16 and Counting!

As of today, I have officially been here for 16 days! I'm so proud of myself. At first, I was a little more homesick than I thought I'd be, but thanks to FaceTime, Skype, and IMessage, I still feel very much a part of everyone's life back home. Also, my host parents (I recently learned this is what the parents of the family I nanny for are called), have been the best host parents I could've ever asked for. They have been so kind, and welcoming, and have definitely made me feel right at home with their lovely family! They have also been so kind in introducing me to people - one of them being another au pair who lives 5 minutes away! Which is so perfect because most other au pairs I've met live somewhere near Amsterdam, which is about 30 minutes train ride away from me. Tonight I actually just met up with another au pair who lives in the city Alkmaar which is very close to me as well! Making friends out here is so great! 2 of the girls I've met are from other countries - Iceland and the Czech Republic! It will be so much fun to keep in touch with these girls once I go back home! I've never had friends who live on the other side of the world :)

For those of you who haven't heard, February 15th I will be flying to Rome with the au pair from the Czech Republic! We are both so excited! We will only be there until the 18th (only really 2 days to sight see) but we will defintely cram as many things into those 2 days as we can! The Spanish Steps, the Colosseum, Vatican City, the Trevi fountain, and so much more! The place we booked to stay in is actually within walking distance of all of these places! Such a great deal! This trip is something I'm really looking forward to - my mom, among many other people, has said that she loved Rome - and my mother has great taste, so I'm so excited!!

These past few weekends I've been kind of busy with things to do! The first weekend I got here I hung out with the family which was really fun! And then this last weekend was the weekend I went to Amsterdam! This weekend, is basically free! Saturday I'm taking a bus into Alkmaar in the late morning to get my hair done (fingers crossed they do a great job!) and then most likely since I will already be there, I will walk around the village! I will defintely bring my camera this time! And then the rest of the weekend is pretty much open, minus a couple of skype dates I have with friends - so that means I will get to roam around my own beautiful village I'm living in and take a bunch of pictures for you to see! There's so many different things around here I hope I will come across - sheeps, bison, horses, cows, the beach, the dunes, ponds, foresty areas, and so much more! So be ready for some new blog posts by the end of this weekend!

I hope all of you are having yourselves some great days as well :) Please feel free to message me whenever on facebook, or my phone (if you have an iphone), or email me, or skype me - would love to see/ hear from you all! Sending my love to you!

xoxoxo

A Night On The Town

So, last night I painted the town red. Amsterdam, that is... and it was spectacular! It was the most beautiful city I've ever seen! The buildings are beautiful, there is so much to see and taste and smell and do, and the people - the bunches and bunches of people - are awesome! I just don't have the right words to fully describe my visit with this ginormous city. So, first I will share some things I learned, saw, tasted, experinced with you and then I will post some pictures from the evening!

• Of course it wasn't possible for me to taste all the different kinds of foods found in Amsterdam, but the food I did taste, was so delicious! After my friend and I put our overnight things in our hostel, we went to dinner at this little Italian restaurant down the street where they had whole pizzas for only 5 euros! Since the deal was too sweet to pass up, we decided to wine and dine ourselves full there! And yes, we did wine! - well it was beer to be exact, but having alcohol legally with my meal was quite a pleasure! We cleaned our plates, the pizza was magnificent!
• Amsterdam is one big tourist spot! I was so surprised to hear people walking by us speaking English! That sounds weird to say, but the little village where I'm living, everyone speak Dutch as their main "go-to" language, so to hear people speaking English was really cool!
• ALL of the coffee shops have pot. ALL. weeeeeiiiirrrrrrrdddddddd. And people were just freely smoking on the streets too! I learned that it's not even legal here, but it is socially acceptable. For example, the cops don't mind!
• The Red Light District was... well I don't even have the correct word to describe it. Creepy? Weird? Awkward? Uncomfortable? Kinda cool? Haha almost every emotion rolled into one. The girls are honestly in a bathing suit or less, and are posing in the windows - that are on ground level. So you're just walking down the street looking at these girls behind glass trying to look their best so some guy will walk in and... well, you know. But it was just surreal. It was definitely an experience!
• There's a prostitute that is 80 years old that's working in the Red Light District! She doesn't pose in the windows or anything. You have to know about her to "get" her. She supposedly has a waiting list!
• Yes, there is a McDonalds AND a Burger King in Amsterdam

The pass I'm holding is a pass for the trains! You just put money on it, and instead of purchasing a ticket every time, you can just swipe it before you get on the train, and then swipe it before you leave! Very effective and helpful!

 

The 2 pictures above are pictures of this little, almost hidden, place in Amsterdam. It's almost like a monestary for nuns, except they don't walk around wearing what you'd think they'd be wearing. There are 92 women living in this place, with some children, and no men! It was one of the prettiest places I'd seen walking around! And there are huge beautiful wooden doors that can close this place off to the public! So I was very lucky to have been able to see this place.

 

This is a flower market! There are a bunch of these and they are so fun to look at! Tulips have really taken over this place, and it's totally fine by me :)

My friend and I walked into numerous stores just to look around, and in almost all the stores that had food in it, you would find these delicious treats. Since I've been in the Netherlands, I've probably eaten two packs of these already! They have become my favorite treat, and are very addicitng. Best things ever made. I love them!

We walked by this clock tower numerous times, and every time it just astounded me! It's so beautiful! Each time we walked by, I'd try taking a picture of it - but none of them gave this thing justice. It's just so amazingly beautiful.

 

This is me (obviously), my delicious 5 euro pepporoni pizza, and a Heineken. Yummy!

These are just some extrememly large wooden shoes I came across, and I just had to take a picture wearing them! Hopefully I will come back to the states with a pair!

 

And last but not least, this was my breakfast the next morning! A cappucino and a chocolate chip croissant. Boy, I am definitely getting used to the food here. I could get used to this.

 

Video Tour Of My Little Home Away From Home

https://vimeo.com/58241332
Click on the link above ^^ Hope you enjoy :)

Little Miss Chef

I, Elizabeth Anne Weinberger, am turning into Emeril Lagasse! Bam!!!! (What ever happened to him by the way?!?) Since one of my jobs as an au pair is to prepare dinner, I've been cooking up a storm!!! Well, sort of. So far, I've made...

• Baked macaroni and cheese
• Spaghetti with sauce and a salad
• Meatballs, potatoes, and beets
• Pea soup and sausages
• Hamburgers and potatoes

And tonight, on the menu, are tacos! With a side of beans of course! (There are no refried beans here though, so I will just have to use what I have! Bueno! :)

Although these meals are far from fine dining, and they aren't anywhere near cuisine masterpieces, please take into account that before I came here I rarely prepared meals. Unless they were out of a box or could just be made in the microwave, my chef days had not yet begun. I'm hoping that preparing dinner for the next 9 months will make me into one of those few people who can prepare a meal without a recipe and be able to throw in a dash of seasonings for taste without being scared of making it taste bad. (That's the point I'm at right now. I need to become confident in my cooking knowledge and just "go with it") So everyone please root for me in my future months preparing meals! They have tasted great so far, and soon I hope they will taste superb.

BAM!!!

Driving Miss Tulips

Hello my lovely American friends! It definitely is true that you never really know what you have until it's gone! I appreciate America and the beautiful place I call home so much more now that I'm not there!! (I'm so happy I brought an American flag shirt so I can still celebrate the 4th of July all the way over here in Europe!) One thing I definitely miss is the sun! The sun still shines over here but it's blocked behind clouds all day! Hopefully when summer comes around it will shine a little brighter!

So here are 2 fun/interesting facts I've learned today:

1. To get a drivers license in the Netherlands costs an arm and a leg and on top of that its very strenuous and takes a long time. The mother of the family I am nannying for was telling me that just to be able to take the 60 question written test and the half an hour driving test, you have to have taken 40, yes I just said 40!!!!, driving courses. That is way unbelievable compared to the requirements needed to get a license in the states! Also, here you pay taxes on how much your car weighs, which is why I have only seen one truck while I've been here!! That's why almost all of the cars are so tiny!! I now know why you see most everyone riding bikes or walking everywhere.

2. The tulips that holland is extremely famous for, are only seen for about 3 weeks in late spring! Once they've blossomed, they are all cut so the tulip itself doesn't take away a lot of energy being kept alive from the bulb which is then sold. During those three weeks I will try my best to take as many pictures as possible :) I love flowers!

So I think it's safe to say I love it here! Everything is so beautiful and all the people are warm and welcoming! And to my surprise, almost everyone speaks English which is very helpful as I don't have the Dutch vocabulary down yet. Some days more than others I do get pretty homesick, but knowing that this will be a great experience for me and that I'm still able to talk to everyone back home makes this all worth while.

Alkmaar

So, I have yet to go exploring with my "real" camera, but while walking around Alkmaar I managed to snap a few shots with my IPhone! Sorry for the quality, but hopefully these not so up-to-par photos of the village will give you an idea of how a lot of villages around here look :)

Gelukkig is het Vrijdag

Gelukkig is het Vridag, "thank goodness it's Friday." I only have a bit to write on here, but my sister requested another blog entry!! I've been trying my best to stay connected these past few days, but it's a little difficult because the internet in my apartment doesn't work, only in the house! So hopefully it will soon :) So here are just a couple things I've noticed, felt, experiencd, seen, or tasted that might just tickle your fancy to know!

• The many people who have been around me enough to notice, know that I love cheese. So I think I'm pretty much in the right country right now because the cheese here is to die for!
• I've already learned numbers 1-20 and the days of the week in Dutch!! Oh, and of course how to say thank you and you're welcome!
• They sell sausages, or wursts (sp?), here in basically any store you walk in to... AND I had some for dinner the other night and they were delicious!
• Holland hasn't had snow in over 10 years, and I get to experience it first hand here on my trip!!! 20 degrees and windy! Wooo!!!
• Everyone walks here. To the store, to the beach, to the village. It's crazy!! Hopefully I come back home nice and fit!
• The colleges here are very different than back home! I learned this first hand when I went to talk to the lady about my dutch classes. She asked what school I had finished back home and I said of course elementary, high school, and then I said that I had done about a year and a half of college and she basically starts bad mouthing college in America! Basically saying I hadn't been to college at all! Not cool!
• Everyone here is very nice and friendly, well minus the dutch class lady...
• Everything I've tasted here I have loved - whether it looked good or not! Meat paste, which is called Filet American, pea soup, which looks like baby food, and all kinds of cookies and cheeses and meats and veggies and different meals! Hopefully I will learn to how make a lot of things so I can come home and cook some Dutch cuisine for you all :)
• And the last thing I will post for tonight is that the one thing that I have really noticed and love so much is that a smile really is universal. I don't know a lot of Dutch yet, and some people don't know any English at all, but everyone knows a smile :)

Until later.... xoxoxo

Little Christmas Villages

So today was the day! Flying into Amsterdam was really a treat. The only way I can describe what I saw was that everything from above looked like those little Christmas villages people put together with the houses and trains and snow covered tree tops - it looked like it was out of a story book! The mother of the family I am nannying for met me outside of the airport with her littlest daughter who was all bundled up in pink. On our drive home, she showed me the main village, Alkmaar, (which is the most fabulous thing I've ever seen! Canals separating narrow streets with houses made of brick bunched together! Not to mention that it had snowed the night before so everything was covered with a layer of snow making everything look 10 times more magical) and then we came home! She showed me to my really cute little apartment they made for me in their backyard (I will post pictures once I've cleaned up my mess of clothes all over the place) and it's perfect! Although all of you already know I want to travel places while I'm here, I could easily just stay in the Netherlands the whole time! If you guys could just see this place - windmills, beautiful old buildings, churches, canals, the landscape, snow covered beaches (yes.. I just said snow covered beaches) it's just amazing here. Although I can admit, looking at the time I'm going to be spending here, it's going to be tough without being able to hang out with my friends and family, but I can't wait to make friends out here, travel around, and more importantly learn Dutch so I can actually communicate properly with the eldest daughter and other people I meet! Hopefully every day I will keep adding words to the list of ones I already know! Well, the Princess Diaries is on and it's calling my name - I miss you all and I will try writing a blog post every day, if not at least once a week! :)

Goodnight California

Before I go to bed and wake up I'm the morning excited and giddy and set on starting this new adventure, I just wanted to remind myself of this wonderful place I am proud to call home and all of the wonderful people in it who have become a part of my life. So blessed and lucky I am to have these people in my life that make goodbyes so hard. I am beyond grateful to God and to my family and friends who have always been by my side, and I can't wait to explore this new part of my life and still have you with me! To a new year and new adventures!! :) Goodnight California. I will miss you all dearly.