The Worst is Over

Today I had the two worst parts of the Profieltoets, spreken (speaking) and Maatschappij-orientatie (social orientation). Speaking is always difficult because you have very limited amounts of time to think of what you want to say, and the MO was difficult because uhh, well I didn’t even crack that book until two days ago and haven’t been to the classes for it. I think I did alright on both of them but I’ve learned that I’m a terrible judge of my own results on these exams so I’m not even going to try. Tomorrow is lezen (reading) and luisteren (listening). As far as I can tell, once I get this profieltoets done I will have satisfied the government and am free of their grasp. I’m not totally sure about that though as I met up with some of my classmates and they said they still have classes after the test is done. That may be for those who weren’t invited to do the test yet, because I only saw 2-3 of the 20ish people from my class at the test. All I know is, I have a nice base of Dutch now and can learn freely on my own from now on.

I think I might start trying to speak more Dutch with Xander around the house. I’ve noticed that the things I remember most are the things I learn from him during our conversations.

Had our British friend Alan over last night for a “DIY Night”. DIY means Do It Yourself.. We decided that instead of the usual thing that happens when we have company, one of us in the kitchen while the other tries to entertain the guest, we’d all hang out in the kitchen. We bought stuff for making pizzas and the three of us hung out int he kitchen making our pizza masterpieces and having a laugh. I learned that Alan is the slowest mushroom cutter on the face of the earth, and if you mention it he gets paranoid and can’t cut them anymore because he laughs too much, that Xander really likes a lot of meat on his pizza and I -really- like artichoke hearts on mine. Damn they are good on pizza! Who knew!

We took our old toilet back and got a new one, which was installed on Saturday morning. It appears to be crack free… when we’re not sitting on it.

A woman was sitting behind me on the tram today and was chewing gum like her life depended on it. The sounds were horrible and I could hear everything taking place inside her mouth. Every little snap of the gum, her saliva being sloshed around by what I imagined to be a really huge tongue. The whole thing made me squeamish and I sat daydreaming about turning around and telling her how I’ve seen cows chew their cud with more grace! Instead I sat there while it grew louder and louder, exaggerated by my own inability to stop listening, of course. Now I wonder if I’ve ever disgusted anyone around me so badly and not known, and if I did, would I have wanted them to tell me or is ignorance really bliss in that kind of situation.

A classmate of mine made me feel like a total shithead for complaining about my life in NL. After listening to her talk about her life here, I mean. She is from Africa and is currently about 6 months pregnant. Somehow we got to talking about her husband and she was telling me that she thinks he’s cheating on her. She went on to tell me all the reasons why she suspects it and that she’s wanted to leave him for a long time, but she can’t because she’s only been living here for 1.5 years. If she wants to leave her husband and continue to live here in NL on her own with her children, she needs to wait until she’s been living here for 3 years. Before that, if she does leave him she won’t have status here on her own and will be sent back to Africa, which she really doesn’t want to do because there is nothing there for her children. So she basically has to suck it up and pretend to be a loving wife for another 1.5 years until she can safely leave him. Shit, it’s hard enough here even with a loving and stable relationship… to have that sort of unhappiness in your family on top of it must be a nightmare. It also can’t be very nice to know that you are at someone’s elses mercy like that, I know I would hate it.

If Xander ever cheated on me and we were going to split… I’d be like a flash across the Atlantic, that’s all I know. You know, after ripping his balls off and feeding them to him.

Stephanie is back on Survivor this season, love that! I hope those other boneheads don’t take the cowards way out and vote her off right away.