Look at all the cards we have gotten!!! #cardfridge #snailmail #mail #post #usps #postnl #sendussomelove!!!
expatlife
Some Housekeeping…and Other Thoughts
So first thing is first. A new look.
We have really been wanting a simpler, more appealing blog layout. We worked hard all last week going through hundreds of layouts until we found this one which we think is simple, but still fun! We hope you enjoy it as much as we do!
So we no longer look like this^^
We’ve been cooking a lot and have a huge backlog of stores to tell you. Right now I’ve been gearing up again to start working and getting myself prepared for that. Job has obviously been working so we are working to fit in time on our days off to keep you up to date and posted on our amazing meals.
I’ve also started running so that has been occupying my time a bit more.
Yesterday I also went to my first Meetup.com meeting for “Unemployed Expats”. I had signed up for the meet up before I had my job and was really interested in meeting some new people because in all honestly, I don’t have really any friends here besides Job and a few of Job’s friends…who are primarily obviously his friends, not mine. (For those of you reading this, please do not take that the wrong way as I love you all as well. I’m just stating a fact.) It’s really nice to meet other expats because both you and they understand the struggle of fitting in to Dutch society, where as speaking with someone who is Dutch can’t quite relate on the same level unless they’ve been an expat elsewhere. I’ve joined a few of the other expat meetup groups, however most of them are late at night or at bars or clubs which really isn’t my scene. I’d prefer to go out and have a nice cup of coffee to just chat and get to know someone in the morning or afternoon.
Anyways, I met some lovely people at the meetup and we met at Harvest and Company which is a very cute cafe/antique/furniture shop off of the Overtoom. The coffees, teas, and baked goods were all delicious! I had a cappuccino and a bread pudding. The interior of the cafe is very home-y and relaxed and as I watched people come in for their coffees and teas, everyone was so friendly and there was such a lovely atmosphere. They all greeted and said hello to one another and it was just a very happy feeling all around.
After the Meetup, I met Job for lunch and we got some lovely bagels at Bagels & Wraps. I love the Dutch Bagel. Job usually gets the Valley Girl or a Tuna Melt. For the amount of times we go here, I strangely have no photos of the bagels, but they’re delicious!
From lunch, we took a nice little walk around the area. It’s really starting to become spring here!
Crocuses are popping up everywhere!
After our walk, Job had to get back to work. I stuck around for another hour (I had a meeting with one of the managers for work an hour later) and first walked by this huge chess game…
and then went to people watch in Vondelpark until the hour had passed. An ominous cloud sat above me.
Unfortunately it did start to rain. I found some refuge and the rain passed quickly. I went to my meeting, had a nice chat, and then went home.
A few hours later, Job came home and we cooked up some dinner and relaxed together which was really nice.
We watched some Gordon Ramsay before bed and it was a good night.
The Crafting Begins
I have a lot of time to myself here while Job is working. I like to busy myself with familiar things, like working on this blog, or tidying the house, or being creative.
I really enjoy crafting and have really been itching to work on a project. I really like to make hand made gifts, but since I don’t know the area that well yet, I’m not 100% sure where I can get all of the supplies I want and need, especially on a really tight budget.
I decided to use my trusty sidekick, google, and found this blog with a very nice listing of crafty stores in the area. I decided to go to Van Beek because it seemed like the closest thing to a Michael’s or A.C. Moore… I think I went to a smaller Van Beek. It had basic art supplies, like scissors, glue, staplers, rulers, paper cutters, colored paper, markers, pens, inks, pencils, paint, pastels…
I purchased a box of colored pencils, a glue stick, a hot glue gun, glue gun cartridges, a red metallic marker, and a silver metallic marker.
My friend Ayla got me a package of awesome blank cards with a colorful frame.
I stopped by the local Bruna which is a store that sells books and cards. I purchased some stamps, and some gem stone/rhinestoney things.
I decided I was going to make some personalized cards.
When I got home, I opened up the Pages application on my computer and found a nice font that I liked. From there, I wrote the names of people I wanted to send cards to.
From there, I would very lightly sort of sketch out the name with one of the colored pencils. 
I then went over the sketch a few times with the same pencil,
and then would use other colors very similar to make a nice blended color and thicken the name.
I added some fun gem stones to the card and then would proceed to write my friends a nice letter.
It’s a really easy and simple craft project that doesn’t make too much of a mess and doesn’t take too long to create.
If you’d like a nice personalized card, just send us your address to either thetravelingspoonsblog@gmail.com or jobandhannah@gmail.com
or..Write us a letter and we’ll write you back!
The Run
Yesterday I decided I needed to start running again. It was a perfect day for it and the night before I made up a destination/route and checked to make sure all the fun apps I like to use were working.
When I woke up in the morning, I made some scrambled eggs (well egg, we only had one) and ate a strawberry activia yogurt. I accompanied this with two or three glasses of water and then waited for all of my food to settle.
I looked through my dresser to pull out my running clothes, my compression pants, my dry fit t, and running jacket and sneakers and got all geared up.
I stretched in the living room before my run to make sure that I wouldn’t really seriously injure myself.
While thinking about my route, I also thought about the errands I had to run. I needed to go to the bank to withdraw money from my American bank account and deposit it into my Dutch bank account to ensure I could pay for rent. I also needed to get some contact lens solution as well as eggs and more yogurt.
I packed my bank cards into my pocket with my residence permit card and my tram card, grabbed my inhaler and keys, and was out the door.
I set up my couch to 5k app because it’s really helpful at getting me back into running and set up the first run since I really haven’t run in a long time. I launched a playlist on spotify and off I went.
I basically just followed the tram tracks so that way, if anything went wrong, I wouldn’t be very far from a tram ride home.
My plan was to run to the Vondelpark from my house or get as close to it as I could because that is about a 5 km distance.
The run was really nice. Intervals were 1.5 min of walking and 1 min of running. Pretty easy for my first time back. That went very well and I wasn’t even tired when I finished the 30 minutes of the couch to 5k program. I had traveled 2.23 miles.
I decided to keep on going and just walk the rest of the way to Vondelpark which was about another mile or so away. From this point, I launched my Nike+ App to track the walk. When I got to Vondelpark, I messaged Job and asked if he had taken his break yet. The park is very close to where Job works, and he was actually out on a break so I walked over and said hi and told him about my run. He was pretty impressed which was cool. He did have to get back to work though, and I wanted to continue on walking and finishing my errands, so we both departed.
I made my way to the bank, walked through Dam Square and the Rokin, and to Centraal Station and hopped on a bus back to our neighborhood. 
I had walked an additional 3.12 miles which was pretty great. I forgot to pause the walk when I ran into Job and when I went to the bank which severely hurt my pace, but it was great exercise still.
I got off the bus and went to the C1000. (I only went to C1000 because I didn’t want to have to go all the way back home and get a bag or pay for a bag there, and they have a container where you can put your old bags for someone who may have forgotten a bag to take, so I took one.) I purchased the eggs and yogurt I needed and made my way next to Kruidvat which is like a CVS. I found my contact lens solution here and then walked home.
I definitely strained a muscle in my left leg because I can barely lift it and my right leg is sore. But it’s a good sore. Hopefully the weather will be nice on Sunday.
A Taste of Leiden: A Photo Journal
A few weeks ago, while Job’s mom and sister were in Cambodia visiting Job’s brother, his brother’s girlfriend and their beautiful baby, Job and I went to Leiden to experience the city he grew up in and have dinner with his dad. Here are some photos, some with explanations about the sights we saw that day!
To start you off, here is a map (kind of) of where we walked and the photos we took.
A windmill near Leiden Centraal
The view from outside of La Place/V&D
Again..
And again…
And one last time. I really liked how you could see all the red tops of the houses.
Appelbollen (seriously the best things in this world. They’re kind of like Apple Pie balls, but not pie. They’re a different pastry and they’re covered in sugar. They get topped with Vanilla sauce and you can see the container of it in the back right of this photo. SO GOOD.)
This is a gravestone that makes up part of the floor from Pieterskerk (Peter’s Church)
Here is a panorama of the inside of the church. It is so vast and gorgeous. This photo does not do it justice.
I liked the top of this building. There is a coat of arms carved in the top.
Everything here is very “towny” and cute. This building had a french poem painted on the side.
This building is from 1683. OLD.
Pilgrims in the Netherlands!
A splash of color!
A statue.
This car lost it’s license plate… 😦
De Burcht
The entrance.
View from the top
View from the top, inside of De Burcht
More red housetops
The sun setting over a church
Another view from the top, inside.
And again.
Some more sunset over the church.
Another church and some other buildings
The side view of De Burcht
The sun setting near a canal. I loved how the sun hit the canal houses.
Waiting for dinner and relaxing
The amazing dinner Job’s father made. Meat with roasted parsnips, carrots and potatoes!
The meat was juicy, the veggies roasted perfectly with a nice herby taste and a nice crisp. The company was wonderful. A very nice day for us all!
Very happy to have received this mail!
The Mix Up
*As for anonymity’s sake, I will be replacing the names of streets here with random names and post codes with random numbers, but anyways, let me tell you about my already so exciting day… So exciting that things have already happened and it’s barely 10 AM.
Let me just first explain some logistics. In Amsterdam, many street names either end in “straat” meaning street or “plein” meaning square. Also, in the Netherlands, post codes directly correlate to an exact street (it’s brilliant). We live on *Bakerstraat with post code *4812QR. When we first moved here, we believed, according to our lease, that we lived on *Bakerplein with post code *4812QT.
When we went to city hall to secure my BSN, in America, a BSN is like an SSN (Social Security Number), The woman asked us for our postal code and then our street. We told her, but she said that the information we gave her did not match the lease. The lease said we lived at Bakerstraat 4812QS. Also not correct. We ended up using Google Maps to figure out that we actually live at Bakerstraat 4812QR. We thought it was Bakerplein because of the bus stop that is near our house.
Anyways, we get a lot of mail that is neither ours, or Job’s brother’s/his brother’s family’s mail, as we are renting from them right now. We thought at first maybe it was the people who were here before them. Then recently, we received some mail for two little girls. The envelope was kind of squishy like some sort of fabric was inside. We knew it was probably something important and that we had to get the letter back to the people it was intended for.
A couple of weeks passed and it was now the night of my birthday. (You read all about that the other day.) Well the gift I received from Job’s parents was a MuseumKaart, a membership card to the majority of the museums here. Job’s dad informed us that we should have… or would within the next day receive it in the mail. Awesome!
Well, come February 18th, we still hadn’t received anything. Job was getting worried. He called his dad, just to double check and asked him what address he had sent the card to, and sure enough, he had sent it to Bakerplein 4812QT. (This of course was our fault because we had given him initially the incorrect address.) Well that was the reason as to why it hadn’t gotten here yet.
As Job was leaving this morning, he strongly advised that I go around the corner to Bakerplein and go to house number *25, the same as us and speak with the people who live there and let them know that we thought that we had their mail and they maybe had (HOPEFULLY) my museumkaart. Job left around 9AM for work. About thirty minutes later, I sent him a little message in my awful Dutch and asked if it would be okay to say this to the people who lived on Bakerplein, if it made sense. He made a few tweaks. I then rewrote all of the message down on paper and left my phone number in case they didn’t answer.
I then asked if it was too early to go over there. He told me I should be fine, so I went. I slowly walked over, mostly because I was rehearsing my Dutch and looked for number 25. There it was! I looked at the name on the mailbox and wrote it on the envelope. I also had in hand, the card for the two little girls, and that was their house! I rang the bell hesitantly and waited. I was really nervous that I was going to trip over all of the Dutch words, so I did what I always do when I get nervous. ”Hoi, uhhh… Ik spreek Engels…” “Oké,” the woman replied. I then went into English and told her how I lived at Bakerstraat at the same number and how I thought my boyfriend’s father sent me mail to their address accidentally and that we had some mail of theirs as well. The woman welcomed me inside, and I told her that in the card I had written was also my phone number in case it happened again and we needed to switch mail. She looked through her things and found my museumkaart!
(A little worse for wear, but hey, it happens)
Job and I had been so worried that his parents had spent money on something that might have accidentally gotten thrown away and then what! No museumkaart for me, but I was super lucky.
The woman was so nice and we decided that if accidentally we got the wrong mail again, it was just a quick walk around the corner to bring it to the correct place.
PHEW! Crisis averted!
Now! Time for some breakfast!
Some Dutchisms: What I’ve learned in one month
Suffice it to say that living here has been great, however there are many need to knows that I wish I knew more about.
1. Free Water: You may be thinking.. what do you mean free water? Well, in the United States, whenever you go to a restaurant, you always get free water. Hi, yes, I’d like a glass of tap water to start… Yeah. Not here. Good luck finding any restaurants that give you a glass of water. Basically you pay for a bottle of water, whether it is barely 8 oz or you get a gigantic bottle, you still pay for your water. And one last thing… AMSTERDAM HAS GREAT DRINKING WATER. It really is a shame, because I’m a huge water drinker. It’s practically the only thing I drink. I have come around to carrying a huge water bottle with me at all times and get very sad when it’s empty.
2. Coffee (Koffie): If you’re not a coffee drinker (I will have to say I definitely was not a coffee drinker. I probably had one to three coffees a week if that before moving here, and that was only recently) you will become a coffee drinker. Wherever you go, whenever you go, you are always offered coffee. Coffee at your friend’s place, coffee with your parents, coffee at the bank, coffee for breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert. At the Bijenkorf Nespresso counter, coffee for a snack… the list goes on. And I’m not sure if this last part is true, but saying no to coffee at least feels to me like a big no-no. So I just say yes..and then get really dehydrated because you can’t get water anywhere without paying.
3. The weather (in the winter): I would say that on average, at least in the winter, it will rain at some point every day. It is also severely windy, or at least has been, with howling winds every night that sometimes carry through the next day. The air here is humid and it hasn’t dropped below freezing since I landed. I have not seen snow like all of my friends and family on the east coast of the United States. I will just say that the type of rain it is is that spitty misty rain for the most part so it just makes my glasses really spotty and hard to see and makes my hair frizzy… in other words, I wish it were just actually raining. The best part of this rain is seeing the bicyclists attempting to bike with umbrellas and the like.
4. The grocery store: Albert Heijn, The Marqt, C1000…First off, you have to pay for a shopping cart. Edit: you get the money back… Job has this cool coin keychain thing that he can put in the shopping carts and we don’t have to pay which is great, but won’t be ours for much longer. I am going to look into seeing if we can find one somewhere. Anyways, i’m not sure on the price of carts, but basically, take a basket and hope you don’t need more than that, or go with someone and each of you take a basket. Also, bring your own bags because otherwise you will be paying for a bag to bag up your groceries, and be prepared to do it quickly and efficiently because the cashier will start sending the next customer’s things through and you will only be halfway done and if you’re like me, you’ll get frustrated. I now bring a backpack whenever I go to the supermarket and fill all of the outside pockets of my backpack with shopping bags to make sure that just in case it doesn’t all fit in my backpack, i’ve got extra bags and don’t have to pay!
5. Bicycles: Everyone here bikes. Everywhere. So that’s cool. I can do that. I brought my bike here from home. it’s good to go. You should bike here too. It’s the easiest way to get around. Things to know about cyclists: some are crazy and must cycle past you no matter how fast you’re going so that they can just go faster. Some are not paying attention to anything and bike 2km/h and don’t care that there are other bikers on the road. Tourists. Just look out for them because they’re probably the most unsafe thing about bicyclists. They don’t know where they can and cannot bike, or about the nifty bike traffic lights or the hand signals to let people know which way they’re going, or how to maneuver that turn because they’re not sure that you saw them make the hand signal. I promise I saw you now GO! Also, watch out for the motor bikes/vespa/scooter things on the bike path because sometimes they go really fast and it’s really scary when they pass. Just stay to the right and you should be fine. And make sure to go to the HEMA to purchase €3 bike lights because even though you bought really cool rechargeable ones from America, they’re not that cool.
6. Learn enough Dutch to be able to say sorry (sorry), excuse me (pardon), thanks (Dank U, dankuwel), please (Alstublieft), do you speak English (Spreekt u engels?), I don’t speak Dutch (Ik sprek geen nederlands), yes (ja), no (nee), bye (Dag, tot ziens), and hello (hallo). And if you’re going to be here for an extended time, when you’re at the supermarket, the last thing the cashier asks you is if you want your receipt. These few words/phrases will come in handy. I went to the bank the other day, and I really don’t like being a rude american, so I will always ask the person I need to talk to if they speak english. I think it’s more polite. Otherwise, you can just start speaking english to the Dutch. Most of them know it enough to answer your questions… Most of the time.
7. Get a map or a data plan for your phone (so you can use maps). The city is super old, full of canals, lots of little alleys, bridges and is curved. It’s really really really beyond helpful to have a map. And Google Maps is great for when you’re biking and lost because you can get bike directions.
8. Fries and other fried delights: There are snack bars on every corner. And it is AWESOME. They serve fries with pindasaus. It’s peanut sauce, or satay sauce. Fries here are double or triple fried for some extra crunchiness, and you can get them everywhere. The first week I was here, I’m pretty sure I ate fries with pindasaus every day. Also, croquetten, kaassouffles, and bitterballen. All amazing as well. Try them at least once. They’re usually served with mustard and the common fry topping here besides pindasaus is mayo. FEBO is your one stop shop for all of the above, however you can definitely find better fries around the city.
9. Waterlooplien: Go there. Go there any day but Sunday. There is a huge flea market every day with lots of cool things for very cheap prices and also some good food. Loempias. That is what I would suggest. They are spring rolls and I love them, and sometimes there is this awesome/ crazy lady who basically just sings to herself really loudly. She prepares the loempias.
10. Money: This is super important! BRING LOTS OF CASH. LOTS OF IT! It is very rare that any place here takes your american credit card. Even if you have the chip inside, because guess what America, Chip and signature isn’t a thing. And that is what is in the American Chip credit cards. No. It’s chip and pin here, and if you don’t have a pin to go with your chip (I promise you, you don’t) Then you won’t be able to purchase anything except for at huge retailers, like De Bijenkorf (basically a huge Nordstrom/Bloomingdales/Macys/Departmentstore-like place). So bring cash because if you don’t have a residence permit/are a citizen here/ have a BSN (the dutch equivalent to social security number), you also will not be able to obtain said chip and pin card (PINNEN is what it’s called here). Just bring cash.
Bonus! ChipKaart: This is what is used to ride the tram/busses/ and on occasion, trains depending on how much money you have on your chipkaart. You must tap your card every time you enter the train/bus/tram and also when you exit. This is very important. A)At some stations, you will not be able to enter, and you will not be allowed on a bus or tram without doing so, and you will also be yelled at by the tram driver. B) If you don’t check out, you’re immediately charged €6 because they assume you went as far as you could go. So remember to check in and check out by holding the beautifully holographic card to the card reader.
I will try to think of more helpful/insightful things later on. I know this is a bit out of the range of what I normally post about, but thought it was a bit of fun information to know.
Let me know what dutch things got you, or what other things you want to know about in terms of living here!
Everything hip… is from Holland! – YouTube
It’s the coolness that gets you here; patience is what keeps you here.
The Dutch do it right.
Making the world a better place – 200 dollars at a time (hers)
Just because I know you are dying to know how this hair whisperer has solved her problems. I went on an all out treasure hunt to find a hair dryer yesterday. I even left work early to ensure I didn’t miss any shop that closed at 18:00. I went to the first place that everyone said had hair dryers….
I feel your pain. I’m a hair dresser and I knew right off the bat (because of an experience two years prior in London) that my hair dryer was not going to work in Amsterdam.. and I love my white hair dryer. I told Job the first thing I was going to buy when we arrived in Amsterdam was a Hair Dryer. Three days after landing, we went to the local Saturn near the Amsterdam Bibliotheek and I shoveled out eighty something dollars. It is a necessity.
Making the world a better place – 200 dollars at a time (hers)
The Traveling Spoons 