, but in the end I had one. Besides that, all of the adults bought presents for all of children. The poems were really fun... I think we'll bring that to Christmas in Spooner next year. I wish I could write them here, but they're in Dutch, so it wouldn't make sense to very many people.'

My time on the library computer is running out, and it's almost time for another training at the fitness center, so this post is done for today. I promise there's more to come though... I wish I could just dictate out of my head. I could spend hours writing every night, and still never be able to explain everything that happens here.

Sweden is coming up next Wednesday. And then no more school until after New Years. I'll be in the Netherlands in 2010!