Mike and Anita James

There are some things that we see here that we now take for granted.  When we first moved here, these things would’ve been very strange, but now, they’re normal.  Here are a couple of things I’ve seen this week:

This backpack is a symbol of graduation

With the World Cup going on, it’s normal to see plenty of orange or Dutch flags.  During this past week, we’ve started to see backpacks put out with flags.  This is only done at the end of the school year, and it’s a sign that someone in the house has graduated.  They literally hang up their backpacks.  When you drive through the city, you’re sure to see this sight.

Here is the other thing that I never thought I’d see advertised:

New herring is here!

Herring is a really big deal here.  They eat it raw & pickled.  Often, they’ll put raw onions on it.  I’ve been told that this helps it taste better.  I take people’s word for it.  I don’t like seafood, so I stay as far away from this stuff as I can.  This is the time of year that the new herring is sold.  It’s the first herring of the season.  People say that it tastes better at the beginning of the season.  They also discuss what year had the best herring.  It’s like a wine connoisseur discussing which year’s wine is best.  That’s a conversation I will never be a part of!

Tonight was the last cooking group/Bible study/prayer group until the summer is over.  The group, Ingredients for Life, was started by me and a friend, Kristi Reavis.  We started it in 2006.  The year Mike and I were in the States, the group kept going.  I took it over again last year.  I love this group!

We have someone who demonstrates some recipe.  Then, we have a Bible study and prayer together.  Oh yeah!  We also sample the food.  In the past, we’ve had women from a few countries, so we’ve had a variety of food.

Tonight, we decided to just hang out together and watch Julie & Julia.  It’s a movie that is about a woman who cooks through Julia Child’s cookbook.  We loved it!  It’s about cooking, eating and relationships.  The woman who cooks through the cookbook writes a blog about it.  When the ladies were leaving, I thought, “This is a perfect time for me to write a blog about this group.”

I guess I have the summer to try out some new recipes before we start back.  Any ideas on what I should make?

This is our second World Cup to experience in The Netherlands.  I can honestly say that there is nothing like it.  I’m so glad that we’re here during this.  First of all, there is orange everywhere!  The royal family is the House of Orange, so if you’ve ever seen the Dutch flag, which is red, white and blue, and wondered why they wear orange, now you know.  The Netherlands is also commonly called Holland, so you’ll also see that on their jerseys.  The cheer you hear the most is Hup Holland!  That means “Go Holland!”

Today was the first Dutch match against Denmark.  It was played at 1:30 pm here.  Every school that we heard about stopped classes and let the students watch the match.  Grace said that her class started watching it, but the girls got a bit bored with it.  She was happy to have a break from the schoolwork though.  :)

You have to understand what the atmosphere is like around here.  There are orange banners and streamers everywhere.  When there is a score, you can hear people in the neighborhood cheering.

This is just some of the banners you can see supporting the Dutch team. This is in the school where our church meets.

Today while the Dutch match was going on, Mike was having a church “staff meeting” that happened to have the game on in the background.  I was out running errands before picking Grace up from school.  At the bank, I was able to watch the game while waiting to be helped.  At the grocery store, they had the game on the loudspeakers so everyone could continue to follow it.  Mike was also sending me texts so I could know what was going on.  At one point, I heard people honking their horns and blowing vuvuzelas (the horns the fans blow at the game).  A few seconds later, Mike send me a message that Holland had scored.  Everyone was so glad that The Netherlands won the match!

Orange banners in a neighborhood in Leiden

Yesterday, we had some of the most beautiful weather.  It was the warmest it’s been this year.  People were in shorts and outside loving the weather.

Today is Koninginnedag, Queen’s Day.  It’s the day to celebrate the queen.  It’s supposed to be on her birthday, but since her birthday is in the winter and weather is bad, they kept the date as her mother’s birthday.  This is the only day that garage sales are allowed, so everyone goes into the center of the city to set up and sell their things.  Grace has asked for years to do this, and I finally gave in.  We got there at a little before 8:30.  It was rainy and cool.

Here is a timeline of how things went:

8:30 – It is raining.  Grace asks, “Has this thing started yet?”

8:45 – Nothing has sold.  It has at least stopped raining.  Grace asks if we can go home.

9:00 – It is raining again.  Still nothing has sold.  Grace asks again if we can go home.  We lower prices.  Grace says, “I hope we at least sell one thing.”

9:30 – Morning snack time.  The kid next to us asks if we have sold anything after he sells a few things.  I begin to not like that kid.  I try to convince Grace to call out to people and try to sell things.  She absolutely refuses.  It’s no longer cool.  It’s becoming cold.  Grace and I are shivering.

10:00 – We sell our first item.  Grace is more optimistic about the day.  More people are starting to come.  It’s raining off and on.

10:30 – The people by us leave, so we move to their better location.  We sell a few more things.

11:00 – Grace gets her second morning snack.  It has started to rain harder.  Yuck!

11:30 – Grace and I are ready to go.  Grace has started picking up certain items and shouting their price.  She even goes so far as to get a Winnie the Pooh toy and have it wave at people as they go along.  I have to tell her to back up because she doesn’t need to get in their face quite so much.

11:45 – We call for Mike to come pick us up.  It has stopped raining, but we are pretty wet and cold.  Most of the people around us have left.

12:00 – We are home and get to go through our things.  Everything is wet and kind of gross.  Grace has made 8.25 today and is very happy.  We have cleaned out a lot from her room and it looks much better , so I am also happy.  Hot chocolate and hot tea make us both feel much better too.

I asked her if she wants to do this again next year, and I got a definite “NO” from her.  I tried not to be too obviously excited about her answer.  Today, I hope she realized how much I love her!  By the way, as I type this, it’s now 1:30, and the sun is coming out.  It looks like it will be a much better afternoon than morning.

Happy Queen’s Day to all!

We had our first Zuper Zondag (Super Sunday) today.  We were so excited.  It’s been something that has been coming for a long time.  From now on, we’ll be having a special, evangelistic service on the second Sunday of each month.

We’ve gotten a new puppet stage from BGMC money.  We also were given funds by Dallas Dream Center to buy other equipment we needed such as sound equipment and banners.

Our new puppet stage courtesy of BGMC

Banner provided by the Dallas Dream Center

Besides the service, we break into clubs.  Mike taught puppets to some of the children while others made a sheep cupcake.  (We were talking about The Lost Sheep.)

Puppet club at Zuper Zondag

Cooking club at Zuper Zondag

We had 30 children for our first time, and we’re excited about reaching even more boys and girls in The Netherlands!

We’ve been so busy working on a curriculum.  We’ve done an entire series on Psalm 23.  There are so many steps to the process.  Mike writes the lessons.  Then, we video the puppets and characters for the lessons.  Next, I edit it and get the video ready.  We have friends who translate it into Dutch for us.  Then, I add subtitles to the video.  Our church is an international church.  Some children speak Dutch and some speak English.  It makes it a bit of a challenge to do a curriculum for such a church.  Fortunately, we have another church that is able to use the curriculum, and we’re hoping that even more will be able to use it.

We’re able to put our videos on YouTube so our workers can see the videos that we’ll use in church.  If you’d like to see any of our videos, go to http://www.youtube.com/user/MikeAndAnita.

Last week we shot videos for the next set of lessons.  Tomorrow, I’ll start the process all over again.  The fun never ends!

For Grace and me, this was our first white Christmas.  It started snowing on Thursday, 17 December and stayed over a week.

The view during our morning walk

It seemed like a lot of snow to us, but on Sunday, we had much more.  Grace was able to play in the snow before we went to church.  She even had a snowball fight with our neighbor, Dirk.

Grace gets a huge snowball for the fight

While we were at church, the snow was coming down so hard!  I said that it looked more like someone was shaking feathers out of a pillow than snow.  The flakes were huge!

The after-church snowball fight

We came home and made our own snowman.  Because the snow was the perfect consistency, it only took the three of us about 10 minutes to finish.

Our snowman for home

All the snow was beautiful, but it wasn’t always wonderful.  On Christmas day, we had just finished opening our presents.  I thought I heard our dog chewing a new bone he got, but the sound wasn’t him.  I followed the sound until I found our roof leaking.  All the ice and snow had blocked the drain.  As the snow started to melt, it was had nowhere to go.  One part of our roof is flat, so the water started coming through our skylight.  It wasn’t a drip, it was a constant stream.  It started in one place and ended up in about eight different leaks.  Mike had the very good idea to use the plastic tubs we had for moving.  Each bucket held about three leaks.

What a mess!

We felt awful but had to get our neighbor/landlord to come help us.  For now the leak has been stopped, but we’re leaving the buckets out for a little while longer.

It’s definitely that time of year again.  Sinterklaas (Saint Nicholas) is here in The Netherlands.  He comes on a steamboat every year from Spain and stays a few weeks.  Gifts are given on Saint Nicholas’ birthday, December 5.  The next morning, he leaves to go back to Spain.

Sinterklaas

While Sinterklaas is in The Netherlands, children put their shoes by the fireplace or front door and get small gifts.  One favorite is a chocolate letter that is the initial of their first name.  No, Grace doesn’t get to eat the entire thing in one sitting.

Chocolate "G"

Most Dutch people don’t decorate their homes for christmas until Sinterklaas goes back to Spain.  I’ve cheated a bit.  I have put everything out except our tree.

Earlier this week, both Grace and I were sick.  Fortunately, our fevers only lasted a day or two.  It came at a terrible time though.  I guess there’s never a good time to get sick, but we got sick when we had company coming.  Our friends were sick the week before, so they had no problem coming into the “sick house.”

The sickness kept me from editing videos.  I’ve finally started on it again today.  We are working on a curriculum for our church that has video segments.  It should make it much easier for the workers, but it does create much more work for us.  We converted our guest room into a studio of sorts.  We’ve shot the video for the first four weeks.  Now, I’m editing it all.  When I’m done with that, we’ve got to get subtitles on it.  Our church is international and it functions with two main languages: English and Dutch.  Het kost veel tijd om iets in twee talen te doen! (It takes a lot of time to do something in two languages!)

So, while I’m working on video editing today, Mike is at the VPE congress.  The VPE is the church organization we work with here in The Netherlands.  Today is their yearly meeting.  It actually started yesterday.  Mike went yesterday to teach a seminar on children’s ministry  It’s nice that we are a team and can keep working even when we’re apart.

No, we don’t have major changes in our lives.  It is feeling much more like autumn here though.  Schools here had an autumn break last week, and it was so nice to have a little bit of time to relax as a family.  We were able to go to a few museums.  Here is Grace after she finished making the button she’s wearing.  It’s made to look like a jewel found in the Viking’s time in The Netherlands.

Grace at the museum

Leaves are changing and falling to the ground.  It’s beautiful until I have to clean up the yard.

Front Yard

Our time changed last week.  That means that we leave for school in daylight now, but it won’t be long before we’ll be leaving in darkness again.  I really don’t like having to turn on lights or start candles at 4:30, but that’s how it is.  I honestly expected it to be colder than it has been by now.  There were a few days a few weeks ago that I had to scrape ice off the windshields before leaving in the morning, but it’s been pretty nice since then.

It has cooled off a little though.  You know it’s cold in the house when our dog likes to be covered up.  I guess it could be because of the cold or that he’s terribly spoiled or ridiculous.  You can take your pick.

We should've named this dog Linus