Week Two

shamelessly showing off the new little logo I made for the blog

I'm 3 chai lattes in and convinced this country doesn't know what "chai" is. The first one was a tumeric golden milk. The second was similarly tumeric based without the additional spices. And the third was a powder mix, I think? Now granted, the word "chai" does simply mean "tea" in many languages, but you, dear reader, know what I mean. I mean a lovely spiced, creamy, black tea latte. And before you think I, a mere American, have no idea what I'm talking about, I do have to casually throw out there that I was neighbors with THE chai guy for 2 years and the chai I make at home comes straight from his book. So it looks like I'll be saving my euros and making all my chai from scratch now. Not that I'm mad about that (I just didn't have the ingredients for it yet).
Now what this country does know? Coffee. The Netherlands consumes the most coffee of all European nations. Do they know coffee well, though? ....Jury's still out, but I'm guessing my PNW coffee-snobbery isn't a promising baseline to be coming from.
That said, I did learn a new skill this week - operating a Coffee Pot. I found one in a drawer here at the apartment, so I cleaned it up and tried doing as the locals do. I thought I'd have more regrets and be counting down the days until all our stuff, espresso machine included, arrives, but it wasn't so bad. Maybe I'm not as much a coffee snob as I thought. Or maybe all coffee is equally "meh" to me.

This week we also ventured out further than before and found the "big" grocery store, Jumbo. It's still smaller than your average Fred Meyer or Walmart grocery section, but it has a nice selection of produce. And it's right next to MediaMarkt, the computer/appliance store, so we were able to replace Christopher's monitor that arrived broken.
My mission this week had been to find a birthday gift for Christopher, so two days in a row I spent some hours poking into all the shops and finding what they were.

I was skeptical when they told us the construction here at the apartments would be finished by the end of December - what's the saying about it always takes twice as long, and is twice as expensive? - and while I still have some doubts, the crews have been out there working every. Single. Day. No breaks for the weekend, they get here at 7:30am and go until 8:00pm or later. I'm learning to sleep through some of it in the morning. Today around 6pm they started tearing down a wall adjacent to our front door, that was looooud.

We're still wrestling with a few things, like getting UPS to evaluate our broken computers, and get our 20ish boxes shipped out of Portland still (all our worldly possessions are sitting in a warehouse somewhere right now, it's been 3 weeks without any word from the shipping company???) but as far as the day-to-day goes, it's been a very lovely two weeks settling in to our new routine.

I've been reading the only book I brought with me, Grandma Denny's memoir, and it's been so fun to read her adventures while beginning our own. I think Liara is also enjoying it!

On Friday night, there was a loud party happening right next door, with what seemed to be mostly 20-somethings (probably students, given that Delft is technically a college town). It went until 3am with a constant rotation of people right outside our window smoking and talking loudly. That was... not our favorite.

We tried making our favorite split pea soup this week, which is a popular soup here it seems, yet it was strangely difficult to find all the ingredients in the same place. Hence finding the larger grocery store. Despite a few mild differences, it turned out delicious and very similar to usual, so that's a win! Nice to know we can make some of our favorite comfort foods and have them taste nearly identical (nachos, crunchy tacos, and burritos are a few others we've tried).

The Denny's fave split pea soup recipe from the old red and white "Better Homes" cookbook, but made with chicken broth instead of bouillon, and beef summer sausage

Here's some distances of regular walks we take:
Oude Kerk - 0.25 mile
Mini grocery/pet store - 0.4 miles
Niuewe Kerk - 0.5 miles
Jumbo grocery - 1 mile
This is of course only one direction, so double that for any trip we make (also with the caveat that those are if you take the "most direct route" and we don't have a firm grasp yet on those yet, it's really more of a "wander in the general direction until you reach it" thing, lol).
The running estimate I have for our first 2 weeks here puts us at already having walked 50 miles! Here's to hitting 100 by our first month. Or, sorry, 160km.