This past week has been amazing, our stay with the Tamminga family was so very special. We felt like we were members of the family just about right away. On Thursday. Mr. and Mrs. Tamminga took us to old Haarlem where we visited the Corrie Ten Boom house. The city of Haarlem is very old and traditional, exactly how I imagined a dutch city to look! Tall narrow row houses, quaint cobble stone streets lined with bicycles and canals with house boats frozen in place, yes, the canals are ice( Well, they were, it has warmed up somewhat in the past two days)!! Corrie Ten Booms house was very interesting and the “hiding place” is exactly how she describes it, except even smaller!! The impact of the war is still very evident in Haarlem, and our guide was an elderly lady that remembered when the Canadians liberated her home town. She thought it was very special Canadians and told us very passionately how thankful she is to her liberators! There was also a girl in our group from Michigan and she started talking to us in... ENGLISH!!! As funny as it might sound we were all so happy to hear perfect English!
The next day we went to “see the zee” the Dutchies get a real kick out of saying that for some reason? along with alot of other English/dutch sentences, such as... Annerie was telling us that their dominee looks like a hell’s angel because he has long hair, and Mrs. Tamminga thought she should explain quickly that “no no he’s not an angel from hell” it was too funny!!! The Nord Zee is beautiful, even in the winter when its freezing cold. I couldn’t get enough of it! The sand was partially covered with snow, the beach was almost completely deserted except for a few people walking their dogs, the wind and snow... I loved it?!
On Friday evening Annerie and Margreet had a birthday party at the church. We went during the afternoon and helped them set up the hall and prepared the food. The dutch really know how to throw a party!! Lydia and I got a chance to meet many of their friends that night, most of them had good English and were very outgoing so we had a blast!!!
Saturday was Sinterklaas!! Margreet took us to the winkelstraat in Haarlem and we bought gifts for everyone. Everyone buys one gift under 10euros for each person and then they write a poem. We didn’t write poems, (our dutch isn’t THAT good!) we received some very cute ones though? All in all it was a very gezellig evening, and we were treated as though we were part of the family. It was definitely very special to celebrate a “real” dutch Sinterklaas!
The last few days of our stay with the family sped by way too fast. Sunday we went to church with in Ijmuiden and in the evening we said goodbye to a few of our new friends, and then it was Monday and we were off to start a new leg of our journey. This time in Voorthuizen with a great uncle of Lydia’s.