Cities are divided into districts. I'm fairly sure there's voting for representatives and such based on district. I live in Cats' Pants. Well, Kattenbroek, which literally means Cats' Pants, but was probably chosen because it's someone's last name. Or possible named after a tavern in Belgium.
We're fairly far from the center of Amersfoort, and this neighborhood was only built about 20 years ago. It was an entirely pre-planned neighborhood and is set up nicely with an open-air shopping mall (winkelcentrum) on one edge. The roads are nice and wide and divided with trees in the middle, and there's never traffic problems. Well, sometimes teenagers ride their bikes side-by-side in the road where the bike lane ends, but we turn onto our street after a couple blocks so that isn't too unbearable.
Every neighborhood has multiple elementary schools, and there's usually high schools/ROCs in neighboring neighborhoods at the very farthest. The closest train station from our 'hood isn't in walking distance, but is in easy bike-riding distance. There are also bus stops in walking distance.
The page explaining the design for Kattenbroek is here. Translated to English thanks to google translate. The hype on it in pretty well-founded. The architecture is always interesting, usually in a good way. Some of the color combinations are a bit odd or dated, but never boring or dull :-P There's a lot of small parks scattered around and it's a pretty kid-dense 'hood.
It's also a nicely mixed-income neighborhood. When looking at houses, funda.nl would list the percentage of low and high income residents. Every neighborhood in the cities we looked at has a moderate low income population, but rarely a very high low-income population (usually in areas with a lot of high-rise apartments). This is significant because it helps avoid the slum problem that happens in the US. So Kattenbroek is about 1/4 high income, 1/4 low income, and 1/2 in between, which looks good both on paper and on the street.
Most people take care of their little front gardens, which is usually just a few square feet. Of course, if they get too unruly, the front door is blocked, which probably helps. All in all it's a very nice atmosphere, though sometimes it feels a little too orderly and quaint :-P
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Friday, October 29, 2010
Language
A requirement of inburgering (integration) is learning Dutch, unless you're coming from the EU basically. It must be learned to some degree within 3.5 years of entry, and is also a requirement when applying for permanent residency or naturalization.
There are 6 CEF levels of Dutch: A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2, going from easiest to most difficult. The civic integration exam tests for A2, which is required to pass.
Failure to pass at A2 can mean a fine if you haven't been trying to learn the language, an extension of time to learn Dutch, or a waiver of the requirement if learning disabled and unable to learn Dutch better. No mention of people getting deported! Yay!
There's another test, the Staatsexamen NT2 (State Examination) for people that need to prove they can speak Dutch well enough to work in certain jobs or study in certain programs, and can also be used for residency purposes. Level 1 corresponds with B1 and level 2 corresponds with B2. The NT2 looks pretty similar to some aspects of college entry exams - showing that you can read and understand, explain what you read, and communicate ideas, as well as listening comprehension.
The official websites describing these tests are all in Dutch of course, except for a main page if you're really lucky. translate.google.com is your friend if you want more in-depth data. Some use frames however, which means the entire site shows the same URL for every page, and clicking on links to frames won't result in getting a translated page, making for mucho cut and paste. I hates frameses. To be even more clever in withholding useful information from non-Dutch speakers, sometimes the relevant information is contained in video clips in Dutch. Google translate doesn't help with those :-(
Dutch courses are available for very cheap. But not until after you've been accepted as a resident. There are also loans available if going to the equivalent of an accredited school, which can be used for related expenses like travel and childcare. Some of the course costs can be refunded to you when you pass the exam. Groovy!
In addition to private language companies, Dutch can be learned at most, if not all, vocational schools (called ROCs). ROCs are somewhat similar to community colleges back in the states, but in addition to providing classes and certifications for adults, also provide vocational training for children aged 12 and up on a vocational education track.
At my incomplete imburgering interview, I was informed that the location where I would be taking classes depends on my Dutch abilities and education level. So it sounds like you might not just end up taking classes at the nearest ROC. I'll find out one of these days. Or weeks. Or months.
A few sites I glanced at indicated that it takes approximately one year of regular classes (5 hours in class per week) to attain the A2 level of dutch, or a year of intensive classes (15 hours in class per week) to get B1 or B2.
I'm tempted to go for B1 or B2, since I'd like work in law eventually. I'd probably be stuck with work involving international law unless I want to go through law school again since the first time was quite horrible, but would probably need good Dutch to communicate with my overlords/employers. The problem is that intensive courses are basically full time jobs if you're studying properly, which is 1-2 hours of studying per hour spent in class. Which would make it difficult for me to work at the same time, especially in a full time job. Well, impossible with a full time job. I don't have the stamina for 13 hour days, not counting travel.
But I need to start working soon, since law school, aside from being horrible and mostly useless, left me with a lot of student loan debt. Unless being in language classes in a foreign country is sufficient to put my loans in deferment. Guess I'll find out!
There are 6 CEF levels of Dutch: A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2, going from easiest to most difficult. The civic integration exam tests for A2, which is required to pass.
Failure to pass at A2 can mean a fine if you haven't been trying to learn the language, an extension of time to learn Dutch, or a waiver of the requirement if learning disabled and unable to learn Dutch better. No mention of people getting deported! Yay!
There's another test, the Staatsexamen NT2 (State Examination) for people that need to prove they can speak Dutch well enough to work in certain jobs or study in certain programs, and can also be used for residency purposes. Level 1 corresponds with B1 and level 2 corresponds with B2. The NT2 looks pretty similar to some aspects of college entry exams - showing that you can read and understand, explain what you read, and communicate ideas, as well as listening comprehension.
The official websites describing these tests are all in Dutch of course, except for a main page if you're really lucky. translate.google.com is your friend if you want more in-depth data. Some use frames however, which means the entire site shows the same URL for every page, and clicking on links to frames won't result in getting a translated page, making for mucho cut and paste. I hates frameses. To be even more clever in withholding useful information from non-Dutch speakers, sometimes the relevant information is contained in video clips in Dutch. Google translate doesn't help with those :-(
Dutch courses are available for very cheap. But not until after you've been accepted as a resident. There are also loans available if going to the equivalent of an accredited school, which can be used for related expenses like travel and childcare. Some of the course costs can be refunded to you when you pass the exam. Groovy!
In addition to private language companies, Dutch can be learned at most, if not all, vocational schools (called ROCs). ROCs are somewhat similar to community colleges back in the states, but in addition to providing classes and certifications for adults, also provide vocational training for children aged 12 and up on a vocational education track.
At my incomplete imburgering interview, I was informed that the location where I would be taking classes depends on my Dutch abilities and education level. So it sounds like you might not just end up taking classes at the nearest ROC. I'll find out one of these days. Or weeks. Or months.
A few sites I glanced at indicated that it takes approximately one year of regular classes (5 hours in class per week) to attain the A2 level of dutch, or a year of intensive classes (15 hours in class per week) to get B1 or B2.
I'm tempted to go for B1 or B2, since I'd like work in law eventually. I'd probably be stuck with work involving international law unless I want to go through law school again since the first time was quite horrible, but would probably need good Dutch to communicate with my overlords/employers. The problem is that intensive courses are basically full time jobs if you're studying properly, which is 1-2 hours of studying per hour spent in class. Which would make it difficult for me to work at the same time, especially in a full time job. Well, impossible with a full time job. I don't have the stamina for 13 hour days, not counting travel.
But I need to start working soon, since law school, aside from being horrible and mostly useless, left me with a lot of student loan debt. Unless being in language classes in a foreign country is sufficient to put my loans in deferment. Guess I'll find out!
Language II
I'm breaking this into 2 parts because my super long posts look scary.
In addition to classes, there's other ways to work on Dutch. The first one I used was Rosetta Stone. This was very useful in getting basic vocabulary, tourist Dutch, and eventually understanding sentence structure quirks. I completed level 1 and 2 before moving over, and some of level 3. It's not perfect, and lacks the focus needed for inburgering versus vacationing, but it was still the best option for getting started before moving over. Somewhat expensive, but still far cheaper than classes, and I think the instructional method using photos, real dutch speakers, and repetition worked far better than the type of instruction I received in high school and college language classes. I also liked being able to do as much as I wanted, when I wanted. But I found my brain getting tired after spending more than 1 hour at a time using it.
After getting here, hearing people speak Dutch has been useful. But I can't work or take classes yet, so I don't spend a lot of time out and around Dutch people in general. When my future in-laws come over, they often speak Dutch to my fiance, but not enough to really help in learning words. Though it is a good way to see progress in my listening comprehension, when I can tell what they're talking about. I learn some words here and there when we translate them for each other.
More useful is watching television. Something I'm good at! One approach is watching an American or British program and reading the subtitles containing the Dutch translation. There are a lot of shows in English, and quite a few basic channels that only have English shows. I don't know if this would be helpful without the basic Dutch vocabulary I got from Rosetta Stone. You need to know enough Dutch to detect which subtitled word corresponds with which English word, which can be a process of elimination. So if the subtitle "Dertig jaar in de toekomst" comes up on the screen and I hear "Thirty years in the future", I can deduce that "toekomst" means "future" because I know what the other words mean already and they don't mean future.
Another way to learn is by reading Dutch things. I suggest starting out with simple things using simple language. My first attempt was a Dutch version of one of my favorite British novels, but even with a dictionary I can't keep up with the satire-filled and colorful prose, since that type of writing tends to get translated into similarly colorful Dutch prose, which can be just as abstract as it is in English, making literal translations very difficult. On the other hand, reading part of the manual for our dishwasher was easy with a dictionary. Newspapers are also pretty straight forward, not to mention more interesting that dishwasher manuals.
When being interrogated at my inburgering meeting, I realized my ability to listen to Dutch was not as good as I thought it was. I couldn't parse a basic sentence, even though I know I can read fairly complex sentences, especially if I have some time to analyze the words I don't know off-hand. So I've started listening to some Dutch television programs too. I prefer the cooking shows, since I've gotten a good food vocabulary by going to the grocery store and restaurants. That basic food vocabulary makes it easier for me to distinguish one word from another on the cooking shows, and seems to be improving my ability to understand spoken Dutch in general, even if I'm not learning new words.
I suppose I could get out and talk to people in Dutch, but I didn't even like doing that in English. Though I am looking forward to meeting people through classes or work one of these days. WHEN I GET MY STUPID RESIDENT CARD!!! Ahem.
In a few days I'll have an electronic Dutch-English dictionary as well, which should help a lot with reading things and communicating with the in-laws. I think I'll save future info about electronic dictionaries for a future post, however. It's not nearly as straightforward as it should be :-P
In addition to classes, there's other ways to work on Dutch. The first one I used was Rosetta Stone. This was very useful in getting basic vocabulary, tourist Dutch, and eventually understanding sentence structure quirks. I completed level 1 and 2 before moving over, and some of level 3. It's not perfect, and lacks the focus needed for inburgering versus vacationing, but it was still the best option for getting started before moving over. Somewhat expensive, but still far cheaper than classes, and I think the instructional method using photos, real dutch speakers, and repetition worked far better than the type of instruction I received in high school and college language classes. I also liked being able to do as much as I wanted, when I wanted. But I found my brain getting tired after spending more than 1 hour at a time using it.
After getting here, hearing people speak Dutch has been useful. But I can't work or take classes yet, so I don't spend a lot of time out and around Dutch people in general. When my future in-laws come over, they often speak Dutch to my fiance, but not enough to really help in learning words. Though it is a good way to see progress in my listening comprehension, when I can tell what they're talking about. I learn some words here and there when we translate them for each other.
More useful is watching television. Something I'm good at! One approach is watching an American or British program and reading the subtitles containing the Dutch translation. There are a lot of shows in English, and quite a few basic channels that only have English shows. I don't know if this would be helpful without the basic Dutch vocabulary I got from Rosetta Stone. You need to know enough Dutch to detect which subtitled word corresponds with which English word, which can be a process of elimination. So if the subtitle "Dertig jaar in de toekomst" comes up on the screen and I hear "Thirty years in the future", I can deduce that "toekomst" means "future" because I know what the other words mean already and they don't mean future.
Another way to learn is by reading Dutch things. I suggest starting out with simple things using simple language. My first attempt was a Dutch version of one of my favorite British novels, but even with a dictionary I can't keep up with the satire-filled and colorful prose, since that type of writing tends to get translated into similarly colorful Dutch prose, which can be just as abstract as it is in English, making literal translations very difficult. On the other hand, reading part of the manual for our dishwasher was easy with a dictionary. Newspapers are also pretty straight forward, not to mention more interesting that dishwasher manuals.
When being interrogated at my inburgering meeting, I realized my ability to listen to Dutch was not as good as I thought it was. I couldn't parse a basic sentence, even though I know I can read fairly complex sentences, especially if I have some time to analyze the words I don't know off-hand. So I've started listening to some Dutch television programs too. I prefer the cooking shows, since I've gotten a good food vocabulary by going to the grocery store and restaurants. That basic food vocabulary makes it easier for me to distinguish one word from another on the cooking shows, and seems to be improving my ability to understand spoken Dutch in general, even if I'm not learning new words.
I suppose I could get out and talk to people in Dutch, but I didn't even like doing that in English. Though I am looking forward to meeting people through classes or work one of these days. WHEN I GET MY STUPID RESIDENT CARD!!! Ahem.
In a few days I'll have an electronic Dutch-English dictionary as well, which should help a lot with reading things and communicating with the in-laws. I think I'll save future info about electronic dictionaries for a future post, however. It's not nearly as straightforward as it should be :-P
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Food
I'm a picky shopper, when it comes to food. No gluten, no MSG (E621) or its close relatives. Not much lactose. Avoiding these foods was challenging enough back home, and now I have to read labels in Dutch to avoid them.
Fortunately gluten-free foods seem fairly easy to find here. Both the Albert Heijn and the C1000 grocery stores nearby have almost half of one side of an aisle devoted to gluten free items that would traditionally have gluten. So I can get gluten free bread and pasta easily, as well as bread and pastry mixes.
MSG, however, is pretty common. And apparently unpopular enough that companies have started using the same trick I've seen for many years in the US: call MSG something (anything) else. The EU has E-codes for food additives. E620-629 are MSG and its fellow free glutamic acid co-conspirators in causing me migraines. But there's also gistextract (yeast extract) in quite a few items, which is just free glutamic acid from a different source. A pre-made salad I bought at AH had this in the salad dressing, and actually listed it as one of the ingredients from a biologisch (organic) source. ... Don't worry, I keep a supply of safe dressing at home :-P
One thing different here is that there are a lot of pre-packaged pre-seasoned/prepared meats ready to throw on the stove or in the oven. About half of them have MSG, even where it usually wouldn't in the US. So I ate a lot of MSG my first week or two. Potato salad usually has it too, which I was eating until last week. I guess I started buying it before learning MSG's E number, and once I learned it, assumed I'd checked for it on previous visits. Jan found it listed during a trip to the store :-P
I found out that brewer's yeast has free glutamic acid, which makes my current folic acid supplement pretty useless for stopping migraines because the base is brewer's yeast. Oh, and I started drinking sake a month or two before moving over, and this also uses a yeast creating glutamate. I've been drinking 1/4 cup to 1/2 cup most days.
So basically I've been making myself sick in various ways since I got here. I decided to write about food today because I spent most of yesterday in a migraine state, and am still feeling pretty funky today. On the plus side, wine is still safe (negligible glutamate) but I like sake waaaay more than wine. And I have a few bottles of sake left in the house :-(
At least eating out is less problematic. Chinese restaurants aren't addicted to it here. Any fast food restaurant that also exists in the US should be avoided if MSG is unwanted. I found out it comprises three ingredients in a Burger King crispy chicken burger. Gotta make the processed sludge taste good somehow I guess :-P
Italian food over here seems identical to back home. Though the local Italian place also does some french food (no objections here). The Chinese food is quite a bit different though. There's still sweet and sour, spicy, and a few other things, but orange or lemon sauces are uncommon, as well as breaded and fried meat chunks like you'd find in the US with a sweet and sour dish. But it's still pretty good. Instead of a hot fudge sundae, the default dessert is a "dame blanche" which I think is french for "white lady". Ice cream, chocolate fudge.
Bottled water is also a bit different. When asking for it, the waiter wants to know if you want "blauw" (blue) or "rood" (red). Blue is uncarbonated, red is carbonated. The color-coding seems pretty consistent - even in the Ikea restaurants.
Speaking of Ikea (pronounced ee-kay-uh here) "frites" are typically eaten with mayonnaise here, rather that ketchup, though both always seem to be available. The Ikea version of mayonnaise, called "fritessaus" (french fry sauce) is pretty nasty.
I've been doing a lot of cooking since arriving, since while Jan is working full time, I'm at home waiting for my resident card full time so I can work or take Dutch lessons. I've been making lean proteins and vegetables mostly, sometimes rice to go with dinner. We have a "combivent" in the kitchen, which is a combination oven and microwave. Except the microwave half doesn't work - the wiring seems to be disconnected. Jan's going to fix it One Of These Days :-P I haven't missed it much, except when reheating leftover rice on the stove.
Fortunately gluten-free foods seem fairly easy to find here. Both the Albert Heijn and the C1000 grocery stores nearby have almost half of one side of an aisle devoted to gluten free items that would traditionally have gluten. So I can get gluten free bread and pasta easily, as well as bread and pastry mixes.
MSG, however, is pretty common. And apparently unpopular enough that companies have started using the same trick I've seen for many years in the US: call MSG something (anything) else. The EU has E-codes for food additives. E620-629 are MSG and its fellow free glutamic acid co-conspirators in causing me migraines. But there's also gistextract (yeast extract) in quite a few items, which is just free glutamic acid from a different source. A pre-made salad I bought at AH had this in the salad dressing, and actually listed it as one of the ingredients from a biologisch (organic) source. ... Don't worry, I keep a supply of safe dressing at home :-P
One thing different here is that there are a lot of pre-packaged pre-seasoned/prepared meats ready to throw on the stove or in the oven. About half of them have MSG, even where it usually wouldn't in the US. So I ate a lot of MSG my first week or two. Potato salad usually has it too, which I was eating until last week. I guess I started buying it before learning MSG's E number, and once I learned it, assumed I'd checked for it on previous visits. Jan found it listed during a trip to the store :-P
I found out that brewer's yeast has free glutamic acid, which makes my current folic acid supplement pretty useless for stopping migraines because the base is brewer's yeast. Oh, and I started drinking sake a month or two before moving over, and this also uses a yeast creating glutamate. I've been drinking 1/4 cup to 1/2 cup most days.
So basically I've been making myself sick in various ways since I got here. I decided to write about food today because I spent most of yesterday in a migraine state, and am still feeling pretty funky today. On the plus side, wine is still safe (negligible glutamate) but I like sake waaaay more than wine. And I have a few bottles of sake left in the house :-(
At least eating out is less problematic. Chinese restaurants aren't addicted to it here. Any fast food restaurant that also exists in the US should be avoided if MSG is unwanted. I found out it comprises three ingredients in a Burger King crispy chicken burger. Gotta make the processed sludge taste good somehow I guess :-P
Italian food over here seems identical to back home. Though the local Italian place also does some french food (no objections here). The Chinese food is quite a bit different though. There's still sweet and sour, spicy, and a few other things, but orange or lemon sauces are uncommon, as well as breaded and fried meat chunks like you'd find in the US with a sweet and sour dish. But it's still pretty good. Instead of a hot fudge sundae, the default dessert is a "dame blanche" which I think is french for "white lady". Ice cream, chocolate fudge.
Bottled water is also a bit different. When asking for it, the waiter wants to know if you want "blauw" (blue) or "rood" (red). Blue is uncarbonated, red is carbonated. The color-coding seems pretty consistent - even in the Ikea restaurants.
Speaking of Ikea (pronounced ee-kay-uh here) "frites" are typically eaten with mayonnaise here, rather that ketchup, though both always seem to be available. The Ikea version of mayonnaise, called "fritessaus" (french fry sauce) is pretty nasty.
I've been doing a lot of cooking since arriving, since while Jan is working full time, I'm at home waiting for my resident card full time so I can work or take Dutch lessons. I've been making lean proteins and vegetables mostly, sometimes rice to go with dinner. We have a "combivent" in the kitchen, which is a combination oven and microwave. Except the microwave half doesn't work - the wiring seems to be disconnected. Jan's going to fix it One Of These Days :-P I haven't missed it much, except when reheating leftover rice on the stove.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
House: The Renovation
We've been living in the house for nearly three months now, and it's been quite an experience. First of all, houses in the Netherlands are almost always made from concrete. This is quite nice from a natural disaster (or air raid) perspective, but a little annoying for basic changes such as replacing wallpaper with paint.
There's a very good reason wallpaper is so popular in Europe. Have you ever tried painting concrete walls? We have. First you have to get rid of the wallpaper. Fortunately for me, my fiance and his parents did 90% of that before I arrived. It was peach wallpaper. Where there was painted trim, it was also peach. And the entry hallway was dark peach. There were about 6 layers of the wallpaper, adding to the fun.
One reason wallpaper is so popular is that it's addictive. Once it's up, you don't want to take it down. If you want a different color or design or it's in bad shape, the easiest solution is to throw up (BARF?) a new layer on top of the old. Wallpaper isn't just for little old ladies here. Removing wallpaper varies in difficulty depending on how well it was glued, how long ago it was glued, and how damp it's gotten. Wide swaths may come off easily, but then you get to the edges and need a moderately abrasive sponge and a thin-bladed scrapey thing. The 10% or so I scraped was enough to reaffirm my hatred of wallpaper.
Once the wallpaper is gone, there's a new problem: concrete walls have holes. Lots of small holes. A lot of them are too big to be filled or covered by a layer or two of paint. So we did some research and discovered that stucco is the recommended way to treat concrete walls. We bought the materials, mixed the first batch, and got a coarse yet watery mixture that was impossible to apply thickly enough. We reread the directions and realized the instructions on the bag failed to use its own calculations when mixing the entire bag with water. We recalculated and started over. After a week or so of attempts and patching and watching instructional youtube videos, we finally had a single wall in our living room stuccoed to our satisfaction. And swore to never stucco again.
The best way to deal with holey concrete is with a hole filler (muur vuller: http://www.stixkoopjesmarkt.nl/components/com_virtuemart/shop_image/product/Alabastine_muurv_4ad0d7b20fbcb.jpg ), the sort that comes in a little cardboard box to be mixed with water and scraped on. Basically we coated the remaining walls in this, which was Not Fun but still Way More Fun Than Stucco. Some walls got primed afterward and some didn't. It didn't seem to make much difference in the end result.
Even after hole-filling or stuccoing, the concrete wall is still somewhat irregular. So instead of using high gloss paint (or satin finish), there's a wonderful product called textured paint (structuurverf). It's vaguely reminiscent of popcorn ceilings, but less extreme. It's thicker than regular paint and is slopped on the walls with specific paint brushes than rolled with yellow plastic spongey rollers if you want a normal texture. There's other rollers for the "sandpaper" and "mountain range" textures, if you swing that way. The result is pretty normal looking walls with well-concealed flaws. It can't really be washed, but debris can be brushed off with a hand broom. It can also be covered with regular paint, which is useful if you want to get rid of the sandpaper texture, or apply a new coat of paint that isn't as absurdly expensive as the first coat.
Another Grand Adventure was dealing with the electrical wiring. When people move out of houses in the Netherlands, they take the light fixtures with them. And the light bulbs. And sometimes even the flooring and kitchen appliances and kitchen cupboards. We survived the first two months with two 7 euro floor lamps. They were fugly.
None of the lights were grounded, or the electric wall sockets, so Jan rewired all of those. Wiring in concrete houses runs through the walls inside little PVC tubes from the outlet to the electrical box in a small closet. To add newfangled things like grounding, you pull out all the wires but one, attach the new wires to the old wire, and push and pull the old wire until it's completely out of the tube and the new wires are in the tube. Then hook it all up and repeat 20 times. But it's not so simple as that. Electric outlet wires are usually routed through light outlets and light switches, which creates all sorts of lovely 90 degree angles that bundles of wires just don't like to squeeze through.
While grounding the larger bedroom, we discovered the junction point was in the bathroom light. ?!?. It had the worst angle yet, and after the wires got stuck and detached from the guide wire the first time, we resorted to using the flexible metal snake-like thing to pull the wires through. Except it still got stuck, even with all of Jan's weight on it and 90% of mine (about 400 pounds combined, or 200 kg), and the main copper wire finally broke where it had been very securely attached to the snake. I managed to get it a few centimeters farther by barely grabbing the tip of a wire with a pair of pliers and hanging from the ceiling by them while squeezing for dear life. I am not exaggerating. Then we were able to grab individual wires and pull them far enough to hook up to the grounding and other wires.
After that rather awesome upper body workout, we moved onto easy things, like wiring the entire house for fiber optic internet that was currently being installed in the neighborhood :-) We replaced the telephone lines in the living room and bedrooms with high speed networking cable, and added a second internet outlet in the living room so we wouldn't have to run the cabling halfway around the room. Seriously, who decided to put the cable outlet in the dumbest possible corner when building the house? Jan had to buy a hammer drill for this project, which seems to rate pretty highly on the list of cool man toys. Basically it's a drill wot spins but also uses a hammering motion to get through concrete. A pretty essential tool in any concrete abode.
He had to venture into the crawl space for this - a board under the nasty outdoor carpetting in the entryway opens up into a 2 foot high space lined with dirt, dead spiders, and some interesting tools that had been rotting down there for 20 years. Of course, prior owners had superglued this board to the floor (?!?), and it had to be destroyed and replaced. Jan drilled a hole into the utility closet, then into the floor near the wall where the outlet should be. Drilling up into the living room wall was not an option, even at a pretty steep angle. But at least the outlet ended up in a great location, directly under the TV cupboard, and invisible with the cupboard over it. Then he hooked up new PVC tubes down there, attaching them to the wall with his handy hammer drill and plugs designed just for the purpose of holding those tubes in place.
Unfortunately, the former owners didn't take the upstairs carpet with them. Or the carpet on the stairs. The bedroom carpet had been replaced at some point, but not the upper hallway or stairs, so in addition to the older carpet being very nasty, there were large strips of wood dividing the bedrooms from the hallway. We pulled out all of the carpet and glued down vinyl in the laundry room, and got bamboo hardwood installed in the bedrooms and upper hallway. White floor trim replaced the nasty old stuff, both upstairs and downstairs, where it had looked like a lego project gone horribly wrong. Jan's dad, over the period of a couple months, completed the Great Stair Project, removing the carpet, scraping off the crud on the stairs, and painting it with several layers of white wood paint.
Last night we finally applied the half-circles of carpeting (bought in a package at the local Karwei hardware store) to the stairs, and everything remodel-ish is done and looking pretty awesome. The other thing the hammer drill is essential for is hanging pictures. That requires hammer drilling a hole, inserting a plug, screwing a screw into the plug, then hanging the picture. We also did this for the shelf over our bed, though since it was a wall added by prior owners, in ended up needing hollow wall plugs for four of the holes and wood screws for two of the holes. Typical :-P At least we didn't hit the Hidden Junction Box Of Doom while drilling there. We know there's one, because wires are running through it to an electrical outlet. We just don't know exactly where it is, and don't want to tear down the wall to find it. So one outlet remains eternally ungrounded.
There's a very good reason wallpaper is so popular in Europe. Have you ever tried painting concrete walls? We have. First you have to get rid of the wallpaper. Fortunately for me, my fiance and his parents did 90% of that before I arrived. It was peach wallpaper. Where there was painted trim, it was also peach. And the entry hallway was dark peach. There were about 6 layers of the wallpaper, adding to the fun.
One reason wallpaper is so popular is that it's addictive. Once it's up, you don't want to take it down. If you want a different color or design or it's in bad shape, the easiest solution is to throw up (BARF?) a new layer on top of the old. Wallpaper isn't just for little old ladies here. Removing wallpaper varies in difficulty depending on how well it was glued, how long ago it was glued, and how damp it's gotten. Wide swaths may come off easily, but then you get to the edges and need a moderately abrasive sponge and a thin-bladed scrapey thing. The 10% or so I scraped was enough to reaffirm my hatred of wallpaper.
Once the wallpaper is gone, there's a new problem: concrete walls have holes. Lots of small holes. A lot of them are too big to be filled or covered by a layer or two of paint. So we did some research and discovered that stucco is the recommended way to treat concrete walls. We bought the materials, mixed the first batch, and got a coarse yet watery mixture that was impossible to apply thickly enough. We reread the directions and realized the instructions on the bag failed to use its own calculations when mixing the entire bag with water. We recalculated and started over. After a week or so of attempts and patching and watching instructional youtube videos, we finally had a single wall in our living room stuccoed to our satisfaction. And swore to never stucco again.
The best way to deal with holey concrete is with a hole filler (muur vuller: http://www.stixkoopjesmarkt.nl/components/com_virtuemart/shop_image/product/Alabastine_muurv_4ad0d7b20fbcb.jpg ), the sort that comes in a little cardboard box to be mixed with water and scraped on. Basically we coated the remaining walls in this, which was Not Fun but still Way More Fun Than Stucco. Some walls got primed afterward and some didn't. It didn't seem to make much difference in the end result.
Even after hole-filling or stuccoing, the concrete wall is still somewhat irregular. So instead of using high gloss paint (or satin finish), there's a wonderful product called textured paint (structuurverf). It's vaguely reminiscent of popcorn ceilings, but less extreme. It's thicker than regular paint and is slopped on the walls with specific paint brushes than rolled with yellow plastic spongey rollers if you want a normal texture. There's other rollers for the "sandpaper" and "mountain range" textures, if you swing that way. The result is pretty normal looking walls with well-concealed flaws. It can't really be washed, but debris can be brushed off with a hand broom. It can also be covered with regular paint, which is useful if you want to get rid of the sandpaper texture, or apply a new coat of paint that isn't as absurdly expensive as the first coat.
Another Grand Adventure was dealing with the electrical wiring. When people move out of houses in the Netherlands, they take the light fixtures with them. And the light bulbs. And sometimes even the flooring and kitchen appliances and kitchen cupboards. We survived the first two months with two 7 euro floor lamps. They were fugly.
None of the lights were grounded, or the electric wall sockets, so Jan rewired all of those. Wiring in concrete houses runs through the walls inside little PVC tubes from the outlet to the electrical box in a small closet. To add newfangled things like grounding, you pull out all the wires but one, attach the new wires to the old wire, and push and pull the old wire until it's completely out of the tube and the new wires are in the tube. Then hook it all up and repeat 20 times. But it's not so simple as that. Electric outlet wires are usually routed through light outlets and light switches, which creates all sorts of lovely 90 degree angles that bundles of wires just don't like to squeeze through.
While grounding the larger bedroom, we discovered the junction point was in the bathroom light. ?!?. It had the worst angle yet, and after the wires got stuck and detached from the guide wire the first time, we resorted to using the flexible metal snake-like thing to pull the wires through. Except it still got stuck, even with all of Jan's weight on it and 90% of mine (about 400 pounds combined, or 200 kg), and the main copper wire finally broke where it had been very securely attached to the snake. I managed to get it a few centimeters farther by barely grabbing the tip of a wire with a pair of pliers and hanging from the ceiling by them while squeezing for dear life. I am not exaggerating. Then we were able to grab individual wires and pull them far enough to hook up to the grounding and other wires.
After that rather awesome upper body workout, we moved onto easy things, like wiring the entire house for fiber optic internet that was currently being installed in the neighborhood :-) We replaced the telephone lines in the living room and bedrooms with high speed networking cable, and added a second internet outlet in the living room so we wouldn't have to run the cabling halfway around the room. Seriously, who decided to put the cable outlet in the dumbest possible corner when building the house? Jan had to buy a hammer drill for this project, which seems to rate pretty highly on the list of cool man toys. Basically it's a drill wot spins but also uses a hammering motion to get through concrete. A pretty essential tool in any concrete abode.
He had to venture into the crawl space for this - a board under the nasty outdoor carpetting in the entryway opens up into a 2 foot high space lined with dirt, dead spiders, and some interesting tools that had been rotting down there for 20 years. Of course, prior owners had superglued this board to the floor (?!?), and it had to be destroyed and replaced. Jan drilled a hole into the utility closet, then into the floor near the wall where the outlet should be. Drilling up into the living room wall was not an option, even at a pretty steep angle. But at least the outlet ended up in a great location, directly under the TV cupboard, and invisible with the cupboard over it. Then he hooked up new PVC tubes down there, attaching them to the wall with his handy hammer drill and plugs designed just for the purpose of holding those tubes in place.
Unfortunately, the former owners didn't take the upstairs carpet with them. Or the carpet on the stairs. The bedroom carpet had been replaced at some point, but not the upper hallway or stairs, so in addition to the older carpet being very nasty, there were large strips of wood dividing the bedrooms from the hallway. We pulled out all of the carpet and glued down vinyl in the laundry room, and got bamboo hardwood installed in the bedrooms and upper hallway. White floor trim replaced the nasty old stuff, both upstairs and downstairs, where it had looked like a lego project gone horribly wrong. Jan's dad, over the period of a couple months, completed the Great Stair Project, removing the carpet, scraping off the crud on the stairs, and painting it with several layers of white wood paint.
Last night we finally applied the half-circles of carpeting (bought in a package at the local Karwei hardware store) to the stairs, and everything remodel-ish is done and looking pretty awesome. The other thing the hammer drill is essential for is hanging pictures. That requires hammer drilling a hole, inserting a plug, screwing a screw into the plug, then hanging the picture. We also did this for the shelf over our bed, though since it was a wall added by prior owners, in ended up needing hollow wall plugs for four of the holes and wood screws for two of the holes. Typical :-P At least we didn't hit the Hidden Junction Box Of Doom while drilling there. We know there's one, because wires are running through it to an electrical outlet. We just don't know exactly where it is, and don't want to tear down the wall to find it. So one outlet remains eternally ungrounded.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Entering the Netherlands
Well, it wasn't quite so simple as "just" buying a house and moving over. First there was purging almost all of my worldly belongings. Then there was extensive research into the requirements to become a resident. Then there was a purging of most of the remnants of my worldly belongings. We'd been accumulating some decent furniture and electronics in Seattle over the years under the assumption that Jan would be moving there. Oh well :-P It's just stuff, even if I did feel like crying a couple times.
The requirements for residency aren't too onerous. I was applying based on family formation, and Jan had sufficient income to support us. I wasn't coming from one of -those- countries where an MVV (pre-entry visa) must be obtained before entering the country, or a basic intergration/language exam must be passed prior to entering the country to apply for residency. A rough requirement for those that have to meet it, since good Dutch lessons are in short supply around the world. I had my passport and proof of single status - an apostilled paper from the department of vital records saying a search for me in the marriage database came up empty. Jan got his work contract and payment records, and statement of single status, and statement of residence at our new house.
I arrived on Friday morning. Saturday morning, I filled out the short-term visit form online informing the Aliens' Police that I was staying in the country - this is required of everyone staying if they aren't staying in a hotel or campground. Tuesday morning we went by the local city hall to register as an inhabitant of Amersfoort - they wanted an apostilled birth certificate - had to order it from Washington. We also called IND (immigration) that day to make an appointment. The earliest available time was a few weeks ahead.
We went to the IND appointment, and were told we needed a third month's paystub and an official new copy of Jan's employment contract. We had the option of submitting an incomplete application and sending in the additional documents when we got a letter asking for them, or making another appointment to start over. It would take a few weeks to get another appointment, so we opted to submit the incomplete application. I got a very cool sticker/stamp in my passport showing I was allowed to remain for 6 months unless they decided they didn't want to make me a resident sooner. I was (finally) told that I can't work until resident status is approved - such a simple thing and NO info about it online anywhere.
One week later (on my birthday!) I received a letter in Dutch from the IND. I typed it out in google translate and it seemed to be saying I was accepted, and they'd send another letter saying where and when to pick up my resident card. My fiance confirmed that was what it said when he got home from work. Yay!
And since then ... nothing. That was over six weeks ago. The city of Amersfoort must have also been informed, since I was "invited" to an inburgering information appointment. Well, that letter started off by politiely inviting and than finished with apologetically explaining I would be fined if I missed the appointment without rescheduling it. The woman was surprised that I hadn't received my resident card yet, but said that had been happening a lot lately. She explained a few things about the inburgering process, such as that the language classes I would take depended on my current Dutch abilities -which she undercut my confidence in with a couple simple Dutch questions - and prior education level. So they have different classes available for people with no formal education, hence no experience forming study habits, and those with too much education, hence lots of experience slacking for months then cramming right before exams. But they would need to see my resident card before I could be processed (the first stage of assimilation!) Based on the timing of acceptance of my resident application and the timing of the inburgering appointment, getting my card should only have taken a couple weeks, at most. Time to call them soon, even if the letter said DO NOT CALL. WE WILL WRITE YOU.
So I'm a temporary resident (must be renewed after 1 year), but have no card. I can't get into the cheap language classes or get a job, even though I'm a legal resident and it's technically legal for me to work. Bleh!
The requirements for residency aren't too onerous. I was applying based on family formation, and Jan had sufficient income to support us. I wasn't coming from one of -those- countries where an MVV (pre-entry visa) must be obtained before entering the country, or a basic intergration/language exam must be passed prior to entering the country to apply for residency. A rough requirement for those that have to meet it, since good Dutch lessons are in short supply around the world. I had my passport and proof of single status - an apostilled paper from the department of vital records saying a search for me in the marriage database came up empty. Jan got his work contract and payment records, and statement of single status, and statement of residence at our new house.
I arrived on Friday morning. Saturday morning, I filled out the short-term visit form online informing the Aliens' Police that I was staying in the country - this is required of everyone staying if they aren't staying in a hotel or campground. Tuesday morning we went by the local city hall to register as an inhabitant of Amersfoort - they wanted an apostilled birth certificate - had to order it from Washington. We also called IND (immigration) that day to make an appointment. The earliest available time was a few weeks ahead.
We went to the IND appointment, and were told we needed a third month's paystub and an official new copy of Jan's employment contract. We had the option of submitting an incomplete application and sending in the additional documents when we got a letter asking for them, or making another appointment to start over. It would take a few weeks to get another appointment, so we opted to submit the incomplete application. I got a very cool sticker/stamp in my passport showing I was allowed to remain for 6 months unless they decided they didn't want to make me a resident sooner. I was (finally) told that I can't work until resident status is approved - such a simple thing and NO info about it online anywhere.
One week later (on my birthday!) I received a letter in Dutch from the IND. I typed it out in google translate and it seemed to be saying I was accepted, and they'd send another letter saying where and when to pick up my resident card. My fiance confirmed that was what it said when he got home from work. Yay!
And since then ... nothing. That was over six weeks ago. The city of Amersfoort must have also been informed, since I was "invited" to an inburgering information appointment. Well, that letter started off by politiely inviting and than finished with apologetically explaining I would be fined if I missed the appointment without rescheduling it. The woman was surprised that I hadn't received my resident card yet, but said that had been happening a lot lately. She explained a few things about the inburgering process, such as that the language classes I would take depended on my current Dutch abilities -which she undercut my confidence in with a couple simple Dutch questions - and prior education level. So they have different classes available for people with no formal education, hence no experience forming study habits, and those with too much education, hence lots of experience slacking for months then cramming right before exams. But they would need to see my resident card before I could be processed (the first stage of assimilation!) Based on the timing of acceptance of my resident application and the timing of the inburgering appointment, getting my card should only have taken a couple weeks, at most. Time to call them soon, even if the letter said DO NOT CALL. WE WILL WRITE YOU.
So I'm a temporary resident (must be renewed after 1 year), but have no card. I can't get into the cheap language classes or get a job, even though I'm a legal resident and it's technically legal for me to work. Bleh!
Monday, October 25, 2010
Background
So how did I end up in the city of Amersfoort, in the Netherlands? Well, it started during my senior year of high school on Maui. I was a high-achieving slacker with a lot of spare time between the end of the school day and the start of extra band practices or extra AP chemistry classes. I spent some time in the tiny computer lab, probably playing solitaire, until I noticed a fellow high-achieving AP/band slacker doing something less tedious, and was covertly given the password for network access and the telnet address for a text-based online multi-player game, collectively known as MUDs. Eventually I met my future fiance, a Dutch university student there, as well as a lot of other interesting people from exotic locations, and was soon able to say very naughty things in several languages, instead of just English and Spanish.
For a couple years, we were friends and chatted a lot, with no hint of romance. He taught me the basics of how to code on MUDs. It wasn't til I was ending a relationship with a moron (my first boyfriend) that I realized what a good boyfriend Jan would make. After many more late night chats while I pondered my feelings, I finally told him "I think I love you." He didn't proclaim the same right away, but didn't run away screaming either, so I figured that went quite well, all things considered. I guess our talks got more intimate after that, however, and eventually we agreed to meet in Amsterdam shortly before I started college for the 2nd (and not last) time.
I bought a plane ticket with some of my summer job money, and flew out of Seatac. We stayed the first couple days in Amsterdam, and hit it off right away. I still remember how weird it was, 12 years ago, meeting someone I had only talked to online. On the one hand he was different than I expected because my mind had filled in the missing blanks somewhat randomly, but on the other hand, we already knew each other very well from two years of chatting a lot. It was nice to skip the awkward dating thing, and go straight from being friends to being in a relationship.
We got engaged about a week after I arrived. I visited the Netherlands a few more times over the past 12 years, and after leaving college and starting work, he started visiting me in Seattle most Christmases, and visited me or we both went on vacations in the summer. The general plan was that he would get a couple years experience at his job (and make contacts through it) and then use that on his resume (C.V.) to get a job in the US. Well, we got to about that point, and I had finished law school and got licensed, which was just what we were waiting for, and then the economy did its famous nosedive. It did this right before I got admitted to the state bar association and could work as a lawyer. Local governments started laying off lawyers, and everyone else stopped hiring. I was not amused.
I started applying for jobs of course, but there were very few positions and the recently laid-off lawyers had the rather huge advantage of experience. I got invited to two interviews and didn't land either job, despite both jobs being located in the Washington State equivalent of Siberia (but with more drugs). I also applied for every law-related job I could find, but none wanted a lawyer, assuming the recession would end in a week or so and I would run off to do real lawyering and they'd be stuck hiring and training someone all over. I even applied for data entry and craptastic minimum-wage jobs cashiering, both of which I do have some experience with (and |33t typing skillz). Nada.
I moved in with my aunt for a very reasonable rate (with a broken-ankle discount for helping out a lot and puppy-sitting when she got back from the hospital), and my mother paying my rent and food bills. Yeah. 30 year old attorney dependent on her mummy :-P I started attending a community college to retrain as something useful to society, such a nurse. But couldn't get financial aid because I'd earned 2 (albeit useless) degrees in the past 5 years. Shortly before Jan came over for his summer visit, I did the math and realized the only way we could have two kids before I hit 35 would be if I scrapped the nursing school plans and moved to the Netherlands, since we sure as hell weren't going to find jobs in the US for a while, and they wouldn't let him over without a job or other financial support.
So we started looking for houses online, using funda.nl . That was an epic saga in its own right, but exactly one year after starting our search, we owned our first house. I flew over on August 6th, and that was that.
For a couple years, we were friends and chatted a lot, with no hint of romance. He taught me the basics of how to code on MUDs. It wasn't til I was ending a relationship with a moron (my first boyfriend) that I realized what a good boyfriend Jan would make. After many more late night chats while I pondered my feelings, I finally told him "I think I love you." He didn't proclaim the same right away, but didn't run away screaming either, so I figured that went quite well, all things considered. I guess our talks got more intimate after that, however, and eventually we agreed to meet in Amsterdam shortly before I started college for the 2nd (and not last) time.
I bought a plane ticket with some of my summer job money, and flew out of Seatac. We stayed the first couple days in Amsterdam, and hit it off right away. I still remember how weird it was, 12 years ago, meeting someone I had only talked to online. On the one hand he was different than I expected because my mind had filled in the missing blanks somewhat randomly, but on the other hand, we already knew each other very well from two years of chatting a lot. It was nice to skip the awkward dating thing, and go straight from being friends to being in a relationship.
We got engaged about a week after I arrived. I visited the Netherlands a few more times over the past 12 years, and after leaving college and starting work, he started visiting me in Seattle most Christmases, and visited me or we both went on vacations in the summer. The general plan was that he would get a couple years experience at his job (and make contacts through it) and then use that on his resume (C.V.) to get a job in the US. Well, we got to about that point, and I had finished law school and got licensed, which was just what we were waiting for, and then the economy did its famous nosedive. It did this right before I got admitted to the state bar association and could work as a lawyer. Local governments started laying off lawyers, and everyone else stopped hiring. I was not amused.
I started applying for jobs of course, but there were very few positions and the recently laid-off lawyers had the rather huge advantage of experience. I got invited to two interviews and didn't land either job, despite both jobs being located in the Washington State equivalent of Siberia (but with more drugs). I also applied for every law-related job I could find, but none wanted a lawyer, assuming the recession would end in a week or so and I would run off to do real lawyering and they'd be stuck hiring and training someone all over. I even applied for data entry and craptastic minimum-wage jobs cashiering, both of which I do have some experience with (and |33t typing skillz). Nada.
I moved in with my aunt for a very reasonable rate (with a broken-ankle discount for helping out a lot and puppy-sitting when she got back from the hospital), and my mother paying my rent and food bills. Yeah. 30 year old attorney dependent on her mummy :-P I started attending a community college to retrain as something useful to society, such a nurse. But couldn't get financial aid because I'd earned 2 (albeit useless) degrees in the past 5 years. Shortly before Jan came over for his summer visit, I did the math and realized the only way we could have two kids before I hit 35 would be if I scrapped the nursing school plans and moved to the Netherlands, since we sure as hell weren't going to find jobs in the US for a while, and they wouldn't let him over without a job or other financial support.
So we started looking for houses online, using funda.nl . That was an epic saga in its own right, but exactly one year after starting our search, we owned our first house. I flew over on August 6th, and that was that.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Inburgering. Nom nom nom.
Anything with "burger" in it must be good. In addition to being the process of integration or naturalization, inburgering refers to some specific requirements in becoming a resident of the Netherlands. All immigrants (over and under certain ages) must learn the basics about the culture, and learn to speak the language with a certain level of proficiency. These requirements are relatively recent, and exist to ensure that immigrants integrate into Dutch society instead of remaining unable to communicate with the locals and intolerant of local customs.
Unfortunately there is no exception to inburgering exams for Americans, even though 99% of the locals over 12 and under 60 speak English quite well. Dutch society is quite similar to American society as well, probably due to most of the local television programs originating in the US. But still, I WILL be assimilated.
Beyond the official requirements of being inburgered, I'm very interested in the aspects of Dutch society compared to the US. I also have personal motivations for learning Dutch, since my fiance is a native speaker and I should learn to communicate fluently with my future in-laws. Or to at least understand what they're saying about me. And I plan to have cute little Dutch children at some point and I definitely need to understand everything they're saying if I'm to have any hope of quenching revolutions before they begin.
Unfortunately there is no exception to inburgering exams for Americans, even though 99% of the locals over 12 and under 60 speak English quite well. Dutch society is quite similar to American society as well, probably due to most of the local television programs originating in the US. But still, I WILL be assimilated.
Beyond the official requirements of being inburgered, I'm very interested in the aspects of Dutch society compared to the US. I also have personal motivations for learning Dutch, since my fiance is a native speaker and I should learn to communicate fluently with my future in-laws. Or to at least understand what they're saying about me. And I plan to have cute little Dutch children at some point and I definitely need to understand everything they're saying if I'm to have any hope of quenching revolutions before they begin.
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