Bing, Bang, Boom

Although it felt as if I was coming out of a long sleep, it did not take me long to be back in action. I arrived after a very long trip to Rotterdam - my 7.5 hour plane ride followed by a 6 hour lay-over in Heathrow that was then followed by an hour flight to Amsterdam, an hour's train ride to Rotterdam, and then a 30 minute wait/ride to my house. I had only one hour to wait before I hopped on my bike and cycled to my Dutch language courses. I’m sure I was speaking Greek to everyone, which was not productive considering this was our exam class for the second level. Never mind, I passed and will begin the third course this coming Monday evening.

As I cycled home I couldn't help but feel exhausted as I had not had time in the plane or the solitude in the airport to have a nap. Unfortunately, my body had other plans. I stared at the clock until 4 o'clock in the morning and when I finally drifted off to sleep I was harshly awoken at 8 am for my 9am Inburgerings Curses (citizenship classes).

I arrived and must have looked positively loopy as my lovely teacher Fleur asked “are you doing alright?”. I responded “Oh yeah, sure!” in a much too giddy voice and decided not to say more as my Dutch was still rusty coming off a two week hiatus. However, luck was with me as our class watched a movie about the German occupation of the Netherlands in WWII. I went grocery shopping after class and then struggled home wondering why my bike was weaving so much (exhaustion)! Thankfully I crashed for a couple hours and got some of my energy back. I woke up and literally sent 15 emails out. These emails varied from the inevitable "I'm baaaaack" notices, to my applying for a conference in Sweden, the due date of which is tomorrow.

I went to bed at a more reasonable hour that night and then it was up early again to keep working on my ever-expanding "to-do" list and to also work off a bit of the ‘welcome-home weight’. Apparently the way to welcome someone home in Canada is to drink wine and eat dessert at almost every meal - this is time well spent of course. Early that afternoon I attended my homework help session and then scooted off to my 5th of May celebration committee. I decided to drop by the Bergweg station after that to see how plans were coming for the upcoming weekend film extravaganza – check it out here. Since there were still things to do, I found myself handing out over 300 anti-nuisances notices (this is my term but essentially these letters told the surrounding community of the upcoming event in hopes that it would forgo any complaints to the police but also to promote the event).

While I was out flier-ing I happened to hear a very loud bang-bang-bang-some yelling-bang-bang-some screaming and thought “What is this?”. As I came to the end of the street, I looked up and saw a girl standing on her balcony facing the road and talking loudly on a portable house phone. In her other hand was a hammer that she was using to break in the window on the door to her balcony. I can only assume that she had gone outside to talk on the phone and then unwittingly locked herself out. She had borrowed a hammer from the neighbour who was also on her balcony looking up at the sight in horror at every crushing but seemingly ineffective blow. Once this woman began to get an audience she made a bit of a show smashing the window and calling out to passerbyers while laughing loudly. I stopped, mouth agape, and when she looked down and saw me she said "oh don't worry, this is my own house." I laughed and moved on to the next mailbox but I was really struck by the oddity of the event. Firstly, she responded to me in English, which took me a couple of seconds to realise. Second, well, there is a woman hooting and hollering on her balcony giving all she's worth to the glass on her balcony door. Need I say more?

All I can say from the experiences of my past couple days is that I'm definitely back in Rotterdam – watch out!