Like this:

Last time I was mentioning that our landlord Jurgen still had to come to finish the work on the gas pipes while I went to a vegan dinner in a squat for the evening. The dinner was held at a place called Joe´s Garage in Amsterdam-Oost, a nice cozy place which doesn´t even look like a squat from the inside. The kitchen was well equipped and clean, and when I arrived there, Diego, my macrobiotic friend and Denise´s boyfriend, was already there cooking with his 2 German friends. I said I would help them prepare the dinner (which was even macrobiotic, yay!), so I quickly picked up a task and started working. I had no idea I would actually spend the whole evening working in the kitchen pretty much non-stop There were about fifty (maybe even more) people coming for the dinner, which is a regular event twice a week there. No wonder there are many people coming, since the dinner costs only 3 euros and is a big culinary event! It´s not always macrobiotic (basically anybody can come and cook there), but they are always vegan, I heard. Later Denise came from work and helped us too – we needed every hand! Everything was running a bit late, so it was rather chaotic, but fun at the same time, because it was all nice enthusiastic people and I got to chat to them quite a bit, while working We made a delicious pumpkin soup, a red lentil stew with fried aubergines and some other vegetables, lightly blanched cauliflower and broccoli, brown rice/oat balls filled with two types of red beet filling and covered in seeds/herbs, and Denise even baked a carrot/coconut pie! What a feast! I helped with cooking, serving, doing the dishes and cleaning up. At least I could eat the dinner for free, and I got to bring home a few vegetables that were left (a lot was scored for free at organic shops, amazing!).

During the evening Nardo texted me that Jurgen managed to damage one of the gas pipes, so we would be without gas for one day and two nights Not nice…That meant no showering and no possibility to cook at home. Luckily Denise and Diego invited me over for dinner at their place for the following day, that was awesome! I really like cooking with them! And I finally got to meet their Slovak flatmates and speak a little bit of Czech with them We had to eat out twice with Nardo because of the shut down gas – once we went to the kebab place (where I got fries and falafel, but it felt really unhealthy, ick!) and the next day we went to our favourite café ´t Sluisje, where we had soup and fries again (pumpkin soup, quite nice!). I even tried their “karnemelk”, a drink I haven´t seen anywhere else – sour milk with orange juice. Sounds freaky, but actually tastes nice! This time the weather was not nice enough to sit outside, so we went indoors, where it´s very stylish and “gezellig” (a Dutch word with no English equivalent…it means basically cute/friendly/cozy…kinda ). Oh, and once we also ordered from a Thai delivery place, that was actually delicious! Anyway, it was nice to get our gas back again, there was a professional worker coming, it even looks nice! Now there are still some holes in the walls/floors/ceilings that need to be covered up by Jurgen, but that is not done yet…hopefully today it will be…not really bothering us though.

I reconciled myself with the fact that I am not going to have any proper job here in Holland. I looked at my study schedule and found out that I have almost zero time to work…don´t know if that´s good news or bad news, I guess both But it seems I have at least a very little part-time job for the moment. I was hired as a babysitter of two Greek-Dutch children, a 11-year-old girl (every Thursday) and a 5-year-old boy (once a month only). Today is my first day of picking up the girl at her school and then watching her for 3 hours until her mom comes home. The kids don´t really speak English much, but the girl at least understands pretty well, so hope it´s ok! Unfortunately, due to my studies I can´t babysit too often

One great thing about Amsterdam is that you can get a free haircut here, that´s just what I did! Nardo goes there for years already – it´s a hairdresser school where they need to constantly practise on live people and they´re happy when you come and become a “model” :-p It´s actually really good, because the teacher is there supervising and sometimes she does a lot of the actual cutting herself, like in the case of my fringe. Great and free!

We made another trip to the Waterland countryside a week or two ago, it´s always so beautiful! This time we went to the village of Zunderdorp which is another cute quiet village with white bridges and neat gardens We were surprised to find a table in front of one of the houses with a sign saying that they sell homemade jams – that of course woke my curiosity We rang the bell and ended up buying three lovely jams from the lady – blackberry jam, quince “cheese” (reminder of Portugal!) and a pumpkin/ginger jam for me. Just a few minutes from Zunderdorp there is the organic farm Ons Verlangen, where they sell a lot of their own produce, including homemade icecream! Well, you can imagine what happened next…the icecream was indeed divine, eaten in a sunny farmyard, with the smell of animals around So cool to examine the local foods!! At the farm they even have a “milk tap”, with raw milk, where Nardo is planning to get his milk some day, it´s even quite cheap. From Zunderdorp we continued to the small town of Broek in Waterland, which is incredibly charming!! We spent quite a long time walking through its streets, even visiting the local cemetery (always interesting from an anthropological point of view!). There are little canals in the town and a lot of old fancy houses, and a small harbour…lovely!

A few days ago we went again to the Ons Verlangen farm for some more icecream (my last maybe, as I´m trying to go full macro! :-p) and we even got to see their bunny hotel (yes, they take care of your bunny while you´re on holiday!) and a couple of totally adorable baby calves….I rather don´t want to know if they will get a chance to grow up, or if they will be slaughtered for meat They were really craving our attention and licking our hands with their huge tongues…

A few days ago I visited Nardo for the first time at his job at Starbucks in Beethovenstraat in the Oud-Zuid quarter. It´s extremely busy there! I came when Nardo was almost done with his shift, so that we could sit together at a table. I first ordered a caramel frappucino because it was very warm outside, but I really disliked the crushed ice (a thing I generally don´t like in drinks), so I gave the rest of it to Nardo and had a warm caramel macchiato, which was much nicer. Anyway, incredibly sweet!! My macro tastebuds can´t take so much sugar :-p and caffeine – coffee makes me always sick. I thought this time I would get away with it, but nope, sick again Good lesson, no more coffee for me, especially not with sugar and/or milk!!

Last weekend we decided to join our Scottish friend Malcolm who organizes power-off weekends several times a year. We never joined before, but this time I really wanted to try it. It´s kind of a fun experiment, spending your weekend without using electricity and finding creative ways how to have fun! Unfortunately, as we don´t live alone in this house, we couldn´t turn off the electricity in the whole house, but at least we didn´t use it at all in our two rooms! We did still use the gas cooker (which has an electric spark) and the shower (with its electric boiler), but it was nice lighting candles in the evening, instead of the big light…And also – no computers for two whole days!! How peaceful and relaxed Too bad Nardo fell sick during the weekend and we couldn´t do many fun activities. I spent a looot of time reading (which was great!) and I also went on Saturday on my own to read to our little park nearby, sitting on benches, and later on the wooden board on the water, sooooo nice. The weather was luckily beautiful the whole weekend! The next day Nardo was able to go to the park with me for a while, and we played some games on paper…Overall, it was a nice experience and I´d like to do it some day again!

Tomorrow I am finally starting my macrobiotic studies at the Kushi Institute, yay!! Really looking forward to that. But it means, I will be very very busy until December! Hopefully there will be some time to write blogposts, but don´t expect too much from me On Sunday we are also moving one floor down as I have mentioned before, that should not be too difficult, we don´t have that much stuff. I am very curious how I will like living in that room! It does seem like a nicer bigger room. Even though I got a bit emotionally attached to our attic “nest” :-p silly me…And the 17-year-old girl actually IS after all coming to live in our room. Hope that goes well…lately we are having quite big communication trouble with one of our Italian housemates So we really want somebody nice here…let´s see…

 

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