En Nederland

Dutch Word of the Day: ja - [yah] - an agreement, an affirmative word. (American for "yes!") eg: "Have you just been in Holland?" "Ja!"

If you couldn't tell, my spring break is being spent in the Netherlands (the motherland.) It's absolutely wonderful, and I've certainly had my fair share of Dutch cheese, stroopwafels, and had a few windmill sightings.

Thus far, Rebekah and I have only really seen Haarlem (not to be confused with Harlem, New York) and loved it. We stopped over in Leiden to see what there was to see, and mistakenly thought that a place called Kaas Markt (Cheese Market) would actually sell cheese. Boy, were we wrong. We also learned from a local that the "Beast Market" didn't have any beasts. We are purely stupid tourists, but gathered a laugh from that one. We found Dutch cheese, nevertheless, but I heard that Gouda, Holland is now the only outdoor cheese market these days, where they have enormous wheels of cheese out on tarps for a market. A normal Dutch market worked out well enough, but Rebekah and I haven't gathered up enough courage to eat the herring yet...we'll have to try that at some point.

Right now, we're in Ermelo, with my father's cousins Jan & Coby. They're wonderful people, and we're getting the full experience, with koffietijt all the time, and koekjes (cookies) along with it.

Tomorrow, we hope to go on a bicycle tour of Ermelo, and take a small, short ferry across a man-made lake to a fisherman town...the name of which escapes me at the moment. Tomorrow evening, I may meet up with some friends in Zwolle that are studying there for the semestre--Zwolle is just a few train stops away from Ermelo. That's the great thing about Holland--you could take a 3 hour train from North to South Holland, and that's it.

You'll be hearing from me. Holland was an excellent choice. Part of me wants to live here. Part of me thinks it's just the glass of red wine talking. Maybe the cheese, too.

Cheers...or...Prost! [prohst]