A pretty uneventful day (sort of). All three of us are definitely under the weather, though Marco has it the worst. But in my case it was probably just from the traveling with heavy luggage and the plane ride that did me in – I wasn’t really feeling it until Saturday when we went to the city.
Marco and I finally dragged ourselves out of bed around 11:30am, after dozing on and off most of the morning from 8:30am onwards. After that, we made some brood met pindakaas (peanut butter toast – yum).
We watched an episode of Seinfeld (American dialogue, Dutch subtitles, as is normal around here for US shows). One of the themes in this episode was the “second spitter” which was a parody of the “second shooter” theory in JFK’s death. I have seen maybe half of the episodes (or less), but I do remember getting a season for my brother all those years ago for Christmas. Afterwards we switched the channel to VH1 classic as I know most of those songs. I haven’t kept up with the modern stuff over the years as radio isn’t as prominent now that we have the internet and I don’t drive/have a car radio.
We also made a to-do list, manually for stuff to get at the Albert Heijn and for miscellaneous stuff to get in the coming weeks (have a key made, get a tram card, etc). We plan on calling the IND tomorrow regarding the next step, as some of the info he has in Dutch conflicts with my info that I received from the NY consulate in English. Not a problem though – it says we have eight days to get it all sorted.
Another fun thing I did was change my personal location on some of the websites I visit frequently. As I lived in Pearl River, NY which was a rather small town, I never really wanted to broadcast where exactly I was. But now I can write that I am an expat in the Hague, since it is a city of half a million people or so. 😉
Other things I was not expecting was CNN to automatically switch to the international edition, etsy.com to only show me items were shippable to NL and have all prices in euros, and Google to switch to the Nederland edition automatically. I at least figured out how to switch Google to the English menu, although it isn’t truthfully needed beyond not realizing that afbeeldingen meant Images in Dutch (versus foto which I am used to seeing).
We also worked on unpacking my luggage and putting it away. Admittedly now one of the drawers under the bed is definitely a “junk drawer” but it works for me for the moment. It is an awesome bed from Ikea with four drawers underneath, two on each side.
At some point later on we are going to go to Albert Heijn and pick up some food and other related toiletries that I will need in the coming days. Thankfully Albert Heijn doesn’t close as early as many stores do (most stores only stay up late on Thursday nights).
Marco also boiled some water for me in his water cooker so that I could have some Pickwick Dutch tea. It was very, very good and helped take some of the soreness and headache away. Two cups!
Life in the Hague 