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the weekend
Aug. 13th, 2006 09:31 pmThis weekend I had the chance to FINALLY participate in something local hosted by Polderslot, only my second since arriving here. ( Read more... )
This was my first time being in a conversational-Dutch setting. I was the only person there that didn't speak Dutch. Occassionally people would stop and say "Oh, we should be speaking in English!" and switch languages for a little bit, but in generally the conversation was all primarily Dutch. I was actually rather pleased with how much I could understand - definitely no details, but I could usually tell what the topic of conversation was (especially if it was about food, because I know a lot of food terms, as well as terms used about food such as 'smak' (flavor, taste) and 'lekker' (tasty, yummy).) Still, when one of the people asked me (in Dutch), "So, how much Dutch do you understand?" I answered that pretty well when I responded in a confused tone, "Sorry?" I thought that that was what he was asking, but it wasn't a conscious enough thought for me to act on it.
Another odd aspect of the language issues came from the kids - there were four there (roughly 5, 3, 2.5 and 1), and of course they all speak only Dutch. The eldest wasn't too sure of me, and at one point when I was sitting next to her mother, her mother told her "She doesn't speak Dutch, but you don't have to be afraid of her, she's nice." (Or something to that effect, I only got the gist). She did warm up by the end of the weekend, and if she walked by me, she'd say "Hi". That's a nice universal word. I also learned that whereas in English, mice say "Squeak", in Dutch, they say "Peep". Curious!
All in all, a fun weekend, and I hope to be able to do more with the Poldersloters in the future. Our yearly event is coming up in September, and unless something unexpected comes up, I'm planning to go, and am still holding out hope of convincing Joel to come with. It'd be nice to have someone to talk to...
Thursday night we had a lovely time at dinner with Syed and Asraf (sp?). We went to an Indonesian restaurant near our office, one we'd never been to before. In fact, it was the first time I'd ever had Indonesian food. The first half of the menu was in Indonesian, Dutch, and English, but that was the "order lots of food for the entire table" part of the menu, and the individual meals in the second half were listed just in Indonesian. So we weren't exactly sure what we were getting, but it all turned out tasty. It's rare that I'm faced with food that I've never had before and have no idea what it will be like. That in and of itself was a fun experience! Anyway, I hope that we have a chance to get together more with them, once they've finished moving over here and settling in. It'd be nice to have a young-married-couple friends.
Meh. Feeling really pretty muzzy now. Think I'm going to go curl up with a book and a cat.
This was my first time being in a conversational-Dutch setting. I was the only person there that didn't speak Dutch. Occassionally people would stop and say "Oh, we should be speaking in English!" and switch languages for a little bit, but in generally the conversation was all primarily Dutch. I was actually rather pleased with how much I could understand - definitely no details, but I could usually tell what the topic of conversation was (especially if it was about food, because I know a lot of food terms, as well as terms used about food such as 'smak' (flavor, taste) and 'lekker' (tasty, yummy).) Still, when one of the people asked me (in Dutch), "So, how much Dutch do you understand?" I answered that pretty well when I responded in a confused tone, "Sorry?" I thought that that was what he was asking, but it wasn't a conscious enough thought for me to act on it.
Another odd aspect of the language issues came from the kids - there were four there (roughly 5, 3, 2.5 and 1), and of course they all speak only Dutch. The eldest wasn't too sure of me, and at one point when I was sitting next to her mother, her mother told her "She doesn't speak Dutch, but you don't have to be afraid of her, she's nice." (Or something to that effect, I only got the gist). She did warm up by the end of the weekend, and if she walked by me, she'd say "Hi". That's a nice universal word. I also learned that whereas in English, mice say "Squeak", in Dutch, they say "Peep". Curious!
All in all, a fun weekend, and I hope to be able to do more with the Poldersloters in the future. Our yearly event is coming up in September, and unless something unexpected comes up, I'm planning to go, and am still holding out hope of convincing Joel to come with. It'd be nice to have someone to talk to...
Thursday night we had a lovely time at dinner with Syed and Asraf (sp?). We went to an Indonesian restaurant near our office, one we'd never been to before. In fact, it was the first time I'd ever had Indonesian food. The first half of the menu was in Indonesian, Dutch, and English, but that was the "order lots of food for the entire table" part of the menu, and the individual meals in the second half were listed just in Indonesian. So we weren't exactly sure what we were getting, but it all turned out tasty. It's rare that I'm faced with food that I've never had before and have no idea what it will be like. That in and of itself was a fun experience! Anyway, I hope that we have a chance to get together more with them, once they've finished moving over here and settling in. It'd be nice to have a young-married-couple friends.
Meh. Feeling really pretty muzzy now. Think I'm going to go curl up with a book and a cat.
