I'm sorry the images have fallen out of my blogs. I lost my camera's battery charger long ago, and I'm waiting for a new one to arrive. Forgive me. I'll post my Picture of the Day until I can get real pictures going. My Picture of the Day was a project I started a year or so ago where I'd take a picture of myself each day. The point was to see how I changed over time. It's really not an exercise in vanity, but rather a way of expressing how things can seem to change but stay the same. And how they seem to stay the same but change. Of course, I stopped doing it for a while. But now I've started it up again. This is what I looked like on my first day of Dutch lessons! :-)
A quick update and then a little personal insight. As I said, my Dutch lessons started today. I'm in a class with about 15 other German speakers. Though I'm not the only American! There's another girl from California who's married to a German. Dutch is entirely too much fun, and I love that everyone in the class is struggling but having a good time. There are a couple of girls who are really good already, and one girl who literally cannot get Dutch to come out of her mouth. Every time she tries it comes out as English. In fact, most of the mistakes that I've heard so far are due to people putting Dutch words in English order. Which is strange since Dutch and German are structurally very similar. Verbs on the end and all that. Then again, I imagine these girls have switched to "foreign language mode" which is, of course, English. So it's bound to be difficult. My "foreign language mode" is German, so I it's easier for me, I guess.
The photo also shows me on the day that I became legal in the Netherlands! I took a train (or two) down to Rijswijk (near Den Haag) to apply for my residence permit. I now have a sticker in my passport that says I've applied. Which makes me legal! Yay for legal immigration!
Now for the introspection bit:
As some of you may have guessed, I've been having a bit of trouble lately. Nothing major, just a total redefinition of who I thought I was. Just your run of the mill identity crisis. This is long overdue and I'm very happy that it's all falling down on me. It hurts a lot, but in that awesome, dance-like way where you haven't danced or even stretched in a long long time and suddenly you jump back in with a major workshop at a higher level than you can actually do so every muscle is sore and you know they'll only get more sore and you just can't tell if you're following the moves or back leading but you just can't stop moving because the music is so good, and your dancing only ends up improving despite looking sort of silly now and then and tripping over the best lead's feet a hundred times and don't worry, you'll feel great after you sleep it all off. I think most of you can relate (if you can follow my run-on there.)
I feel like a big rock has just been taken off of me and I'm the shriveled yellow grass that's been dying underneath. And it turns out I was the stupid blade who thought it would be safer under there. So now I'm trying to figure out this whole sun and rain thing again. Am I really grass? Or am I, I dunno, a dandelion or a clover, or one of those weird purple flowers with the square stems? Or any other variety of garden plant, exotic or otherwise? I'll just have to wait until I'm green enough to find out.
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