ROTARY monday 24th-friday 28

So my second day in europewas monday the 24th, on that day i woke up still feeling sick, didnt eat anything and just chilled at the house, and then Nienkes boyfriend Nicolaas then in the afternoon we had to go into roermond centrum ..and i had to go by bike.. which I found out i dont like to do! we went to a Kruidvart (took me so lng to be able to say that and have people actually know what im saying!) i got some stuff like shampoo and hair brush only to find out that my visa didnt work.. you can imagine my horror that the first time using my visa in europe it didnt work luckily niekne had some cash and paid for me, when we got back to the house Hanneke told me that vis a normally doesnt work in most drug stores and grocery stores. By that night i was beginning to notice so real differences in a lot of little things... of course now i can think of barely any of themm.. but then again im a lot more used to it now too. Some that i can think of are... that in between the doors here i dont know if we just dont have it in canada but.. here i am constantly tripping on the door frames or missing a drop from the floor to somewhere else, the tea like i said in my last blog, dutch people eat a lot more sweet food, example, at break fast time they have so much bread adn then on their bread they have nutella or jam or something and then chocolate flakes or choclate sprinkles and if they have cereal and to my family it would be considered a sweet cereal, well they sprinkle Sugar on that. After dinner on the monday i went with Nienke to her dance class, Nicolaas came to so I wouldnt be alone, because I wasnt dancing. I got to meet her friend Vadime and we got on well :) watching her class was really cool it made me miss my own and really made me want to join in haha but of course all the descriptions for what they were doing was in dutch and so was the counting. On tuesday we had a plan to go to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam to see art work by Van Gogh and Andy Warhol and Rembrandt, but the morning i threw up again, figuring out that I had gotten the flu (perfect timing right?) so we didnt go, and i was really dissapointed. It kind of ironic really a couple of days before leaving I had gotten the horrible thought of öh how much would it suck if i got sick while i was there?" and then look what happened, i think theres a saying "speak of the devil and the devil shall appear".  So that tuesday me nienke got to know each other a lot more, as well as watching the twilight movies *which also made me a little homesick, its so flat here no mountains any where and the tress are small and they seem kinda... Ive been trying to think of a word since i got here and all i can come up with in placed :P candas more wild i guess ahha* I ddint eat anything on the tuesday
                    On the wednesday I was sick again (not a good start to my trip) didnt eat anything as far as i remember but that night i went to Maartje's musicalk at her school, she was in her last year of elementary school and is 11, and every school for that year has a musical of the "graduating"students. Maartje's musical was called "Paniek in de Snoep Fabriek" which means Panic in the candy factory... So i watched a musical made of up eleven year olds in dutch about a candy factory... needless to say it consissted of a lot of smiling and nodding and understanding nothing.
                    On the thursday I think i finally eat something but was still feeling rather gross, in the afternoon Vadime came over and so did nicolaas and then in the a little later Vadime left and Nienke went to nicolaas's house and me and maartje watched a movie. After the movie hanneke asked if i wanted to go with her and Maartje into Roermond and i was feeling a bit better and so decided just to make up my mind that i wasnt sick and that I wouldnt let it ruin my trip and went with them. I got to see some more shops and just kinda feel the amotsphere and it is a different kind of feeling than it is at home.
                    On Friday in the morning i went with Nienke to her school to get her report card and it was like a 20 minute bike ride in the rain and my newly recovering body felt like it was an hour and i think i might have nearly died haha. I met some of her friends at the school including a girl called Imke, who also plays volleyball (though by her height id different rather play with her than against.) After we got back home (around lunch) we went to go pick up Maartje from her school as it was the "graduating"class's last day all of the girls were crying and crying (I asked nienke why, and she told me its because a lot of them wont be going to the same highshool as eachother) maartje was also crying. When we got home we tried to cheer her up and had lunch and then took her shopping for summer clothes. When we got into roermond this time we actually really got to go into the shops! and thus started my shopping in the ntherlands! First week?? sick and homesick anbd jetlagged, and at the same time starting to fall inlove with the Netherlands and learning more of the language.

ROTARY Catching up-first day

Okay so I had said that I would write when I got to Europe and then when I getting here I really did try and remember to write but the keyboard was in Dutch, the site was in Dutch and I also couldn't remember my username to log into this thing in the first place.... Also factoring in that I am lazy. So I might as well just do it now! For those of you who did not hear from when I first got here I got horribly sick on the plane. I threw up and the air hostess thought I was going to faint and had to put an "air compresser" on me... Though really I'm pretty sure it was just wet paper towel... Needless to say that when arriving in the schiphol airport where everything was written in this language that I had no idea what it said and I was sick and tired (didn't get any sleep on the plane thanks to the German woman who was sitting beside me(I was on the aisle seat)who decided she would make it impossible for me to be able to get comfortable, and I swear she had to get up to go pee like every five seconds!) it was such a relief to see a familiar face! Well I guess familiar considering I had never actually met her in person before! Herman my host father and Nienke and I all then proceeded to finding the parking but not being able to find out car. But on our little rampage around the parking lot it gave me a good long while to realize how amazing the cars are in Europe! Now I have pretty much zero interest in cars, my boyfriend Alex can tell you that, but I definitely noticed that every car was a fancy looking brand and all of them are shiny and new looking and clean and I'm pretty sure since then on my constant remarking of the niceness of the cars, my host family must think that the average cars in Canada absolutely disgusting and scratched. It was a two and half hour drive from Amsterdam (in northern holland) to my where I've been living in Roermond (which is in the very far south of holland). My first impression of holland?? Rain. And I'm afraid exhaustion! It took almost all of my effort to stay awake and talk to Nienke during the car ride. When arriving to the house my host mum Hanneke and my host sister Maartje came outside to say hello and I gave them all a hug and then we had tea. They were all very shocked to see that I have my tea with milk and sugar... I had never found that weird but here everyone has their tea just straight and sometimes with sugar, but never milk. After that they showed me my room and told me that they would leave me be and come and wake me up in the evening for we were going into Roermond for Italian food. Once they left I'm sorry to say that I just started to cry and fell asleep. When I woke up it was time to go, I changed and left and w happy to see that it had stopped raining, as we were walking through town (which is like an 8 minute drive by car and 15 minute bike ride) I started taking picture of everything, the munsterkerk, the cobblestone roads, the terraces, the shops pretty much everything I laid my eyes on. When we got the the Italian food restaurant I could tell that normally the smell would have made me drool, but unfortunately my nausea from earlier was still in affect and the thought of food simply repulsed me. So my first meal in Europe, Italy food none the less, was a miss. During dinner I found my self having to think so much more than normal. When your with other people who natively speak your language you don't really think about what your saying as much you just know that they will understand you (yes I know I'm one to talk right?? Never makin and sense and speaking fast) but that dinner I was having to think about the simplest way to say thing and to say things slowly and that they were so many things I had to explain, when I got onto the topic of my family and friends back home I'm afraid I started to tear up and excused myself to the bathroom, oh that reminds me! The stairs here! Oh wow! Those of you who always say my bedroom stairs are steep? HAH! Come to Europe and try these stairs! After dinner we walked back to the car, I took more pictures of the European cars and then we went home, when we went home I expected to just go to bed but sleep couldn't come to me, I started to cry again and felt very homesick, for my bed, and my family and my boyfriend, and of course the typical self pity one gets when one is sick. Eventually I fell sleep, and thus concluded my first day!