Friends

If you ever meet a lonely foreigner living in your area, please welcome them into your life. Speaking from experience it makes a huge impact. Make the extra effort and think of me as you do it, knowing that a family has been a tremendous blessing to me by inviting me into their life when they didn't have to.

New Place

Even after almost three weeks I am still amazed at how many ways this New Place is like the place from which I come. Everything's kind of shrunk, like the opposite of the Big Bang, but other than that it's very similar. I suppose it makes sense on some levels, since people are people the world over. I think the people here expect me to be strange and different as well, and I am, but only in the way that one person is strange and different from another.

This weekend I went to Amsterdam for a day. Now that was a different place. It reminded me of going to New York City and seeing all the tourists and hearing all the different languages, except it was my language that was the foreign one, and I was the tourist. It is a beautiful city, with the cobblestone streets and the canals and the flowers growing out of cracks in the rocks and pots on the pavement. It was also full of people who you could tell were there for the city's more infamous aspects, and having a marvelous time.

Abby in the Flat

I'm contemplating changing the name of my blog to "Abby in the Flat." Apparently there's a Dutch TV show for kids with that name, so that's what the girls (and their mother) think when they hear my name.

I've always wanted to learn how to drive stick-shift, but I'm not sure I wanted to learn in such a high-stress environment. The roads here are very narrow. Thankfully there are no hills at all anywhere in Holland, so I'll be fine as far as that's concerned.

This is an absolutely beautiful country, and the people are very proud of it, at least the ones here. All the houses and yards are neat and well-kept, with no junk in the fields or around the houses. There are also very few fences. Canals serve to keep the animals in, and it makes for a very neat and tidy view. I wish I could take a panoramic picture so you could get a better idea. Think Texas, but with lots more water.
Snow one day:

Gone the next:

Arrival

I'm not sure why I thought moving to a country where I knew less than nothing of the language was going to be easy.

Church this morning was good, if a tad overwhelming. Everything was done nearly exactly the same as my church in the States, but, of course, all in Dutch.

We ice skated on a canal for a good two hours this afternoon. It started snowing as we headed in, but they say it will turn to rain and there will be no more ice skating after tomorrow. Too bad, but glad I got to participate in such a quintessential Dutch experience!

Snowing:

Preparation

This is Paddington, my new traveling companion:

Can't Go Back Now

In seven days my life will change completely.

And the World Spins Madly On

My new home, as of February 11: