Countdown to see my beloved ones again ♥

Ahhhhhh....

just two more nights sleeping and I will see my family and friends after four month not seeing them. That is the biggest time distance I haven’t seen them.

Don’t understand me wrong, I like my life here and I guess I will miss my host family here in this two weeks, too. But of course I am really happy to see them again because of course I’m not seeing all of my friends every week or something. But still you feel that the possibility isn’t there to see them, if you need them.

So this year Christmas will be something really special and even more Christmas feeling like. And of course after I’ve been to the Christmas market with Daniel, my cousin Mathias and his girlfriend Laura in Aachen. It was really crowded but also really nice – but that’s maybe because it was my first time on a Christmas market this year – and normally I’m going there two to three times A WEEK xD so for me it was awesome and I will go there on Sunday and Monday as much as my hands aren’t  freezing off.

my own little chirstmas tree ♥

But even though I have some Christmas feeling here as my host mom grew up in Germany with Christmas markets and nice decorated Christmas trees. So a few days after Sinterklaas they went to shop for a Christmas tree. He is a little small fat cute tree decorated with lights, super kids save plastic (Disney) balls, some stars and stuff mad of felt and of course we made some craft decoration. Also Neo’s Babybox got some lights and it stands right under the tree so he is fascinated from all the decoration when he lies in it. By the way he grows a lot and can sit now. He really is a little sunshine and he is really ticklish so even when you just pick him up under his arms he will smile and laugh and giggle. Nyra learns new words every day and loves to climb everywhere so most of the stuff here in the house is not save anymore. With Ty and Cyan everything is going good and I hope these two weeks won’t change a lot in my relationship with them.

So this is my last post before I head home and I’m really excited.

Much love, hugs and happiness Xx

Wohoo making some christmas cookies (Plätzchen)

 

My beloved little Chirstmastree :)

Another package for St Nicholas' Day

I also want to tell you about my second package from Home ♥
My mother thought of me not having a German St. Nicholas' Day and so she sent me a package with lots of great stuff like:
- Two self-made jam (strawberry and pumpkin-ginger-orange)
- A beautiful calender for coming year
- KINDER choclate (which reminds me at home and is my favorite)- of course the large package xD
- KINDER bueno (which is super delicious and I looove it!!)
- A aromatic candle (spiced orange)
- A lovely card with words from the heart
- and a "Advendskalender" where you open a little door each day to count the days until Christmas (24th in Germany) from a famous caracter from my childhood ♥ (Oh and I got it perfectly on the 1st December in a different mail)

I really enjoyed this gift and was really happy to recieve it!!
Lots of love and huggs to my family, and happy news to see them in less than a week :))))

Oh wow schon brennt das dritte Lichtlein - Time flys by

Sinterklaas also found our house around 11 days ago. The whole family including Chris’ sister, her husband and their two kids and the grandmother, were at our house with lots of food and in a good mood. On a table lots of presents were already waiting to be unpacked by the kids. As the 5th December is also Nyra’s birthday she had around double the presents.

It was really full (in a good way) because at that day Li’s sisters were here for around two weeks already and it was really nice that they could enjoy this special holiday with us.

But to give you less to read - let photos speak :

Vor gut 11Tagen fand Sinterklaas auch unser haus und lies einige Geschenke für die Kids da. Die ganze Familie war bei uns zuhause – von Oma bis hin zu Chris‘ Schwester, ihrem Mann und deren Kindern. Worüber ich noch nicht berichtet habe, ist dass Lis Schwestern aus Singapur für gut drei Wochen zu besuch waren. Auch sie konnten diesen Feiertag mit uns verbringen. Wir hatten eine Menge Essen und Naschereien vorbereitet, um gestärkt in die Schlacht über die Geschenke zu gehen :D

Am Ende gab es glückliche Kinder und einen sehr leckeren Kuchen – denn es war auch Nyras Geburtstag, den wir an diesem Tag gefeiert haben.

Aber genug der Worte – lassen wir Bilder sprechen:

 

Advend Advend ein Lichtlein brennt ♥

Hallo meine Lieben,

da meine letzten Posts beide auf Englisch waren hier ein deutscher für alle meine Lieben zuhause :-*

Dieses Wochenende hatte ich erst ein wundervolles Paket im Briefkasten :) Meine lieben Großeltern haben im vorweihnachtlichen Stress an mich gedacht und da es hier nicht mal Weihnachtsmärkte gibt *seufz* wurde ich mit einigen Dingen versorgt.

- Ein Advendskalender (natürlich!!) mit sehr leckeren schokoladentäfelchen
- super weiche Kuschelsocken im Doppelpack, dass meine Füße nachts auch schön warm bleiben
- ein schoko Weihnachtsmann & kleine schoko Sterne
- LEBKUCHEN!! in der mini Version (Nürnberger Mini Elisen). Einmal glasiert (mit dieser leichen zuckerglasur) und schokoliert - ich hätte kaum geglaubt dass das wirklich so heißt.
- und die Kinder nicht zu vergessen noch kleine schokoladen Engel und Weihnachtsmänner

Mein Freitag und mein Advendt war natürlich gerettet. Samstag morgen wurde ich leider druch den Lärm der Kids geweckt und das zu einer recht frühen Zeit (7:30Uhr) und wer mich kenn weiß, dass es für mich fast nichts besseres gibt als ausschlafen. Naja dann ergriff mich das Heimweh, die Sehnsucht nach Familie und Freunden und dann kamen auch noch die Sorgen über meine Zukunft, Sprachkurs und Studium dazu. Also entschied ich mich kurzerhand nach Maastricht zu fahen, was inzwischen ja glücklicherweise in machbarem Abstand liegt. 
Da ich den Tag heute (Montag) frei hatte war es trotz babysitten am Freitag ein einigermaßen erholendes Wochenende mit etwas mehr schlaf als normal :P
Und als ich heute zurück kam hat noch eine wunderbare Karte von meiner Lieben Mama auf mich gewartet mit einem Bilder- Adventskalender vom kleinen Maulwurf (vielleicht kennen das ja noch ein paar von euch :) ) Darüber habe ich mich auch riesig gefreut :)))

Von beidem habe ich heute glücklich zwei Türchen geöffnet und zähle nun die Tage, bis ich am 21. Dezember zu Besuch nach Hause fahre. 
Ich hoffe ihr habt eine wunderschöne Advendszeit und dürft auch jeden Tag ein tolles Türchen öffnen :)

Bis dahin alles Liebe und ich freu mich immer, wenn ihr mir schreibt ♥ eure Leo

10 typical Dutch things

1. Biking – you’re not seeing people biking when the weather is good like in Germany. Here you see people on the bike even in winter and you also feel like doing that because the biking paths are absolutely amazing. They are separate from the street, often in both directions and as they have lots of roundabouts you also can drive there separate from cars. 

2. Albert Heijn and Hema – are typical Dutch stores which are really popular. Albert Heijn is a common supermarket and in Hema you get everything you need – from makeup over kitchen stuff to sweets.

Hagelslag in different colous and flavours

3. Hagelslag - there are different foods I want to talk about but this one is more special because its sprinkles for (Dutch) bread (And therefore they are not the same sprinkels as for baking!!!). There are lots of variations of flavours so I guess nearly everybody can find one which fits you.

Yummiiiii!!!

       4. Speculoos – besides Hagelslag they have another special bread toping which I thought you should know about. Speculoos is actually tasting like the cookies but it’s a paste like nutella or peanut butter.

5.  Cafés – Here in the Netherlands they have lots of cafés where you can sit outside almost all the time. When fall comes the put on their heaters outside and every seat has a blanket. When Sun is shining it’s really hard to catch a table especially when you’re with many people and so you have to wait and catch the first table that’s free. 

6. Water – when I visited my host family for the first time I already got the impression that the Netherlands actually should be floated. But as they have very good engineers here they stopped most of the water and kept some land. In my neighborhood we have lots of “Grachten” which are water canals where you can find lots of duckies and swans.  I really like it but sadly there are blue algae in the water so you’re not allowed to swim in the water. 

7. only ONE “koekje”(cookie) – That’s a typical Dutch habit. When they have tea time or a birthday and there is cake or cookies there is this unspoken rule to just take one piece/cookie. You will seem kinda greedy when you take more ;) 

8. Wilhelmina Pepermunt – If you go to a restaurant and you have something with garlic don’t worrie, after paying you’re check you will get a humbug each and mainly they serve it fom the special brand “Wilhelmina Pepermunt”.  

9. Sinterklaas – At this time of the year you can buy “Oliebollen” which are fried dough and they are awesomely delicious (: besides that you’ll get a chocolate letter in your shoe which will be the first letter of your name. And as I mentioned in my other post that’s also the time when you can buy Kruidnoten – but as Daniel corrected me they call it “Pepernoten” in general (even if it’s a different thing). 

Coffee in a Blond Amsterdam cup  

10. Blond Amsterdam - is a special brand you can (as far as I know) just purchase in the Netherlands. It looks comic like and is very cute. They bring out different editions like now there is a Sinterklaas and a new Asian Edition.

 

And next time I may make a list of 5 typical foods. But I have to work on that first.

So I wish you a nice rest of the week and so far an enjoyable and wonderful week.

Feel hugged Xxx Leo

Visit from Germany, good wine and music and finally Sinterklaas arrived

Hey Guys,

Since my homesickness is okay again that might be because I saw a very good friend, Kai, from Germany who came to Eindhoven for a concert. And as far as the Netherlands are not too big I could travel there easy and meet her. First thing that happened was I crying as a kid seeing someone from home, which was some kind of releasing all the feeling I actually don’t want to come up.

SO we had a great day with some super delicious food (burger and French fries from “la place”). I bought her some “Kruidnoten” to introduce her to the Dutch style of Sinterklaas here. It was really good to talk and hug somebody who is really close to you. In that case not saying that I’m not happy about the people I met here in fact I found really good friends here nd I’m happy to have them.

Well so the following weekend I met with Sandra and Sinterklaas finally arrived. Before Sandra and I went there we had a great Friday night. While waiting for some pizza we drank some delicious red wine with Elisabeth joining us. After enjoying some really good grilled vegetable pizza we went to Sandras hous – yes she has her own house. So we could turn on the music as loud as we wanted and that’s what we did :) so many different types of music – also some Danish and German. So we had great fun and went to bed later than expected. But we already planned to go to the arrival of Sinterklaas in Rotterdam. So that was also my first time biking to the city which was a little difficult in the first place but also a lot of fun!

There we found the place where the parade should take place pretty fast but we found out we were a little early. So we decided to have a cup of fresh mint tea with honey which was awesome but sadly timing wasn’t on our side. When we began to drink we saw some swarte pieten and realized that the parade was beginning already. So we went out to watch the parade. We found it really exciting so we decided to walk with them and enjoy the feeling. Due to our really good time we thought we should follow the parade with our bike which we did :) on the way back we picked some swarte piet for a nice picture. It was a grey day but one of the best grey days of my life to be honest.

To come to the last weekend we had some kind of a birthday weekend with Daniels family as his parents and big sister have their birthdays in November. We ate really great food, went outside for a long walk and we also were able to enjoy some sun that weekend. It was quite a tip for me – around 7hrs on the way back – but it was totally worth it.

By the way it remembers me that Gino (boyfriend of Daniels biggest sister) sees my developments in Dutch in the biggest intervals and mentioned that I made very big positive steps and he was really surprised how good I became. That really motivates me and encouraged me to hear especially because I’m going to take the test at the Volksuniversiteit that will show which of the five courses for the NT2 test. And in the first place I was some kinda scared because I don’t want to be disappointed or something because I will be in a lower course. But now I’m interested in which course it will be and as I found out I need to take the test until 1^st September. SO there is enough time for me to work on my Dutch skills for this test :)

That’s it for today and I’m sorry not uploading it in German but it is pretty time intense and since it is dark early I don’t really feel like writing a lot.

So far have a nice day, week and I hope to hear from you ♥

my beloved Kai and our super delicious food

A very nice fountain in Rotterdam

The two danish girls - Sandra and Elisabeth ♥

Sandra and I with some swarte piet (so you have a picture how they look like - just imagine at the parade were plenty of them :D )