"The Test"

Once again, I missed a few weeks, and though I could go back and write about everything that happened in great detail, I won't because it would be boring to write, and boring to read. I will say that Taiana turned 18 (the poster with "eindelijk volwassen"- finally grown-up- is still on the wall) and she had a great party to celebrate. Also I spent a day in Den Haag with Milja and her dad picking up my Swedish passport, visiting the Dutch government buildings, and seeing some Dutch art. And, I'm still not running with TDR, but am getting closer every day.

Saturday was "The Test." All of the hours that I spent doing lessons out of my blue "green book" that I got when I first came here, the Dutch grammar I've worked so hard to perfect, the nights I spent listening to Dutch tapes before I fell asleep, finally paid off.

Not.

There were no hours spent doing lessons out of my blue "green book" (well, maybe one, but not much more), no hard work spent perfecting my Dutch grammar, and definitely no nights listening to Dutch tapes. What there has been is countless mistakes that made me blush bright red, a varity of imitations of my "Wisconsin" accent, Swedish words that I creatively turned Dutch, several nights of poorly dreamt Dutch, physics books in Dutch, and months of hearing almost nothing other than Dutch. And I can only hope it paid off. We knew from the beginning of the year that we would have a Dutch test halfway through the year, which is why we got the blue "green book" from AFS Netherlands to study from.
In my own defense, I really didn't need the blue "green book" to learn Dutch. Now, after five months here I can get across just about any point that I want, even if I have to repeat the sentence a couple of times. The worst case scenario is that I get frustrated after the third time and end up yelling what I wanted to say instead of using a normal tone of voice, but it always works out in the end. Nobody speaks English to me anymore except for people who have just met me, but I'm not even going to get started on that because it makes me SO MAD. Phone conversations with people I don't know are also still hard, but most of the time they work out.

About the test. All of the AFS Netherlands students, whether they were from Indonesia, Hong Kong, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, or America, had to take the test. Half of us took it last Saturday and the other half took it on Sunday. We had to go to a city called Utrecht- an hour away by train, which turned out to be an incredibly beautiful city. The test started out with a 100 minute reading test. The instructions, the text, and the multiple choice questions were all in Dutch. When I first started the reading test I panicked a little right away because the first thing I saw was a packet full of text about all sorts of complicated subjects. Once you started reading though, and trying to answer the questions, it turned out that you didn't have to know the exact meaning of most of the hard words to be able to answer the questions. The difficulty of the words did make it harder to focus on the text, but overall I think that the reading part of the test went okay. After the reading test came the real hard part.
I was expecting the listening test to be easy, because listening tests aren't hard. Though I guess that my experience with listening tests doesn't go much further than my English class here, which definitely should be easy for me. The subjects of the interviews in the listening test were so boring and complicated, I can't even remember most of them. I know that the first one was about a lady who made jewelry, that one wasn't too hard. Then, there was one about a woman who gives driving lessons to people who have to drive company cars- or something like that, I know that part didn't go very well. The last one I can remember was supposed to be a lesson in higher education about caulking (sp?). Really, where would I ever have learned the words about that in Dutch? Besides the fact that the subject of all the questions in the listening test were hard, it was hard to focus for a full 70 minutes. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it went well, but I'm really not confident about the listening test- or the reading test for that matter.

Sometime this week the results from our tests come in the mail. There's no real consequences if you don't pass the test except that you have to take another one in a few months. If your test results are in the best top three, then you get to take another harder test (yay! who wouldn't want that?) that is apparently the standard Dutch test for immigrants, or something like that. I know for sure I won't be in the top three, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I passed, because I will be extremely embarrassed if I didn't. Milja says that it's okay as long as I did my best, but she always says that and it's something we generally disagree about. So, if my best wasn't good enough to pass the test, I'm still going to be embarrassed!

And the rest of you are all keeping your fingers crossed for me too, right?

Days of the Week

Should we start by talking about my feelings? The week started out a lot bit rough, not because I was homesick or anything. Homesickness is way behind me now. I mean, the year is almost halfway over. (THE YEAR IS ALMOST HALFWAY OVER?!) My frustration with not being allowed to run, combined with proefwerkweek (I explained that already- exam week, remember?), combined with who-knows-what-else, made me go a little bit crazy during the beginning of the week. On Thursday the week started to go a little bit better, though I did have an incident with my debit card.

The incident goes something like this:

Thursday afternoon I decide I need to go to the ATM and get some money so that I can pay the lady who's going to cut my hair later in the afternoon. I ride my bike happily to the ATM on my way to the fitness. Standing in front of the ATM I start to think about my pincode. "Gosh, I think to myself, I haven't used my debit card for a while. Do I still know my pin number?" I laugh at the idea of forgetting the number I've punched in so many times, in so many different stores. Like that would ever happen! I punch in the number and choose the amount of money I want to get from the ATM. The machine takes a while and then says, "You have entered the wrong pin number. Please try again." I laugh joyfully to myself, thinking that my finger must have slipped, and punch the pin code in one more time. I look around at all of the seagulls flying in the air, and the bikers riding along the canal as I wait for the machine. It beeps. "You have punched in the wrong pin code, please try again." My smile begins to slowly turn into a frown. "Did I really have the wrong number?" I think. I stand still looking at the machine for a while and contemplating it some more. Finally I smile again. I had punched in the wrong number! What was I thinking? Singing along to my iPod I punch in the right pin number that has just come to me. I stand patiently with my hand at the slot in the machine waiting for my money to come out. It doesn't. The machine beeps again. "Your pin number was not correct. This bank card is no longer usable." Oops, apparently my epiphone of the right number wasn't so brilliant as I'd thought.

What did I do next? Well, I used all of the independence that I've gained from being on my own in a strange country to contact the person I've become very dependent on. Milja! She didn't answer her phone right away, but of course she called me back during the next two minutes. Her first suggestion of going to the bank and asking them to fix it for me didn't work, since the bank was for some reason closed. After the second time I interrupted her meeting with a client (in my defense, I didn't know she was in a meeting), she convinced me that we would figure it out, and I let her get back to work.

Friday was also a day with a lot of feelings, though I didn't majorly mess anything up. First, I had to go to the physical therapist early in the morning, and she said that I wasn't going to be allowed to run again until all the pain in my leg was gone. It's not that I'm ever in a lot of pain, it's that most of the time I have a little bit of pain and if someone (for example the physical therapist) were to press down on the spot where it hurts, then I would temporarily be a lot of pain. The fact that she said I had to wait until the pain was completely gone was scary, because until then it hadn't been going away very quickly, and I hate the thought of not being able to run when I have the opportunity to run with TDR. After going to the physical therapist, I went to school to take my Spanish test. Let me just say that my Swedish is barely making it through the process of learning Dutch and my English is also suffering a little. My Spanish is completely gone. This made the Spanish test a little bit of a struggle, and when I was done I had a horrible feeling about how I did. We still don't have the results back, so that horrible feeling hasn't been put to rest yet.

When I got home from school around 11:00 on Friday, I spent a few hours feeling sorry for myself and laying on the couch. I tried eating some chocolate to make me feel better, but that didn't work very well, and only made me feel guilty for eating junk food when I wouldn't be able to run it off. Luckily, I didn't have to spend the entire afternoon laying around, because Danique (one of the few girls I know who lives in Akersloot) and the neighbor girl, Pip who's eight, came over to help me make apple pie. They do have apple pie in the Netherlands, but it's more like apple cake. We made apple pie (though the Dutch kind is really good too). The afternoon with Danique and Pip made me feel much better for a while, which proves the fact that it's hard to feel sad if you're busy. After they left I still didn't have much time to wallow in self pity, because the kitchen was an absolute disaster area and I wanted to clean it up before Milja came home.

When Milja got home from work though, I told her everything that the physical therapist said and of course in the process of explaining it got myself all worked up again. Then Milja decided that we weren't going to sit on the couch all night, we were going to do something. She called Anita, and then we went to her flat for a few hours in the evening and planned the trip we're going to take in the February vacation. We're going to Drenton, another province of the Netherlands, and staying in a cabin there. Who would have known, Planning the vacation did actually make me feel better (the house has a sauna! and a tanning bed!).

What else happened over the week? Saturday I went out with Danique, for the first time without Taiana... I'm growing up!
Sunday we ice skated with all of the other students from AFS, which was fun, because I got to see everyone that I hadn't seen in forever, and catch up on what was going on in everyone else's lives. Also on Sunday we went out to eat, "gezellig" as usual, plus I spilled a glass of water all over the table.
Monday was Taiana's 18th birthday, plus it was on January 18th, so she was 18 on her golden birthday. I don't think they do anything with golden birthdays here though. Peter drove me to the foot doctor that morning, and he had good news. Apparently my calf muscle is short, and my foot tilts inward. The combination is pulling too much on the tendon that runs underneath my foot, and makes it hurt. See, it wasn't even that complicated. The good news is that after I get new insoles for my shoes, it should stop hurting. We got back home early in the afternoon, and then people started coming for Taiana's birthday. By the end of the evening, almost the whole family was there, plus about ten of her friends. We all ate soup and sandwiches for dinner and sat around talking. Plus, there was a cake with a picture of her on it. And on Monday I only did one thing wrong. It involved a plastic bag of bread sitting on the stove, and a burner that I turned on... but hey, everything was okay in the end!

The Fitness Center

The sun shining down on the snow is making everything sparkle like crazy. The sky is huge, and this perfect bright blue color that's usually covered by clouds, and the seagulls are flying around all light and free. The temperature is perfect for winter... that right amount of cold where your cheeks get pink, you can see your breathe, and the snow crunches a little when you walk on it, but you don't freeze to death the second you go outside.
If you go running when the weather's like this you warm up after five minutes, and you feel like you could run forever, because the air goes through your lungs so easily and it supercharges your arms and legs. When you get done your skin stays cold, but your muscles are warm, and you feel so healthy all you want to eat is fruit and vegetables. Your clothes smell like outside.

If you're biking at the fitness center when it's not too busy and the weather's like this, you can pick the bike furthest to the left and then you'll be able to see quite a bit of blue sky and a few seagulls out the window. If you're an optimistic type of person and you have to work out on the elliptical machines instead of on the bike, you'll tell yourself it's okay because you get to see much more out the window. On the other hand, sometimes the seagulls fly away, and after a while the blue sky isn't so exciting anymore.
Luckily, there are friendly people who go to the fitness center, and friendly people who work there. They have all the machines there I need for my strength training and no one ever complains when I use the bike for 70 minutes. The people trying to do a relaxed workout for physical therapy don't seem to mind that I'm panting, bright red, and sweating all over the place. So, if I have to be at a fitness center and not outside running in the crisp snow, I guess I'm at a pretty good one.

Patience is a virtue, so it's good for me to try learning it. Shin splints are not a very serious injury. With a little bit of patience I'll be back with TDR before I know it. An hour of warming up with the trainers, a hard interval practice, and then a long cool down. It will feel so good! And Sunday practices in the dunes again...

It's just that 70 minutes on the stationary bike, or 40 minutes on the elliptical feels sooooooo long.

Things That Might Happen in the Netherlands if It Snows

1) It might take you four hours to go somewhere with the train that would usually take you two hours.

2) The buses might also run "a little" late.

3) Maybe the highway will also get packed up for 30 kilometers, and it might take people until 10:00 at night to get home from work.

4) The snow might melt, get rained on, refreeze, and then get snowed on again.
If this happens:

• It could be extremely dangerous to bike to school.
• Or to walk outside your door.
• You will see lots of people fall.
• Training gets canceled because the track is pure ice, and the bike path is ice and slush.
• There will be no more road salt left in all of Holland.
• You'll see lots of people walking with their bikes.

5) The boys who usually stand in the park and smoke might abandon smoking and throw snowballs at you when you bike by.

6) Biking might be really hard because if you look straight up the snow flies into your eyes and makes you blind.

7) When you look across the fields the only thing you see is white, and you might hardly be able to tell where the sky starts and the field stops.

8) Maybe it will be just as beautiful as it is in Wisconsin when it's just snowed and the sun shines, and there's ice on the trees- just in a different way.

9) Maybe you'll want to sit inside drinking tea, eating borenkol, sitting at the dinner table for hours, and not doing your homework.

One Little Toenail is Not That Big of a Sacrifice

Something very traumatic has been happening to me over the past week. In the second toe on my right foot I have what is, according to GoAskAlice, a subungual hematoma. If the case of subungual hematoma (something which commonly occurs in athletes) is extremely serious, it could result in a lost toenail. What happened yesterday night? My toenail fell off! GoAskAlice also says that a subungual hematoma is caused if your toes are repetedly jammed or slammed against shoes or another object. I have to conclude then, that my subungual hematoma and my lost toenail (I'm not sure if they're the same thing or if subungual hematoma is what comes before it falls off) comes from the three days I spent in Soest training with Team Distance Runners. But, let me also say, that it was worth it.

On the Tuesday before New Year's (that would have been the 29th, I think), I rode with Will (one of the coaches, remember?) and another one of the athletes to Soest which is about an hour away from where we live. The whole way there Top 2000 played on the radio. Every year starting on Christmas day and until New Year's, a radio station in the Netherlands plays the top 2000 songs in Holland, starting from the bottom of the list and working their way to the top. All the way until midnight on New Year's Eve.
We had already been organized into separate houses before we got to Soest, but when we got there, there had to be a little bit of rearranging so that none of the girls would end up all alone in a house with just boys. Our house had Will, four of the boy atheletes, and another girl in it. For the entire team we had three houses.
Almost right away after we got to Soest we had to get changed and ready for the first workout of the day. We ran along the bike path to the woods, and then spent about an hour or so running there. Actually, the woods in Soest were the first woods I've seen in Holland that aren't part of the dunes, and they were really pretty. After the first workout we ate lunch, everyone took a nap, and then we all went out for the second workout of the day. Again we went all the way to the woods, did a few series of speed ups, and ran back. Then we cooked and ate dinner, though there was a little bit of battling for the shower in between the running and eating. The next day in Soest was the same routine as the day before: eat, run, sleep, eat, run, eat. It had snowed a little bit the night before, rained a little bit the afternoon before, and then frozen, so we had to be careful running the next day, and just stayed in the woods nearby. On the second day my legs were still exhausted from training twice the day before. It was nice being outside though, eating only healthy food, and spending the whole day with athletes.

Both the nights that we spent in Soest, the athletes had to give presentations about themselves. The first night we were there the group I was in- the new athletes, had to give presentations about themselves, why we decided to run with TDR, and how we see running as a part of our future. I barely managed mine in Dutch, but it was successful. The presentations that I really found interesting came on the second night. All of the athletes who had been with TDR for a year or more had to give "self-reflection" presentations. They used points that the head trainer from TDR had given as important points for an athlete to think about in a presentation at the beginning of the year. The points are authenticity, being able to learn and ask the right questions, self reflection, passion and self-motivation, performing when it's necessary, separating the more important issues from the less important issues, pro active solving of problems, courage: daring to choose, self-esteem, surrounding yourself with the right people, criticism of your environment, and resistance. Each of the athletes had to pick five of the points, and discuss how the points were relevant to themselves in addition to writing goals for the following season.
It was first of all interesting to hear their presentations about themselves, but secondly it was interesting to hear the coaches ask questions afterwards. The coaches wanted to hear things about the athletes that they found most relevant to each athlete. Watching, you could tell that the coaches asked questions that were meant to make the athletes think about themselves and how they could be better. And, you could watch the athlete really thinking about what the coaches asked.
Before TDR I'd never done anything that had to do with mentality and running, but from being a part of TDR, I can see a little bit more how incredibly important it is. All of the athletes are strong enough mentally that it helps them during the races, and in getting through the workouts. By listening to all of their presentations I could see the things that I need to do to make myself stronger mentally... an area that I've always been fairly weak in.

The third day in Soest we had a race called the Sylvester cross. I raced in the Junioren B girls, which is girls ages 15-16, but there were all sorts of different races. For the males and females who are in about their 20's, the race is much more competetive. It is also a part of the NK series, which (I think) means Dutch Championships. Those races are fun to watch, because the runners hardly even look like they're trying; the way they run is completely effortless and perfect.
For me the race went fairly well. I finished further away from the end than I usually do here, and felt strong the entire way. It was cold, something I really don't mind, and the woods were incredibly pretty. I did struggle at the end of the race where we had to run up a hill through deep sand, but that was to be expected.

We drove home from Soest with the Top 2000 playing again, and the songs were better and better since we were getting closer to 2010.

And to sum it up? Soest was definitely worth losing my toenail, even more than one if it would have come to that.

The Three Days of Christmas

Now that Christmas and New Years, plus another half a week, are already past, I figured that it's time to write a little bit about all of the things that are going on here. Hopefully there are still a few people reading this after the ages that it's been since I wrote...

Christmas Eve: This is not one of the above "Three Days of Christmas." Most people here just go to work like normal on Christmas Eve, and then in the evening a lot of families go to church (actually, I think that's basically the only time that anyone ever goes to church here). To be honest I can't actually remember all that far back to Christmas Eve, but I think that we mostly just spent the day at home, nice and relaxed. In the evening we watched Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire until we left for the church at 11:15. Milja's parents, a friend of hers, and all of us crammed into the car and drove to the church. There was a choir singing at the church, and lots of people from the town who all knew each other. The service officially started at midnight and was mostly singing with some talking in between. As hard as I tried (not all that hard), understanding the priest didn't work out very well at all. But the Christmas songs were nice, and reminded me of the Christmas Eve services at home.
When we came out of the church at 1:00, it was snowing. How perfect is that? In this country where it's hardly ever supposed to snow, it was snowing. And huge, perfect, white Christmas snowflakes too.

The next day counts as the First Day of Christmas. The plan had been all along to drive to Peter's families house nearby Eindhoven and celebrate it with them. There was a few inches of snow on the ground when we woke up, and the road was slippery, but Milja decided that she could drive anyway, so at 9:30 we left in the direction of Eindhoven. It took us a good two hours to get there, but I've been missing long rides in the car. You have to get used to it when you live in Spooner, right? Peter's sister's house is huge, and there were tons of people there. When we got there we made the usual round of saying hi to everyone. Here's how it works: whenever you go to a party, family gathering, or actually anything with lots of people, you have to walk around and say hi to everyone individually. Most of the time you also kiss three times. When I first got to the Netherlands, I felt really weird and awkward kissing people I didn't know (and people I did know), but I'm starting to get a little bit more used to it now. It at least doesn't make me blush anymore.
The afternoon there was spent talking to everyone and playing guitar with the other kids. Then in the evening came the food. First, everybody changed into nice clothes. Then we sat at the long table that was set with all different kinds of forks, and glasses, and plates. It took us four hours or so, and we ate a five course meal. The main course was the best, and it was the classic Thanksgiving dinner- only for Christmas. There was a huge, real American sized turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, chestnut sauce, green beans, and everything that we usually eat for Thanskgiving. Then there was dessert which was "cappucino cakes" and after the dessert coffee with little chocolates on the side.
We had already decided ahead of time that we were going to drive back late at night, so after dinner we decided to make it a little bit later and go out with Peter's nieces and nephews. We left the house around 10:30, riding on the back of their bikes. It took a while biking through the snow, the ice, and the darkness, and the entire time I was absolutely terrified. All the girls here do it so elegantly. They sit sideways, and then just sort of jump on to the back of the bike while it's moving. The problem with me is that I'm not elegant, and I definitely can't jump onto the back of a moving bike. Once I finally manage to get on, I have to focus extremely hard on staying on, and on not making the person actually biking have an accident.
Anyway, we made it to the street with all of the bars safely, and after we put our jackets in one of the bars, we went into a different one. Since Milja was going to pick us up at one o'clock, we weren't there very long, but it was fun with the music and the entire Christmas atmosphere. Milja picked us up, and then drove us all the way back to Akersloot while Taiana and I slept in the back seat. I tried to stay awake and ask her occasionally if she was still awake, but I didn't manage it very well. We were home at 3:00 in the morning, and all went exhausted to our beds.

The Second Day of Christmas was another relaxing day for us. But, in the Netherlands most people celebrate two days of Christmas. "Eeerste Kerst Dag" en "Tweede Kerst Dag." So, technically it was still a holiday. We spent the day getting ready for the Third Day of Christmas, which actually we just made up... it's not a Dutch tradition or anything. Milja's whole side of the family was going to come over to eat on the Third Day. Everybody was assigned to some sort of food that they had to bring, so we ended up not having to make very much food. We'd already done the grocery shopping and we couldn't bring the tables in yet since they'd take up the entire house. If I remember right I went for a run, watched TV, and generally did nothing.

The next day, the "Third Day of Christmas," was full of things to do.
The first big project was getting the tables to fit in the living room. Taiana and I had talked Milja into buying a huge Christmas tree (huge for the Netherlands, normal for America), and ever since then Milja had been worried that the table which had to seat 17 people wasn't going to fit. We kept assuring her that it would fit, and in the end it did. But, it did take up the entire living room. We carted one huge table over from the neighbors house, along with all of her chairs (I'm not sure where their family ate that day). Another table came out of the shed, and then some plastic lawn chairs came from Milja's parents. We connected all of them and spread white sheets over the top. Taiana and I were "officially" in charge of decorating the tables, something which it seems like people do pretty seriously here. Milja had bought all sorts of silver things for us to decorate the tables with. There were silver coasters on the table, silver candles, silver balls, silver tress, and silver snowflakes hanging over. The napkins were silver and white, and wrapped in silver ribbon.
At 4:00 all of Milja's family came, plus Anita and her daughter, which with all of us made seventeen. Again we had different courses, but it started with soup and then went on to the main course. We ate cold slices of pork, potatoes, cranberry sauce, applesauce, broccoli, pears, and lots of different vegetable dishes. Desert was creme brulee which was to die for. And then of course there was more dessert with the coffee.
Everyone stayed for a long time, sitting at the table and talking. I think this was about the time when I was supposed to get homesick, but it never really happened. I guess that's what good company does for you... and you can't really be homesick when you feel so welcome in the family you're with.

The Third Day of Christmas was a Monday, and I'm going to skip Monday since there weren't Four Day's of Christmas (we just cleaned). Tuesday is coming soon though! Tuesday I left for Soest with TDR, so there's a lot to say about Tuesday and the days that followed.