To Market, To Market

If you’re ever at a loss for something to do during the holiday season in Europe, chances are you can find a Christmas market (Kerst Markt) to visit nearby. There are eight around The Netherlands. They are bright, fun, and crowded. We decided to visit one in Holland first.
We met up with our friends, the Bendis Family, at the Valkenburg Cave Markets.
The Valkenburg Caves are situated in southern Holland. They are the result of mining efforts of the Romans in the 11th century. They were mining for marl to build a castle, as seen on the hill behind us.
The secret passageways were also used by US troops when they came to liberate The Netherlands in WW2. I’ll write more about that when we go back to tour the caves. This visit was for the Christmas market and the tours were closed. It was quite a unique setting to have booths set up inside the caves. One could definitely get lost through the five kilometers of secret passageways. We were a little disappointed with the selection of crafts as most things were ‘Made in China’. I loved this booth, but I really doubted the purses were locally produced.
However, there was one wonderful booth where a lady was carving clay and molding it right there. She let the children try their hand at it, too. She was from Lithuania and we loved her work. It was the one thing we bought at the Valkenburg Kerst Markt. We chose a rendition of Helpoort which is, as we’ve been told, the oldest standing structure in The Netherlands. Though we didn’t get a picture, one could see it in person when he/she comes to visit. Really wonderful artisanship.
The kids loved seeing Santa walking through the caves as well as seeing his sleeping quarters and room for the elves, triple bunks included.The painted murals were intriguing and I’m excited to come back and learn more about them. We knew we wanted to visit a Christmas market in Germany also, the pride of Christmas markets. Germany boasts nearly 120 Kerst Markts! We had heard Cologne had the best. There are eight just in Cologne. We waited until my brother and his friend, Laurie, were both here then we zipped over to Cologne for the day. The part we all enjoyed best was Cologne’s cathedral. From start to finish, the building process took just over 632 years. It was amazing to walk through this beautiful cathedral.We couldn’t help but think of all the history that had taken place within these walls over the past centuries. The relics of the Magi are said to be enshrined behind the altar.The stained glass was stunning, but that seems to always be one of my favorite parts of a church or cathedral.There are also multiple sarcophagi throughout the cathedral, also dating back hundreds of years. It would have been most helpful to read German to know what was written on the descriptions. Some of our children thought it was a little creepy. I thought it was fascinating, but maybe that's the Indiana Jones-lover in me. Unfortunately the camera, as always, doesn’t quite do the setting justice. If it wasn’t so chilly (and we if didn’t have shopping to do!) I could have sat on a pew for a long time just enjoying the expansiveness of the chapel and the peacefulness of the cathedral.

We managed to make it to two of the markets. They were very cute and more crafty than the previous markets. As always, Emily rode around like the Queen of Sheba.
What better way to entice the kids to shop than to let them enjoy the rides?
The highlight of the Cologne market was adding a nativity to our collection. I love it and was so captivated by the display that (once again) I didn't even get the camera out. I am already deciding on one for next year. Perhaps next year we’ll make it to the floating Christmas market –one that’s actually on a ship.

Christmas in The Netherlands

It would be ridiculous now for me to write a blog entitled “Novemblur” or “Decemblur” so I am just going to write as though it has not been TWO WHOLE MONTHS since I’ve written. Then, hopefully, the guilt will slowly begin to wane…We enjoyed spending the holiday season here this year. I love seeing how different cultures celebrate holidays and The Netherlands was no exception.

Their celebration of Christmas begins with St. Martin’s Day on November 11. Abby celebrated this with her class. Regrettably, I don’t think I got a picture of her with her lantern. They sing a very cute song and receive either oranges or candy. The Dutch children do this in a similar fashion to Halloween. We saw a few children out on November 11th with their lanterns. They then take their “snoop” and share it with others.

The Saturday following St. Martin’s is the day Sinterklaas arrives. This is a huge day! As tradition goes, Sinterklaas was a bishop (St. Nicholas) born in Myra, Turkey several centuries ago. He supposedly saved some young girls by tossing gold coins into their bedroom one night to pay their father’s debt. Like Santa Claus, Sinterklaas lives forever. Sint (as he is often referred to) arrives by boat from Spain, where he keeps his residence (sounds nicer than the North Pole, doesn’t it?) With him he brings his zwarte Pieten (black Petes) and his white horses. The Petes are his helpers, akin to elves. One may be taken aback at first glance and the Dutch are often accused of being racist. However, once you actually listen to an explanation you realize the Petes are black because they are covered in soot from climbing down chimneys whilst helping Sinterklaas. They also may have darker skin because of their Moorish heritage. They are the jovial, jolly ones who give out candy and especially pepernoten, yummy, tiny gingersnap-like cookies. Again, I failed to get a picture of these…next year. Sinterklaas, on the other hand, is serene and revered as he is a bishop. One Dutch teacher explained to us she was quite offended upon her first Christmas visit to the U.S. and our comfort with hugging Santa and his ho-ho-hoing about and Mrs. Claus?... Sacrilege! Honestly, the more I’ve read, I think we’ve just adapted our traditions, and our St. Nick is the same as their Sinterklaas. I wonder how much of that is dependent upon the Dutch colonization of New Amsterdam, which later became New York. Did they bring this tradition with them to our part of the world?

Because of a soccer tournament, we didn’t get to attend the grandest of entrances into The Netherlands where he arrived in a steamboat followed by a huge parade. We did, however, go the next week when Sint arrived here in Wassenaar. We gathered with the rest of the town at the end of the canal and waited. The Petes arrived first and danced and gave the children candy and the pepernoten.


We loved seeing the Dutch children dressed up like Zwarte Pete and Sint.
They were selling balloons and had a live DJ.We finally caught sight of Sinterklaas coming but were not able to stay for the big parade. And to think, this was all a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving!After Sinterklaas arrives, the celebration continues until December 5 (his birthday), when Sinterklaas leaves a mass of gifts for good little children. They are left hidden somewhere in or near the house in a burlap sack. Children also are to put out their wooden shoes to be filled and perhaps an apple or a carrot for Sint’s horses. Here are ours in line from Emily's to Kennedy's with their treats for the horses.
Many Dutch children receive a gift each day until December 5. We decided we would honor a portion of the Dutch tradition. Abigail and Erin decorated shoes at school, too, where Sinterklaas happened to find them. Sint found our house and left some ever-popular gold coins and a chocolate initial for each child. I can’t remember the significance of the initials, but they, too are everywhere!

It was so much fun to learn about this wonderful and unique way the Dutch celebrate Sinterklaas. It was nice to have it separate from Christmas. They still celebrate Christmas, (if they’re Christian, of course!), but Sinterklaas and gifts are completely distinguishable from celebrating the birth of Christ. We hope each of you had a joyful holiday celebration.

Octoblur

How did this month pass so quickly? To me it seems a little like a blur. Thanks to my calendar and iPhoto, though, I know we were at least on the radar.

Our month began with a weekend of conferences from our church. We listened to eight hours, delayed of course, of talks from our church leaders in Salt Lake City, Utah, as well as music from The Mormon Tabernacle Choir. We loved being able to watch again. After moving overseas, it really resonates with me when “those participating around the world” are welcomed. I loved that our children enjoyed listening to every session. I loved that we had my grandmother’s famous cottage cheese pancakes. I hate cottage cheese, but these are sublime!!!

I love that Emily had her first taste of them and wanted more, more, MORE!
I love that Abby loved raspberries with hers (even if she had to play with them first).
I love that Erin loved hers with my first-ever batch of homemade apple butter. It’s fun to live here and get produce from places I’d never expect. Our grapes often come from Greece, our oranges from Egypt, and these raspberries were from Portugal, though the sources change all the time. It’s the fruit imported from USA that is expensive. In Saudi, we could buy a 5 oz box of blueberries for $8 or a pound of cherries for around $30! But that’s another story…

The next day on our way to school we saw some men working on a dirt strip near a field. The previous week we had seen a tractor tilling the ground. They now had several stacks of pallets. As I drove a little slower, I realized each pallet was full of bulbs. They were planting tulips! As seen in the picture, there were so many bulbs!! I think they planted three rows here. Abigail, Emily, and I stopped on the way home from preschool to catch a shot. They gave us a hearty wave and kept on planting. They had to. Look at all those bulbs! (You might have to click on the picture to enlarge it.)They were covered up with dirt the next morning appearing undisturbed as though nothing had happened. We can't wait to see the tulips come up in the spring.
This church is behind the tulip-planters. It is an old church in Wassenaar. We love hearing the bells. I can’t, though, tell what the abundant, red flowers are…maybe poppies. They supply such a vibrant border for the field.

This month Emily attempted to learn to dress herself. She still needs help selecting matching outfits and proper fitting ones, (these are really for the dolls), and finding just the right shoes, but she's showing great fashion initiative!
Kennedy and Ethan participated in the Terry Fox Run at school, a fundraiser for cancer research. The middle school students ran for ninety minutes for a total of 2,988 km and raised 9,654 Euros. Kennedy enjoyed running and walking (and talking) with her friends. Ethan was very pleased (and surprised...as were we!) by his 13 km run. We found an apple orchard here and went with a few people from the school to find some apples. It was a great little orchard, not quite like our favorite back in Ohio, but it was fun to be out picking apples. Ethan was at soccer practice so missed our fun outing. We picked Elstar apples, a sweet offspring of the Golden Delicious. After one bite, it is decisive…she likes it! We decided this year we’d make caramel apples for the kids’ teachers. Between the four of them they have twenty-eight teachers! I had fun learning how to make them and I think the kids enjoyed giving them to their teachers.
Finally it was Halloween. Halloween. Whew! What a circus it is here! Because we live in an expat community with a traditionally strong American influence, Halloween has become a much-anticipated and celebrated holiday. Here is how it works in Wassenaar. The school basically runs Halloween for the community. You register your child through the Halloween committee’s website. You also register your home if you want it to be placed on the trick-or-treat route. For every child you register to trick-or-treat, you much donate 1200 grams of candy to the Halloween committee. The committee has a theorem for redistributing the candy based on where you live (and how many potential trick-or-treaters you may have).

This year, we only registered three of our children (sorry, Kennedy and Emily!) For those three we had to donate 3600 grams of candy…that’s eight pounds!! (I think Kennedy enjoyed her girls’ movie night with her friend anyway.) One hundred houses were signed up for trick-or-treating, ours being one of them. Thursday night I looked at the map and realized we were the lone house in our neighborhood signed up. I had no idea why!! Not only that, no way would any kids venture over to our neighborhood to trick-or-treat one house. I went to the collection table Friday to pick up my candy and talked to the committee member there. Everyone here is so cheerful and helpful! They told us to take our names off the list and go out and trick-or-treat with our kids! Although, we did have to give back the garbage bag half-full of candy they were going to supplement us with. Frankly, I was shocked their system deemed us worthy of any supplement.

Saturday night came and we took our ladybug, our pioneer, and our Nutty Professor out trick-or-treating.
There were over 1100 kids registered to trick-or-treat in Wassenaar this year! That didn’t include kids from neighboring communities who decided to come join the fun, not knowing you should register (who would think?!). If you didn’t have a map that outlined the addresses of registered homes, you just followed the clumps of costumes to houses with jack-o-lanterns and porch lights. I guess the Dutch who don’t want to participate make sure to keep their porch lights out on Halloween night. Some of our friends on one street had over three hundred kids. Another friend on the reputably busiest street had over seven hundred! Can you imagine? They were supplemented with two garbage bags full of candy to pass out (in addition to what they already bought).

It was a crowded, wonderful community event with perfect weather as well. Our kids have been introduced to some new types of candies and a new style of trick-or-treating.

We have now been here for three months and it has gone quickly! If it doesn’t slow down a little, our next blog may very well be “Novemblur!”

Abbyism

Lately Abby has been, out of the blue, making remarks such as, “I love Jesus” or “I want to see Jesus” and “I wonder when Jesus is coming again. I think He’s coming soon.” They’ve been very sweet and have ensued some brief but sweet conversations.

On Sunday as we were having our weekly family council she decided to bring this up again, I guess in case He was coming this week. Here is how the conversation went:

Me: Does anyone else have anything they need to discuss?
Abby: I miss Jesus.
Me: Ohhh. Me, too. (polite snickering from other participants who had never heard these interactions)
Abby: I love Jesus. I hope He comes again soon. Do you think He’s coming soon?
Me: I hope not.
Abby: (shock) Why?
Me: (shamefully) Because I’m not ready
Abby: Well, maybe I can just call him. (more snickering)
Me: How would you do that?
Abby: On the phone.
Other participant: You can’t call Jesus on the phone!
Abby: Oh…(pause)…well, I guess I’ll just Skype with Him.

Happy Birthday, Emily!

Happy Birthday, Emily! After a year of chiding (and rightfully deserved) we have finally taken a family photo and added Emily to our family blog…on her birthday, no less.

We celebrated with our good friends, the Sterris, who gave Emily this wonderfully soft, over-sized pooch. Emily’s first cake was my first attempt at homemade fondant. I have loved decorating the kids’ birthday cakes over the past several years and look forward to experimenting more with this new medium that has been so intimidating to me. She seemed to love the little ghost and the little candy corn cake Kennedy made for her. Unfortunately we didn’t get a picture of it. (very cute!)
We think she was thinking, “Buttercream! Where have you been all my life?!” Emily definitely makes our home brighter. From the beginning, she has been our “Sunshine.” She is a delightful baby who has easily learned to roll with the crazy schedule this family leads. She is officially classified as a walker, as in up on two legs. (We’ve confused Abby with this, as my sister’s married name is Walker. “She’s not a Walker! She’s a Lister!”) She loves to walk and push her little baby stroller, sometimes with a passenger, sometimes without.
As a one year old, some of the things she loves are:

*Her baby doll and blanket (the pink one with flowers; NOT the pink one with sheep)
*Talking about everything (wa-dubba-dubba, idda bidda, yudda yudda, and a lot of other serious conversational sounds)
*Jewelry (if you’ve got a necklace on, please consider sharing)
*Bananas (Mom loves Oxy Carpet Spray)
*Singing in the car (I think my Hilary Weeks is rubbing off)
*11:30 (we get to pick up Abby from pre-school…wishes it was her school)
*Hanging out with Abby when she’s home (I can see in her eyes that she truly believes she has the best big sisters ever!)
*3:30 (pick up rest of kids…loves, loves! seeing them again)
*Riding around on her little push car and rocking in the boat
*Reading books by herself or with mom or dad or one of the kids
*Talking to the animals during our drives, especially the sheep (she has a very cute “baaa baaa” and is working on “mmmooooo”)
*Playing peek-a-boo around the corners of walls or doors

Not much bothers this little one, but she is completely offended if you try to wipe her nose or put tights on her (as opposed to socks, they are very difficult to take off!)

Ethan was looking at her the other day and I could hear a sigh when he told us, “It’s hard to believe it’s been a whole year since she was born. It went so fast!”

Tell me about it. So will the next ten…

Tale of an Odyssey

Whoever has said moving is easy has never truly moved. They’ve not lost boxes in a move. They’ve not had furniture damaged in a move. They’ve not had to learn how to cook or shop in a new place. They’ve not been frustrated by language barriers that hinder progress. They have not had to try to attain new resident status or identification. They have not had to establish themselves in a new health care system. They’ve not had to transition children between schools. Moving is exciting and thrilling, and filled with wonderfully irreplaceable opportunities. Easy - it is not.

As we sorted through boxes and unpacked we discovered that a box “fell off the truck” somewhere between here and Saudi containing and Euro pillow and King pillow that goes with our bedding ensemble. Erin has superbly rearranged the bedding to make it balanced and somewhat symmetric (she knows her mom all too well), but deep down I still know the set is incomplete and I’m frustrated.

In Jeddah as the packers were packing up our things, Dano decided it would be better to send our desktop computer and hard drive via FedEx to arrive at the offices here in The Netherlands within two weeks and not sit in a shipping container for a couple months with risk of being damaged. It never arrived and has fallen into FedEx’s black hole of untraceable boxes. Our entire family is disappointed by this (well, Emily doesn’t seem too bothered) as we occasionally recall things that were on that computer. FedEx doesn’t seem to think it’s their responsibility and is not willing to replace the computer at its full value. Where’s the accountability in that? I really want to tell them, “Then don’t replace it. Simply find it!” We have not ruled out a quick trip to Paris to scavenge their warehouse (the last known whereabouts) to find it ourselves.

Our printer, purchased in Saudi, moved to Holland, loaded with ink cartridges purchased here, won’t work. As it turns out, HP printers are regional specific regarding their ink cartridges. We have to have someone reformat our printer to accept ink cartridges anywhere outside of Saudi Arabia. As Dano says, HP is a global company. Then act like a global company and make your products consumer-friendly for your global customers.

Then there’s our beautiful Odyssey. This was not meant to be a post about a Greek war or tribute to Homer. This is about a Honda purchased February 7th in Ohio. I saw it for the first time in person when I was back in March. The car salesman had delivered it to our home and parked it in our garage. We knew we wanted to pay the extra money to ship a car rather than buy a ridiculously expensive one here that would fit our brood. Dano looked into all the requirements for importing a vehicle. One of them was you must own the vehicle for six months. This was no problem as we’d paid for it in full on February 7th and would be moving to The Netherlands the beginning of August. It would be close but we should be fine. Dano arranged for the shipping and we shipped it from Seattle in July while we were visiting my parents.

We obtained our residence status here in The Netherlands on August 12th, still six months after purchasing our van (and five days). Our van arrived the first week of September. Yea! We were ready and anxious. Then Dano received word that it did not meet the import regulations and we’d be charged the import duty taxes. The Dutch consider ownership to take place once you have registration. In the US, we consider ownership to take place once monetary transaction has been exchanged. For us, that would be February 7th. In the US, title and registration aren’t always immediate. Ours apparently were completed on February 22nd…not six months before our Dutch residency. Therein lies our problem. They’re contending we didn’t own it for six months before importing it (though it didn’t even arrive until September). The penalty: import taxes of 40% of the cost of the vehicle.

Dano and I discussed the worst-case scenario: They deny our petition and we have to pay around $16000 to get our van! That thought was really hard for me to swallow. Then another statement came informing Dano the taxes would be based on the value of the vehicle here, not what we paid. In other words, the value of a Honda Odyssey here is around $115,000 making our taxes due amount to $46,000 to collect our van...double what we paid. I was just upset when he told me this. What kind of skewed system were we working with who wasn’t understanding our situation and being so petty about dates? Clearly on paper, we owned the car six months prior to moving here!

Dano and I have discussed our next worst-case scenarios. They make me too sad and frustrated right now to write. (None of which include any of our children missing a portion of college.)

There are some days when it makes me feel badly for our nearly-new, quite-loved van sitting in a warehouse all alone waiting to be claimed. I know it’s just an inanimate object but somehow, cars become part of our family. I don’t know if anyone else ever feels this way. Sometimes I am certain I hear it calling out to me from far away in Rotterdam….Melissa….Melissa…come and get me!

Hopefully there will be an addendum in the next week or two with a happy ending. Who ever said moving was easy?

Exciting Opportunities

It’s always fun to have a few treats thrown into a week as opposed to, what my mom would call, snafoos. This week one of these wonderful opportunities was having a special visitor at our school. Kennedy and Ethan were able to participate in a small assembly where Marvin Hamlisch, the incredible, renowned composer spoke and performed several of his great works. They were thoroughly impressed. Ethan was even one of the students selected to ask a question. He was giving a concert in The Hague and staying with some friends whose children attend the school. It was quickly arranged for him to spend a short time talking with a group of students. What an amazing opportunity!! I was quite jealous! I wanted to get Emily and Abigail up from their naps so I could go but thought that could potentially be more of a distraction.

Ethan is enjoying playing on a soccer team again as he made the middle school’s U12 soccer team. They traveled to Hamburg last week. Dano took Erin and Abby to cheer him on whilst Kennedy stayed home to work on loads of homework and help me unpack, a task that is seeming quite daunting this time around. I was sad we weren’t able to go. I think it’s the last time I’ll let Dano zip on over to Germany without me, though. I heard a few too many times how much he loved driving on the autobahn! How easy the trip was because of the autobahn. How it would be so great to have a Porsche to drive on the autobahn. I think when we visit Germany, I’ll be doing the driving and Dano can do the sightseeing.

This week Ethan played against an international school in Waterloo, Belgium. Everytime I think of Waterloo, Belgium, ABBA pops unwittingly into my head and won’t leave! (Waterloo…I was defeated, you won the war. Waterloo…Promise to love you forever more… Now you try to get it out of your head!) Dano was in the States doing my shopping…er… at Greif board meetings this week so I would need to make the drive on my own. Surprisingly I didn’t give it much thought. We grabbed the passports but didn’t even need them crossing the border from The Netherlands into Belgium. Going between EU countries is like crossing statelines. Very simple. Though later when I was speaking on two separate occasions to Dutch people and mentioned our trip to Belgium, they guffawed at our trip and couldn’t imagine driving farther than Rotterdam (45 minutes away) to watch a sports game. Had I mentioned Dano drove to Hamburg to watch a game, they would have thought he was insane!

It was a beautiful drive of two hours. We watched a great soccer match against St. John’s International School. It was such a beautiful day and we were so close to the Waterloo battle site that we decided to take a tour.
I'm not sure why they have a statue of Napolean and not Wellington. Maybe because the Duke has his own small museum on the property. Perhaps this is also why this statue is located in the parking lot across the street from the Waterloo museum.

I didn’t realize I knew so little about the Battle of Waterloo. Okay, yes I did. But now I’m back on the historical track and so are the kids. We all thoroughly enjoyed our two-hour stopover at the local museum. Waterloo is considered one of the greatest battles in European history, marking the end of the French Empire and Napolean’s final defeat. Had they won, we may be working and living in France right now and attempting to learn French rather than Dutch.

We watched two movies, both in French (one of the two official languages in Belgium). Fortunately there were English subtitles. As they were fast and a little technical, I read them to Erin and hoped no one else minded the English narration loudly whispered (with great vivacity, mind you) in the back. We then proceeded outside and hiked Butte de Lion’s 226 steps to the monument erected to the memory of the battle. The kids were also quite pleased to find what had to be a Buckeye tree just before the path.

The lion atop the hill symbolizes peace which caused me and Kennedy to wonder if that’s why many European currencies and crests have a lion on them.
From the hilltop we had a panoramic view of Waterloo’s battlefield and tried to envision what it was like nearly two hundred years ago. So great was the impact of this great victory here in Waterloo that now 124 towns or sites bear the name of Waterloo. Maybe there's one near you! (Many others bear the name of Wellington, leader of the British forces at Waterloo.)
The kids stood under the monument in which is etched the final day of the battle, June 18, 1815.

Although I debated stopping since Dano wouldn’t be able to enjoy it with us, I’m so glad we took the exciting opportunity. We all loved it!