i like to call it blessed.

So as I'm writing this, I'm gonna describe where I'm sitting because it's wonderful. Well first of all I'm in Belgium, not Holland. (Tamara and I drove in on Friday afternoon to teach for the Belgium Kings Kid's team until Monday morning) We get super special treatment and get to stay at the Belgium leader's house, The Biesbrouck's. They have a the coolest three story house and with so much character I wish I wasn't too lazy to take pictures. But try and imagine something super quaint, cozy, and in a small city called Kojrik. We drove 4 hours to get here, which for Europe, that's a "long drive." Hard not to laugh due to the numerous amount of road trip to Colorado and Florida :) Thanks for living large mom!

I decided to do a blog about my adaptation to Holland. Or you could call it a culture shock. I documented my meals in Belgium just for this blog. For cold meals, it's an assortment of bread, butter, jam, and of course the "hagel slag"... which is a fancy word for chocolate sprinkles. Yep, sprinkles. I'm still trying to explain to people that "hagel slag" goes on ice cream and is considered somewhat of a dessert in America, but it's not going well :) oh, the culture. This summer most of my time out of the U.S. was spent in South Africa, so this month in Holland has been a learning experience for sure. My first day here Beth showed me my bike that would be my main way of transportation [pause for remembrance of my sweet, sweet, sweet Nissan Murano sitting at home HOPEFULLY not being driven :)] It was a mountain bike and everyone laughed when I said I had that kind of bike. To myself I just kept thinking, "what other kind of bike is there?" Of course my best friend Bonnie told me "normal" bikes are called, "cruisers." But I thought my mountain bike was perfect...until it was too tall and prohibited me from sitting sometimes. Tamara has a car which has been such a blessing when it comes to driving to Amsterdam twice a week, except she just looked confused when I told her that it was the smallest car I'd ever ridden in. So needless to say, the food and the transportation has been an adventure in itself :)

 

After countless conversations about why it's not weird for me to drive everywhere, I decided to give up. Walking everywhere is so much better for you, but I'm still so grateful for our "let's drive to the mailbox" culture. It just seems to make sense. Why would you walk when you can drive? Haha, these conversations have been so interesting and eye opening all at the same time. When everyone sees that I have two iphones they just look at me kind of crazy and say "why do you have two!" and I just say the obvious, "this one is for America, and this one is for Holland..." I've been lucky to have such a great job since I was 16 years old and I'm proud of the things I've paid for....i.e. my car and more than 2 iphones due to lake trips and other miscellaneous accidents. It's interesting though, to realize the things I have taken for granted and to realize that some things that are "normal" to me... aren't to others. Oh, culture.

Last week for Arise, we got to take a  photo shoot in Amsterdam, it was so cool! I just have two photos so far of the day but I thought I'd share them :) We walked around the city changing from Hip Hop outfits to Modern outfits... of course I'm only posting these for now! 

Yep, that's me upside down :)

Tamara, Bethany, and I :)

Teaching at the Belgium boot camp was such a blast!! They were so willing to learn, it was so encouraging to have kids that were so in love with dancing. The boys at this boot camp really got into every piece we through at them and they were such a blessing this weekend. I gave them a pretty advanced hip hop section and they worked so hard to master it, it was so awesome! Tamara and I were so tired and exhausted at the start of the weekend but they were so nice to us and so unbelievably grateful we came. After being there for a few hours we were so blessed by the people that the rest of the weekend was nothing short of a treat! :) They gave us a warm meal before we left and gave us candy and made us cute little name tags. The people were so nice! I will say it was a bit of a challenge at times because we were so tired, but every time I had to teach I had enough energy. Other than the times I was teaching I was pretty much exhausted though. People in Belgium don't use english as regularly as people in Holland so sometimes I wanted to scream because I didn't understand what people were saying... but in the end I made it through. In my dance classes I made the kids introduce themselves in Dutch and talk about their dance background and I could understand mostly everything which is SO exciting! These are the group pictures of this past weekend, truly a blessing to meet so many kids that were eager to learn.

After our Kings Kid's weekend in Belgium we had to drive back to Holland... then straight to Amsterdam to meet up with Bethany for monday night classes with Arise! We had this ongoing joke about "what Belgium did to us" and these are the pictures to describe it! Tamara has been basically our chauffeur for weeks now since we can't drive here... Beth and I "made" her take a day off to rest after our delirious ride home that night :) It's been so tiring, but so fun... I promise!

I'm signing off now... going to teach classes in Apeldoorn tonight. And then tomorrow.... SPAIN!

:)