Just a few mills

This post is from yesterday night, but I was delayed in posting due to lack of Internet, and laziness :)


Just a few mills... and a few tourists.

So today was my first complete day in the Netherlands. It was pretty awesome, if you ask me. I spent the day with Andy (my second cousin) and his family, whom I am staying with for one more day, until Andy drives me to Venlo (and hour and a half away) tomorrow where I will be living for the next 3 months. I woke at around 8:45 this morning, just to promptly fall back asleep until about 11:20. Which I was supremely angry at myself for, suffice it to say that I have set myself 3 alarms for tomorrow. Anyways, today was also Aileen's birthday, she turned 15, and she got to spend the day with her fam jam and me, haha.  Once I woke up I had breakfast (yummy bread and Gouda cheese with butter) and then we went out for a drive. Andy and his family brought me to a couple of smaller villages around where we are. All the villages I have seen so far have been very cute, there isn't really a better word for them.

 The first one was Oudewater, we walked around the streets for a bit, and Andy told me that the tops of the buildings have different names, the step,  the baker, the clock, depending on how their facades look. We then went to a museum, it was a museum about witches. Back in the dark ages, people used to think that witches were as light and feathers, so that they could fly. In Oudewater, people could come to the weight house and be weighed to see if they were witches or not and receive a certificate stating that they weren't witches. There is a story as to why it was Oudewater that had the privilege to hand out certificates, but it is quite long, and according to the video, may not even be true. Anyways, I got myself weighted, and I am not a witch. It was pretty cool.

(Getting weighed to see if I am a witch, I will never go to Hogwarts *sad* )

We then continued to another village, I don't recall the name (but it started with an S) There we walked around, it seemed a bit bigger, and we had some apple pie and hot chocolate outside, which was during the only sunny period all day).

(different facades)

After that we saw some windmills, and we found some tourists. We went to a town called Kinderdijk, where there are a whole lot of windmills. It was pretty cool to see them, especially so many in one place. Of course nowadays, they don't need the windmills to pump water anymore, they have these giant screw things to do that instead. So it was buses and buses of tourists that were there to see the windmills, just like us. We also saw some funny tourists, that were probably almost as interesting as windmills.

Nadine, Andy's daughter painted my nails, blue, white, red and orange for Queensday. And then we ate dinner. It was also very yummy, vegetables and rice, and then we also had fallofel and this fried goat/sheep cheese pattie that was supremely good. For dessert we ate yogurt and blueberries, which was absolutely heavenly. One new thing I noticed was that the yogurt came in a carton (similar to milk) instead of the tubs that we have back at home. I then went for a walk with Selma and Aileen to walk their dog. It was super nice, because from the back of their property you can get right into the woods. Its a really nice forest with a pond(more like a lake) in it. It was a very nice walk.

(Forest behind their house)

We then drove into Utrecht for Queensnight. Which is the night before Queensday. People go out and there is music in the streets and people are selling tons of stuff, and you can buy beer everywhere and drink in the streets as well. On the way there we drove past Aileen's and Nadine's highschool, and then we parked at Andy's work. And I am currently in Selma's work right now (she works from home doing acupuncture, I am sleeping in her office haha) So I have seen everything :) . So Utrecht was very busy. There was one main street that was closed for cars and there were little booths all over the place. Aileen was able to meet up with her friends, they had decided to set up and paint peoples nails for 50 cents. They seemed pretty busy, but ended up making less then the cost of the train to get there. It seemed like they still had a pretty good time. We walked around the streets and stopped for a coca-cola. I think we all had fun people-watching, there were a lot of drunk people decked out in orange. Selma told me that it was a shame that I couldn't understand the funny conversations going on.

(Strange houses with floor to ceiling windows, it was like watching TV when they are eating dinner)

(Aileen's friends painting nails)

(Nadine, Selma, Andy, Aileen. Dressed in orange for Queensday)