Monthly Report 5: December

It was a mostly quiet month, but filled with the holidays. I've already mentioned Sinterklaas a bit in my Sint Voor Elk Kind post, but that focused mainly on the role of Zwarte Pieten. Sinterklaas is a Christmas-like holiday specifically for children. Sinterklaas sails over from his home in Spain on his steamboat in late November. He returns to Spain for his birthday (December 6th). Families can celebrate Sinterklaas anytime while Sinterklaas is in The Netherlands (usually the weekend before he leaves, as you do not get off work or school for the holiday). The holiday is celebrated when kids but their shoes (filled with an apple or carrot for Sinterklaas's horse) in front of the fireplace. During the night Zwarte Piet slides down the chimney and puts the gifts in the shoe. 

Traditionally the gifts for Sinterklaas are very small. I got to celebrate the holiday with my first host family. We met up with the extended family on a Sunday morning. It really felt like Christmas (especially since there were so many gifts). We even got a visit from Sinterklaas and two Zwarte Pieten. Dutch children definitively like Zwarte Piet more than Sinterklaas. My baby host cousin would only sit on Zwarte Piets lap, not Sinterklaas's.

As soon as we finished Sinterklaas, we set up our Christmas tree

I also got to see Sinterklaas celebrated at the grade school I volunteer for. Sinterklaas and his Zwarte Pieten circled the school in a Jeep before going door to door handing out small gifts to the school children (and of course, throwing pepernoten with reckless abandon).

About a week after celebrating Sinterklaas is when I switched families. My new family seems very nice. I have to bike half an hour to school now, but it really isn't so bad. They have one 13 year old son who is still at home, a teenage daughter on exchange, and two twenty year old girls who are out of the house. They've been home a lot for Christmas time though so it's been nice getting to know them. The eldest only lives in Amsterdam so she's always close. 

We got real snow this month! It lasted maybe two days but it was a solid 6 or 8 inches. No one is sure if we will get snow again this year. Right now its averaging low 40s. I did learn in those two days though that biking in the snow is nearly impossible. Bike paths are too small for normal road plows, so they have smaller plows specifically for them. But as a country not accustomed to snow, they plows were not fast enough to clear the bike paths in time for me to go to school. There were several parts where I just had to get off my bike and walk (none of the bikes I've seen here have been mountain bikes, which makes total sense for the terrain. It was slippery too, and I saw lots of kids falling off their bikes or skidding on their bikes in those two days. I miss the snow but it really isn't practical here. 

The bridge atop a steep hill that I take to and from school each day

Me and my host brother pre-a brutal snow ball fight

This month I also babysat for some host-cousins of my first host family. They're such great kids and it was both easy and cool to hang out with them for a bit. 

I had two plans to go to Germany Christmas markets this month. The first plan got rained out, and we ended up going to a mall in Utrecht instead. It was honestly too much time inside for me, but it was still a nice day. The second trip went according to plan. I met up with Laura (my student mentor last year) and her family in Nieuw Amsterdam. We drove from there to Germany. I think we were over the border in like ten minutes, and I honestly couldn't tell the difference at first. We went to two Christmas markets in Nordhorn, one of which was in a zoo. I saw the biggest pigs of my entire life there. The other was in the city center. It was cool to see a Germany Christmas market because so many American Christmas traditions have their origins in Germany. It was also cool to see where Laura is from. I showed her around Rochester last year and she got to show me around her home town. I'm the only American that has seen her house and she is the only person in The Netherlands that has seen mine. That's pretty cool. We played pool with her friends in Emmen that night and I plan on hanging out with again. I suppose those connections are a cool thing that Rotary exchange grants you that many other programs can't. 

Hoog Catharijne Mall - Utrecht

Laura's family outside a crepe stand in Nordhorn (I got a crepe filled with Kinder chocolate, it was crazy sweet)

This month all the exchange students had regular meetings to promote the Rotary Santa Run. We've been passing out flyers, marching in parades, and manning booths constantly in the week leading up to the event. The day of the run I left very early because I was sick (I've actually been sick all month, its a real bummer. But I've been to the doctor twice and I was diagnosed with tonsillitis. A week of antibiotics and I should be good as new) but the event went well. The parade to advertise was a little sketchy because we were not officially invited. We just jumped on the end of the parade. A lot of the exchange students were uncomfortable with that but oh well, it's not like we had a choice. 

Us jumping behind a marching band with similar Santa suits as our own

Christmas in the Netherlands is much different than in the United States. For one, there are more days. You have Christmas eve, the first day of Christmas (the 25th) and the second day of Christmas (the 26th). The days have no assigned purpose, it just gives you more time to see both sides of the family while it's still officially Christmas. However, because of Sinterklaas, some families don't celebrate Christmas at all. Or celebrate it without gifts. My host family only started exchanging gifts on Christmas when the kids outgrew Sinterklaas. A common thing Dutch people do when gift giving is make Surprises. That means you hide their gift in come kind of cardboard or paper likeness of their interests. For example, if a little boy really liked trucks, you would put his gift inside a big cardboard truck. You usually also write a poem about the person, a lot of the times one that also kind of makes fun of them. We also had poems for Sinterklaas.

For our Surprises we did a secret Santa. I got my eldest host sister, how like musicals. She really really likes Moana. I got her a Hamilton CD (same song writer as Moana, and relates to my nationality) and sewed it inside a pillow that I tried to make look like Maui's hook from Moana. The poem I wrote her was short, but all in Dutch. I think that's a happy medium. He boyfriend is German and apparently for his first two years spending Christmas with her family he just wrote the poems in English. Joke's on him though, if I wrote it in English there would be no excuse for it sounding bad. It was really cool to have him over for Christmas though (we opened the gifts on Christmas eve, the next morning they drove to Germany, and then they came back for the second day of Christmas). He isn't Dutch either, so some things were new for both of us. He isn't fluent in Dutch either (though he is certainly better than me) which meant there was just a lot more English (and also Spanish) spoken in the house while he was here. He thought it was really neat when I told him that we say "gesundheit" in America too.

My host sister's Surprise for my host dad was a brutal scavenger hunt that involved puzzles, and gross/cold activities. Each task completed rewarded him with a piece of map that would lead to the gifts final location. That was fun to watch.

The day before Christmas Eve I helped my host mom wrap all the small gifts from Santa (socks, earrings, hats, etc.). It was really sweet and felt a lot like Christmas. Christmas eve we took a walk through the woods with the extended family. I was struggling a bit. There was no snow and the sky was all white, no blue at all. It didn't feel like Christmas and I was definitely missing home. Things were a lot better that night though when I got to sit down with my host for some good old-fashioned family time. We opened all the gifts that night and I got to face time my sister to put Jesus in our nativity scene. And since there wasn't any gift opening scheduled for Christmas day, I had plenty of time to face time my family and open gift with them. So overall the holidays went smoothly. New Years seems to be a much bigger deal here though than in the U.S. Maybe because of the wide availability of fireworks (grocery stores, drug stores, flower shops, hardware stores, pet stores, etc etc). I am looking forward to seeing how that goes. 

I had a couple day trips in the last week of December. I visited Haarlem with a couple other exchange students. I was excited to see the namesake of a famous New York neighborhood. I split off from the exchange students to tour The Grote Kerk/St. Bavo Kerk. I thought it was very cool. For one, the man I bought the ticket from handed me a Dutch version of the tour book, not the English version. I was too pleased to correct him. And from the book I learned that the grand organ of the Grote Kerk was once played by Mozart. A ten year-old Mozart to be precise. There was also a pendulum in the church whose tether extended all the way to the ceiling (that's a pendulum that is hundreds of years old connected to a 66ft string, restricted only by an old leather belt). I found it to be very random but so cool! Apparently they used to do scientific demonstrations with the pendulum (which weighs 14kg) and still give them during the summers today. To my understanding it was installed partially to be a symbol of the Earth. I spent about an hour in the church while my friends where getting coffee. I also lit a candle for my friend that had a sudden heart transplant a few days ago.  

Today I went on a day trip to Harderwijk with my future host family. It was very nice and we plan to hang out more soon (hopefully when I'm not still hacking from my tonsillitis c;) 

It's been interesting seeing more of Dutch culture this month. I am excited for what next month brings. I already have a couple loose plans for next week and some events next month. Of course I still have to get through New Years, but I'll let you know about that. I am seeing On Your Feet! during its international tour in Utrecht, and Lady Gaga when she performs in Amsterdam. And of course next weekend all the exchange students in the country are obligated to participate in a swim marathon. That should be fun, and it's all for a good cause.