Listening to Ecouragement

Tempus fugit, my friends.  Tempus, if nothing else, fugit.  Today was the last day of my language courses!  I have the spoken part of the test tomorrow, and the rest on Friday.  How quickly it all went by!  Though, I do admit there were certainly times I thought it would never end.  I hope to keep in contact with the girls from the class.  And Sören.  :-)  

Today was so beautiful!  After class we all went to a restaurant and sat outside and chatted.  In Dutch, English and in German!  :-)  Afterwards, I biked around with Susanne for a bit, and then sat in the park and read.  Then I came home and did all sorts of boring things like cleaning and organizing and reading and yadda.  :-)

I went to the Burcht to read my book, and sat in the grass by the punk teenagers.  They're always there.  I'd say they range in age from 16-19 or so, and they always sit around, laughing and playing guitar and making lots of noise.  :-)  There are two girls with particularly cool hair. The left side of one girl's hair is white, and the other side is black.  The other girl has long long long bright purple braids.  The boys all have long hair too!  :-)  

There was also a family in the park, a mother and two children.  A girl, about 8 years old, and a boy, maybe 4.  The girl was trying to teach her family some sort of game.  It was like a mixture of cat's cradle and double Dutch.  Two people stand about 7-8 ft (2-2.5m) apart with this long thin rubber band thing stretched between them (think of the string in cat's cradle.)  One person stands in the middle, and jumps over the ropes in various patterns that the other two people must call out.  Left foot in/right foot out, right foot in/left foot out, both in, both out, both on top of the ropes, but they all have cute names.  You can even jump over the bands, taking one with you on your feet, twisting it around, making it even more complicated.  Yikes.  

The thing that really hit me about the family, was the relationship between the girl and her brother.  The boy got in the middle at one point to try the game, and he just wasn't good at it.  Not surprising really, he was still on the young side of 4.  The girl was just so patient with him.  She encouraged him every time he messed up, and praised him highly when he did something right.  She treated him in such an adult way.  And thanks to her help, he never got frustrated.  And finally, he could do it.  Not perfectly, but he even managed the really complicated jumps!  

:-)