had a busy weekend. peter's parents came over on saturday morning. we hung out here for a bit before heading to delft to makro (like costco) to buy a dishwasher and some other things. we stopped in at the hornbach on the way back here and peter's parents bought me 3 orchids and a plant for outside. i think we have to stop buying plants now. i just watered all of them and (not including this week's ration of flowers which take up 3 vases) we have nine. that's a lot considering the apartment is only 90 square metres (810 sq. feet). after buying some groceries we came back here at which point marcel arrived. then it was time to watch peter try to light the barbecue. after some unsuccessful attempts i took the matches and got the fire starting stuff to light. apparently we didn't have the briquettes piled up properly so peter's dad eventually had to come out and get everything sorted. honestly, i much prefer our propane-fueled barbecues. the dutch tend to look at barbecuing as quite the event from what i could tell. packages of various meats are labelled as being for the barbecue (rather than buying just chicken or just hamburgers or... well, what most north americans would do). i imagine this barbecue meat costs much more than if you were to purchase things on their own. said meat is then placed on the barbecue (which is what we would call a hibachi, and takes at least an hour to get ready) sans sauce. then the meat is served and people take their pick of sauces that are placed on the table. it all seems far too "formal" to me. anyway, i didn't have anything barbecued as i didn't want any veggies infested with meat goop. so i made a salad and cut up a baguette and made garlic butter and we all enjoyed that.
peter's parents went home and i FINALLY started to properly read harry potter and the half-blood prince. i knew i'd totally get hooked so when marcel and peter said they were going out to a club i had no interest in joining them. i got more than one third through before i was too tired to continue. the guys got home at around 4:00 which woke me up and we didn't end up waking up until noon on sunday.
book in hand and bathing suit on we went down to the beach. the weather was (finally) warm enough to do that so we had to take advantage. peter and i immediately went swimming (a little cold, but fun in the waves with the tide going out) and then laid in the sun to warm up again. i made it through another good portion of the book whilst lying on my stomach, inadvertently burning parts of the backs of my legs where i hadn't put sunscreen on. peter and marcel went for a swim and not too long after that we all got hungry and decided to get a bite to eat at the restaurant on the beach. great food, but when it came time to pay we were all annoyed/concerned that we couldn't pay by credit card. honestly, who puts a restaurant on a beach with no means of paying except by cash? arg! peter managed to find out that he could pay by a one-time deduction from his bank account - a means preferred over walking all the way back home to get money.
we came back here and marcel decided to get going home to eindhoven. i finished the book (yay! but sad) and then headed to bed.
i realized yesterday that i feel a million times more comfortable here than i did even 3 or 4 weeks ago. i went to the city centre to do some shopping and didn't feel much out of place at all. in fact, despite not being a master at the language, i do feel that i fit in quite well. :)

tot ziens,
liz

random dutch fact of the day: the disney characters "chip and dale" are called "knabbel and babbel" here (pronounced, kah-nobble and bobble). how cute!!