Nederlands

helllllllo! I am currently sitting in the room Ella and I are staying in at her Tante (aunt) Coby and Ome (uncle) Marten's house. Before I begin discussing things any further.. I have a clarification to make for those that I misled. The Netherlands is to Holland just as America is to The United States. I wasn't really clear about that.. but now I am! There are provinces here.. I don't know how many, but the province we are in is South Holland... which doesn't really make sense to me because we aren't even that far south in Holland. But there is a North Holland province and a South Holland province and obviously many others, but we are in the South Holland province. The town that we are in is Voorhout. Tante Coby and Ome Marten's house is in the country with flower bud fields all around. There is also a couple goats (is that how do you pluralize a goat?) and the biggest bunny rabbit and a horse and many other creatures next to the canal that is right next to us. They have a HUGE garden behind us with the most beautiful flowers, all samples from Ella's dad's business Dutch Gardens. Flowers are huge in Holland... everyone has gardens and really awesome flowers. There are canals everywhere here. Parallel to all the roads and drive ways and such. The reason being because Holland is LOWER than sea level. Interesting, huh? This is probably the lowest altitude I'll ever be at... which is cool, maybe the air is richer here or something? So the canals have something to do with the low altitude and how the sea is higher and they help so the country doesn't flood or something to that extent. I haven't really got the science nailed down, but I mean it's really beautiful so that's cool.

Where to start where to start? From the beginning, I suppose. My apologies for those who aren't looking for something long to read .. there's just so much to tell and I enjoy writing! Also, apologies to my friends because I know my family is interested in lots of details.. so maybe everyone else should just skim? or skip to when the pictures start popping up?

SO, the flight here went really smoothly. Went through security, customs, etc. without one question from the grumpy workers. It was fabulous! The only problem we encountered was a 30 minute delay on the first flight because of leaky water or something, but that all got straightened out and we were on our way to Heathrow/London. Quite an interesting event occurred there! First of all, I was barely conscious as we made our way through that airport to our next gate because I took drowsy inducing dramamine way late in our first flight because it was through the night and I couldn't sleep and I thought that would be an important thing to do, but I took it with only 3 hours left in the flight which led me to be drowsy for many hours post landing. With all that said, we got to Heathrow at sometime the next day and when we found the gate and sat down Ella saw a girl with a sweatshirt on that read the word: HOPE. Not many people go around wearing hoodies that say things like HOPE ....UNLESS.... you go to Hope College! So she was kind of sitting crowded by many other people and since I was not in a good state of mind we just kind of like laughed about how ironic that was that we would see somebody from our small college in Michigan in a HUGE airport in London, but after the flight when we were getting our luggage (I was much more awake at this point) we saw her and I asked her if she went to Hope College and she was like Yeah! and then we noticed that she was wearing Dance Marathon pants and we were like oh man this is crazy. And it was. And we asked her what she was doing in Amsterdam and she said she is on her honey moon and that she is half dutch and has never been there so she came! God is really good at reminding you where you come from when your thousands of miles away... He always tends to show up :)

I already have written way to much and I haven't even made it to Voorhout..

Basically since our arrival we have been taking lots of walks and have taken 1 bike ride with many more to come. EVERYONE here rides bikes, and I honestly mean everyone. There are streets for bikes next to the normal streets and even some busier intersections have stop lights for bikes. The lifestyle is SO active here. I have yet to see one person that is obese. There are so many beautiful towns around here today we biked to Lisse and Sassenheim. We walked to this castle called Teylingen which is about a 10 or 15 minute away walk. It was built in the 1300s... it's beautiful. It wasn't open so we couldn't go super close so we are going to go back there on Wednesday so we can walk around it more. We also saw another castle on our bike ride called something like D'ever. 2 castles in my first full day here. Later in the day we went to Delft which is an AMAZING city with ancient buildings, beautiful canals, tons of terrace style restaurants, and so much diversity. I loved it.

My time in Holland has just begun seeing as we have 10 more days here. I'm really excited for everything and will definitely keep you guys updated. My memory card adapter card thing is in the bottom of my backpack under a lot of stuff and I haven't worked up the energy to get it out, but when I do I will upload pictures and then my stories will make more sense.

Thank you everyone for your prayers and support and love in sending me here on my first journey in Europe. Ella and I are now jamming to Sufjan Stevens and trying to wind down from the excitement of our internet working... I'll keep you as updated as I can.

love from The Nederlands,

Jess