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!