February 13th is my birthday. This year is the first year I am not in America to celebrate with my friends and family from home. This year I got the opportunity to celebrate with my Dutch family.
The day before my birthday proved to make my birthday a bit stressful. As many of you know, I’m was still waiting for a job offer as well as my residence permit. My birthday marked the one month mark of living in Amsterdam and I still didn’t have these two things. Well, on the 12th, I received a call from the recruiter for work and we spoke about a possible job offer, but I really had to think things over with the specifics I was given. That night I sat and pondered away if the contract was fair and a good choice to take. I felt a little cheated at what was offered and spent the whole night thinking over the pros and cons. If you’ve ever gone through a grueling interview/job application process, you know how stressful this can be. I contemplated all night long and into the next morning. I felt guilty and scared for what I was going to ask for the next morning from the recruiter, but I was not off base with the questions I had and the counter offer. I was just super stressed.
It was difficult to sleep and I woke up a but uneasy on my birthday.
Job however surprised me in the morning by bringing me to my favorite breakfast place, Gartine. 
Gartine is a super adorable little joint in a small street off of the Rokin. It is owned by a husband and wife who are always in a very pleasant and friendly mood! It’s just a fabulous atmosphere. They have a gorgeous chandelier hanging from the ceiling,
a huge painting on the wall, about 10 tables and a huge branch with some color of flowers hanging on the wall, depending on the season.
It’s just a very intimate feeling place… and you always need a reservation otherwise it’s almost impossible to get a table.
Anyways, the morning started off alright. We went to Gartine and got “the usual” for us, which is the yogurt
(This picture of the yogurt is from a previous visit. All of the food is seasonal some some ingredients change. The yogurt we had was decorated with dates instead of dried cranberries and coconut)
and the french toast, which is perfectly grilled and is so moist but has a caramelization of sugar that is to die for. It’s complimented by an apple compote as opposed to the traditional (at least for an American) maple syrup.
I had noticed a raisin bread on the menu that also looked intriguing and delicious, so we got that as well.
(You can’t see the bread in this picture as it is covered by old cheese and lettuce, but it’s there. This is also a photo from a previous visit, with a rhubarb jam)
We both ate our french toast and the raisin bread and started on the yogurt, however, the stress started to come back to me as I still had to call the recruiter back. I soon because uneasy and I totally lost my appetite. I decided we should go back home so I could call the recruiter, however before making our way back, I suggested Job call immigration because at this point, I still was waiting on my residence permit and it had been a month… it was only supposed to take two weeks to get my residence permit.
Job called the IND as I unlocked our bikes. He gave the normal information, my V-Nummer, date of birth, my name.. his name… and finally we were connected to a woman who looked up our case. She told us she could see it was taking a long time and that we applied five months ago and that we had come in a month ago for pictures and prints and all of this other stuff… finally she told us that the residence permit was at the IND in Amsterdam (that was good news…) and that they had been working very hard to mail out letters stating the cards were ready. Job informed the woman that I was working on getting a job and that it was necessary that I had my residence permit. He asked if there was anything else she could do… and low and behold someone at IND was helpful. She said she would just send an email stating that it was an emergency case and that we could just go over and pick up the residence permit. That is exactly what we did.
Upon arriving at the IND, we received a number and were asked to sit in the waiting room until the number was called. We only waited about five minutes and the bell went off that indicated it was our turn. We went over to station number six and sat with a woman. We explained that we had called in and that the woman we spoke to told us the residence permit card was indeed ready and that she emailed the office to say we would be allowed to pick it up (normally you need the letter they mail you to pick up the card.) The woman told us to wait a moment as she went to look for the card. She looked in one place and it wasn’t there, so she came back and told us she would look in the other spot. That is where she found it. She returned a few moments later, had me look over all of the information, gave us a little packet and we were on our way with residence permit in hand!
Next stop: VODAFONE!
Now that I had my residence permit, I could finally get a phone contract and not have to worry about topping up my prepaid SIM. (You need your residence permit card or European ID. A passport does not work.) We went to the Kalverstraat and spoke with a very helpful gentleman who set up my contract. That was fast and easy.
From there we took a minute to walk around the Kalverstraat because there are a lot of shops there. We stopped into a bookstore that was going out of business. It was nice to do some of these activities. It really helped me to try to de-stress. The bookstore was really sad… Everything was 70% off and books were just strewn about everywhere. I found a book about American food from before the time we froze things and had microwave meals and it looked interesting.. and was only €3. We also go a large map print of the city of Amsterdam. €12 well spent!
At this point, we finally biked back home to make the torturous call I had been dreading all day.
We arrived home and I made the call. Voicemail. So I left a message. A little bit later I finally received a call back and we negotiated the rest of the contract to fitting terms. I start on March 3!
Whoa…
Residence Permit… √
Phone Contract… √
a job… √
wow… I was a real citizen type person in Amsterdam…Established.
It was a fitting way to celebrate both my birthday and my one month of living in the country.
The stress finally subsided. We spent the rest of the day sort of relaxing and just being with each other. I also checked the mail (my favorite activity of the day) and found an awesome birthday card from my BFF Ayla.
The card is now hanging on our refrigerator with all of the other nice cards we’ve received.
At around six in the evening, we met up with Job’s father to enjoy a nice birthday dinner. Unfortunately Job’s mom couldn’t make it. She had just returned home from Cambodia a few days prior and wasn’t feeling too good.
We went to Bird, a Thai restaurant located in Amsterdam’s chinatown and near the Red Light District. I have to say that I have not had a whole lot of asian cuisine yet in Amsterdam, but I have had Bird every time I am in Amsterdam and it is top notch. Since we frequent it so much, as well as it’s cheaper counterpart, Snackbar Bird, which is across the street, we kind of have our favorite and “regular” dishes here as well. We always get Tom Ka Kai
which is a coconut milk based soup with chicken that is to die for, (unfortunately this trip, the soup was really salty. For compensation, we got free coffee and tea at the end of the meal) and Chicken Pad Thai.
This time, however we tried some new dishes with Job’s dad. We had some Beef with Mango and Pineapples that was both sweet and spicy and very delicious and Beef with Green Curry, which was also really really tasty. We even got dessert, which is not something Job and I ever really do because by the time we get to dessert, we are really really full, and I promise you, my birthday night was no different. For dessert, I had Sticky Rice with Mango, Job’s dad had some Thaise Cakes and Job had some sort of Sticky Rice with taro and Ginko nuts. It was super tasty. We left pleasantly stuffed and happy. 
It was a lovely birthday evening.
The Traveling Spoons 