Things are getting better in my brain.  I'm slowly beginning to sort all of these languages out.  My German is coming back to me.  For the past few days I've really not been able to speak German at all.  It just refused to come.  But I spent most of today speaking only German (when not speaking Dutch) and it's only getting easier.  I can now rock the known world in Dutch.  Or at least read children's books.  I'm actually extremely impressed with myself.  That is to say, I'm thoroughly impressed with my INTENSIVE Dutch language class.  When I started this class I could say, "hello, goodbye, thank you, water" (though not please, or May I have some) and I could struggle through understanding (but only if I imagined German spoken by someone from North Dakota.)   A week later and I am 163 pages into a book in Dutch.  Sure, it's written on a 10 year old level, but hey, 10 years in one week isn't bad!  I can (and do) now order food, shop at the market, write text messages, and give directions.  And people don't even answer me in English anymore!  Woot!  Not that they think I'm Dutch, by any stretch, but they at least don't think I'm incapable of Dutch.  I am in linguistic heaven here.

The sun also shone today, which is awesome.  People kept telling me that the weather in the Netherlands is bad.  The problem is, people kept telling me that it was always cloudy and rainy in Germany too.  And that turned out to be untrue.  It rained and clouded and all that, but not really noticeably more so than anywhere else.  (I heard this so many times that I decided that either a) I look for sunshine, b) Germans are depressing and look for rain, and/or c) they were lying to me!)  Unfortunately, they were not lying about the Netherlands.  It has rained every day this week.  Not just misty warm sprinkles either.  Hard, cold, wet, thundery, miserable rain.  I was downright depressed yesterday.  The sun shone for about an hour yesterday, and I went and stood in it.

But today was nice.  After class, Vanessa and I went to a cafe on Nieuw Rijn and sat on the boat and enjoyed the sun for a few hours.  Then we went to a bookstore and she got a children's book too.  Hers was some educational series about China.  Mine is about fairies.  Na ja.  She and I are meeting up tomorrow to go to the market.  I'm very excited.  I live for market day.  There's just so much life and noise and bustle on market day!  Vanessa is also entirely too cool.

I then came home and read my children's book in the sun.  Then it got to cold and windy, so I sat in my window.  Now I'm getting ready to go out with Yohann, Fabio, and Katerina.  These are real people, though if I had to make up European names, these would just about be them.  There would also be a Sebastian and a Natasha though.