The End of Week Three?

Only a week left to go? Time is flying by. Our time in Hellevoetsluis was great! Thank you to everyone for all of your hard work in planning our time there. Our farewell party Friday night again brought fun and tears. The kids at the party took it upon themselves to start teaching me Dutch. Well, at first they were just trying to get me to say long words and then were laughing at me. So I had them go back to the beginning with the alphabet. I was surprised to learn that their alphabet song is to the same tune as ours (twinkle, twinkle little star). I wonder if it's the same in every country. Anyway, they were great teachers and I'm surprised at the number of words I've learned over the past few weeks. Last week someone accidentally said something to me in Dutch and I responded without realizing the language was different. Then we both realized what had happened and started laughing. The Dutch language is a very difficult one with two sounds that Americans don't use at all. I'm able to do one but no matter how hard I try I can't seem to pronounce the other. It is the sound the ui makes in Hellevoetsluis.

Yesterday we left Hellevoetsluis and landed in Rijnwoude, a small town near Leiden. Thankfully, the coordinators of the club we are visiting expected us to be exhausted and planned an easy schedule for yesterday and today. I slept ten hours last night! It was definitely needed. Today we went antique shopping in the Hague and I found a cute little coffee/tea set. We then had dinner at Hans and Jane's house. Hans was an excellent cook and we had a great time. Our schedule for the week looks great. Tomorrow I'm starting the day with a biking tour of the area and then I'm off to the High School in Leiden. The weather is back to cold again :(