We set our clocks forward a couple days ago, so I guess it's really Spring now. Over the weekend we finished getting plants for the garden, and Jan is almost done hauling out bricks and rocks. There was a big wooden fan on the shed that he removed as well, since it was extremely rotten. We also got a bird house to attach to the shed, close to the bird feeder in the tree.
This weekend I mostly got shade plants and some flowers for the sunny areas. We also tracked down a 2nd blueberry bush! We tried the nursery in town first, but it sucks and the employees believe that "self-pollinating" blueberry bushes won't benefit at all from having a 2nd variety nearby. Everything I've read online says otherwise, ranging from "my self-pollinating bushes produce no berries" to "they produce about twice as much when cross-pollinating". Maybe the don't have teh intrawebs in Dutch nurseries and believe everything the manufacturer tells them :-/ The new bush we got will only hit about 4 feet, instead of 6 like the other. But both should have blossoms around the same time, and happily cross pollinate.
After getting the new plants in, I dug up the dense patches of tulips, crocuses, and those little purple things and put small clumps of them between the other plants, distributed around the garden. No idea if they'll survive a transplant at this time of year, but it's worth a shot. All that's left to do is taking a look at the front little garden area. It has a small plum tree surrounded by white pebbles, a small slow-growing hedge, and a nasty mound of ivy growing out of something that it completely obscures. I hate ivy :-P
The visit to the doc went well last week. She asked some questions and ordered some blood tests, basically checking for indications of the causes of my exercise intolerance problems. Most neighborhood clinics don't have a lab, so she marked a scantron sheet with the applicable tests to run, and I picked up an envelope from the receptionist on the way out, which had the addresses and hours of the hospitals and other clinics where I could have blood drawn. She suggested I make myself sick prior to getting the blood drawn, so that whatever was happening might be captured in my blood when it was drawn, versus going in when I was feeling fine. Very sensible! Though getting sick again (and an purpose) really sucked.
Jan took a couple hours off work to drive me to the hospital, since I'd have to take two buses each way otherwise. Catching and transferring buses is not good when my body is trying to shut down and insists on taking a nap. So I went to class in the morning, and walked nice and fast to catch the bus afterward, and just barely made it. Jan got home half an hour after I did, and we left for the hospital just as I was starting to feel icky. The main hospital is pretty easy to get to, but parking really sucks. Unless going to the emergency room, you have to park a 5 minute walk away, which wasn't much fun for me. Stairs were involved :-/
We weren't sure how to get to the lab for having blood drawn, so stopped at the reception desk to ask. Which turned out to be a good thing, because the first time someone goes to a hospital, they get a card created that contains all their data. The card itself is pretty similar to a credit card, with raised numbers, but also all the other data in raised type, like my name and my doctor's name, etc. It's all white, including the raised type. When we got to the lab, I gave the scantron from my doc and the white card to the receptionist, and she did something with the card and put the scantron into a little machine, not for scanning but for automatically printing the info from my card onto the scantron. Sweeeeet, formless hospitals!
I only had to wait a minute or two to get blood drawn. Both nurses (the first was newer and intimidated by my reclusive veins), were very nice and happy to chat in English when they realized my Dutch wasn't so hot. Everything was pretty fast and easy, but the biggest surprise was how relaxed and happy all the hospital employees seemed.
I should get results back in a day or two. My doc told me to give her a call then. In the meantime, I made myself sick again over the weekend with too much gardening :-/ Either I wasn't being careful enough, or my threshold of how much exercise I can tolerate is decreasing. Ick.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Volunteer Work
So last Monday I had a meeting with the volunteer agency, Ravelijn, that works with the inburgering agency, NVA. It went well and I was very impressed with how organized and focused they are. We talked about my future plans, as they put a lot of emphasis on finding volunteer work that will be useful for either experience useful for getting a real job, or networking for future jobs. But the primary objective is always to be getting practice speaking Dutch. They are very firm on that :-P
From what I could gather, Ravelijn deals largely or only with immigrant female volunteers. As a result, most of the non-profits they deal with regularly have positions for uneducated women, rather than over-educated Americans. But Ravelijn did an awesome job of finding a possible position for me with a organization that offers assistance to low-income renters in dealing with the organization that provides low-income housing in Amersfoort. I love rental law, so it would be great, even if I'm just stuffing envelopes and chatting with the other office workers. I had a meeting yesterday with that organization and Ravelijn, which seemed to go very well. The only concern is that my Dutch might not be good enough for me to be very useful. I'll hear back by Monday.
Over the weekend we did more gardening, clearing out the rest of the bricks and Stupid White Pebbles of Doom. We visited a large nursery in Leusden, which is really close enough to think of it as part of Amersfoort. It's still pretty early in the season, so we didn't find squash or brussel sprouts yet, and only one variety of blueberry bush, so we'll probably make another trip in week or two. Also to get non-edible plants :-) We gave the hibiscus tree a major pruning, which looked like it was about 5 years overdue. Hardy ones should get a hard pruning every year, apparently, to avoid becoming huge messy bushes and make nice big flowers. The top foot or two of the branches were completely entangled with a vine that had snuck in from the neighbor's yard. The plum tree out front also got a mild pruning.
We also finished up the downstairs bathroom this weekend. We painted it last weekend, though I think the color is too light. Jan fears paint any darker than the pastel shades, so we keep ending up with ... pastel shades :-P Anyhow, it looks a lot better with yellow/cream walls (depending on the light source), instead of a white wall over white wall tiles over white floor tiles. We also got up a small mirror, towel hook, and TP holder. The old TP holder was flimsy ugly yellow plastic, and the towel hook was a metal stick poking out of the wall.
Over the past few weeks I've been getting sick a lot, and I finally noticed a pattern. Exercise is making me sick! Basically any aerobic activity results in me getting intense chills and exhaustion 2 hours later, which lasts for about 2 days. I'd been having this problem every day lately after getting home from class, and I kept thinking I had the Neverending Dutch Flu For Immigrants or something. But over the weekends I usually feel better. After class I walk pretty fast for 10 minutes to catch a bus. I push myself hard enough that my breathing accelerates and my calf muscles start burning. Then I get sick. But if I walk slowly (like I did for the A level class, catching a bus that gets me to school 2 hours early), I'm usually fine. Gardening has also been fine, so long as I go slow and steady and don't carry around bags of bricks and such. Cycling to the volunteer work meeting yesterday made me sick again. Even riding slowly takes a lot more effort than a slow walk.
So I called the doctor today and made an appointment for this afternoon. Yeah, still no problems getting in to see a doc with socialized healthcare :-P I hope they can figure out what's going on ... there's quite a few things that can cause exercise intolerance, and some, like electrolyte imbalance and blood pressure problems, can be easily fixed. And if the cause is something not so easy to fix, hopefully I can get a better idea of how to deal with it. Hopefully I can go back to walking fast, because walking slow annoys me to no end.
From what I could gather, Ravelijn deals largely or only with immigrant female volunteers. As a result, most of the non-profits they deal with regularly have positions for uneducated women, rather than over-educated Americans. But Ravelijn did an awesome job of finding a possible position for me with a organization that offers assistance to low-income renters in dealing with the organization that provides low-income housing in Amersfoort. I love rental law, so it would be great, even if I'm just stuffing envelopes and chatting with the other office workers. I had a meeting yesterday with that organization and Ravelijn, which seemed to go very well. The only concern is that my Dutch might not be good enough for me to be very useful. I'll hear back by Monday.
Over the weekend we did more gardening, clearing out the rest of the bricks and Stupid White Pebbles of Doom. We visited a large nursery in Leusden, which is really close enough to think of it as part of Amersfoort. It's still pretty early in the season, so we didn't find squash or brussel sprouts yet, and only one variety of blueberry bush, so we'll probably make another trip in week or two. Also to get non-edible plants :-) We gave the hibiscus tree a major pruning, which looked like it was about 5 years overdue. Hardy ones should get a hard pruning every year, apparently, to avoid becoming huge messy bushes and make nice big flowers. The top foot or two of the branches were completely entangled with a vine that had snuck in from the neighbor's yard. The plum tree out front also got a mild pruning.
We also finished up the downstairs bathroom this weekend. We painted it last weekend, though I think the color is too light. Jan fears paint any darker than the pastel shades, so we keep ending up with ... pastel shades :-P Anyhow, it looks a lot better with yellow/cream walls (depending on the light source), instead of a white wall over white wall tiles over white floor tiles. We also got up a small mirror, towel hook, and TP holder. The old TP holder was flimsy ugly yellow plastic, and the towel hook was a metal stick poking out of the wall.
Over the past few weeks I've been getting sick a lot, and I finally noticed a pattern. Exercise is making me sick! Basically any aerobic activity results in me getting intense chills and exhaustion 2 hours later, which lasts for about 2 days. I'd been having this problem every day lately after getting home from class, and I kept thinking I had the Neverending Dutch Flu For Immigrants or something. But over the weekends I usually feel better. After class I walk pretty fast for 10 minutes to catch a bus. I push myself hard enough that my breathing accelerates and my calf muscles start burning. Then I get sick. But if I walk slowly (like I did for the A level class, catching a bus that gets me to school 2 hours early), I'm usually fine. Gardening has also been fine, so long as I go slow and steady and don't carry around bags of bricks and such. Cycling to the volunteer work meeting yesterday made me sick again. Even riding slowly takes a lot more effort than a slow walk.
So I called the doctor today and made an appointment for this afternoon. Yeah, still no problems getting in to see a doc with socialized healthcare :-P I hope they can figure out what's going on ... there's quite a few things that can cause exercise intolerance, and some, like electrolyte imbalance and blood pressure problems, can be easily fixed. And if the cause is something not so easy to fix, hopefully I can get a better idea of how to deal with it. Hopefully I can go back to walking fast, because walking slow annoys me to no end.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Gardening
Spring seems to finally be here. At least, temperatures have been above freezing for about a week, and should stay there for at least another week. Woohoo!
Last weekend we went to the library and got more easy Dutch novels, but I also started reading a "normal" novel in Dutch and have been able to make good progress. We had our speaking midterm a few days ago, and I didn't do very well. No one else did either, really. The teacher attributed that problem to the short amount of time we have at A level Dutch ... we learned the rules, but didn't really have time to get comfortable with applying them. She suggested speaking Dutch at home, and doing volunteer work. I already had an appointment scheduled for the 14th, so that works out well :-P I'm also speaking Dutch at home now (when I remember to and can sufficiently express myself), but Jan has been banned from speaking Dutch since he tends to use a lot of words I don't know yet, and it's too annoying and frustrating. Anyhow, I can understand Dutch sentences pretty well, but just need to get more comfortable using the correct word order. I'm learning enough new vocab as it is :-P
We have the writing midterm on Tuesday, and I think I'll do much better on that.
Jan's parents came to visit yesterday (and get computer help), and helped out a lot in the garden as well. Jan and his dad fixed the wiring in the shed, and took out most of the lights. Apparently it was set up to be a marijuana grow operation at some point, hence 10 lights in a small shed :-P Plus a timer for the electricity! Now we just have two lights, one right by the door and one at the opposite end ... plenty for good illumination.
Jan's mom and I worked in the garden. I got caught up on the weeding and removed some of the bricks from the yard. Basically it had a big patio area and a wide path to the shed and gate, despite being a fairly small yard. And half of the non-bricked area was filled in with little white rocks :-P Basically there were bricks in the most useful spots for growing plants, and dirt where there's partial to full shade from the shade. Brilliant :-P So now the patio is being trimmed around the edges, as well as the path, and the white rocks have been removed to a fully shaded corner around the base of the tree. Jan and I did more garden work today, pulling out more bricks and laying down some fresh soil to fill in the empty bits.
Next week we'll probably get plants. I suck at garden design, so I'm going with a practical use of the space, centered on food bearing plants that are also attractive. Then I'll fill in the spaces around those with decorative plants, tentatively aiming for a cottage garden look. I'm thinking about getting 2-3 highbush blueberries for along the north fence (lots of sun exposure), one or two small squash varieties to grow on trellises, a rosemary bush, and strawberries, brussel sprouts, garlic, and rhubarb. All things we like to eat which should do well here. And I'm pretty sure we'll have good spots for all of it :-)
No more trees since we have so little space and they create a lot of shade. But the blueberry bushes should be tall enough to break the monotony of the fence. Oh, and the house came with a nice little plum tree in the front of the house :-)
Right now there's just remnants of prior owners growing: the big purple hibiscus tree by the shed, and small clumps of tulips, crocuses, and something else that hasn't bloomed yet - probably mini daffodils.
Last weekend we went to the library and got more easy Dutch novels, but I also started reading a "normal" novel in Dutch and have been able to make good progress. We had our speaking midterm a few days ago, and I didn't do very well. No one else did either, really. The teacher attributed that problem to the short amount of time we have at A level Dutch ... we learned the rules, but didn't really have time to get comfortable with applying them. She suggested speaking Dutch at home, and doing volunteer work. I already had an appointment scheduled for the 14th, so that works out well :-P I'm also speaking Dutch at home now (when I remember to and can sufficiently express myself), but Jan has been banned from speaking Dutch since he tends to use a lot of words I don't know yet, and it's too annoying and frustrating. Anyhow, I can understand Dutch sentences pretty well, but just need to get more comfortable using the correct word order. I'm learning enough new vocab as it is :-P
We have the writing midterm on Tuesday, and I think I'll do much better on that.
Jan's parents came to visit yesterday (and get computer help), and helped out a lot in the garden as well. Jan and his dad fixed the wiring in the shed, and took out most of the lights. Apparently it was set up to be a marijuana grow operation at some point, hence 10 lights in a small shed :-P Plus a timer for the electricity! Now we just have two lights, one right by the door and one at the opposite end ... plenty for good illumination.
Jan's mom and I worked in the garden. I got caught up on the weeding and removed some of the bricks from the yard. Basically it had a big patio area and a wide path to the shed and gate, despite being a fairly small yard. And half of the non-bricked area was filled in with little white rocks :-P Basically there were bricks in the most useful spots for growing plants, and dirt where there's partial to full shade from the shade. Brilliant :-P So now the patio is being trimmed around the edges, as well as the path, and the white rocks have been removed to a fully shaded corner around the base of the tree. Jan and I did more garden work today, pulling out more bricks and laying down some fresh soil to fill in the empty bits.
Next week we'll probably get plants. I suck at garden design, so I'm going with a practical use of the space, centered on food bearing plants that are also attractive. Then I'll fill in the spaces around those with decorative plants, tentatively aiming for a cottage garden look. I'm thinking about getting 2-3 highbush blueberries for along the north fence (lots of sun exposure), one or two small squash varieties to grow on trellises, a rosemary bush, and strawberries, brussel sprouts, garlic, and rhubarb. All things we like to eat which should do well here. And I'm pretty sure we'll have good spots for all of it :-)
No more trees since we have so little space and they create a lot of shade. But the blueberry bushes should be tall enough to break the monotony of the fence. Oh, and the house came with a nice little plum tree in the front of the house :-)
Right now there's just remnants of prior owners growing: the big purple hibiscus tree by the shed, and small clumps of tulips, crocuses, and something else that hasn't bloomed yet - probably mini daffodils.
Friday, March 4, 2011
Inburgering Progress
We just finished our third week of B1 level Dutch class. Which means just 5 weeks til B2 starts. Eek! If I look at all we're learning and supposed to be learning, it seems hopelessly overwhelming... but somehow it's sticking pretty well. Just yesterday I got a "heel goed!" on a grammar quiz :-P
The main thing now is sorting out the rules, and picking up as many new words as I can. One nice thing about Dutch is that a lot of words get recycled. One verb might have one of 5 or 6 different prefixes added to it that create a different meaning while still being related to the basic verb. And nouns can be stacked to form new nouns that are longer than the English alphabet. They're scary to look at, but easy if you break them down into their basic parts. Dutch word formation is actually pretty logical. Too bad the grammar is so complicated :-P
I'm still a lot more confident with reading and writing than I am with speaking. Our teacher spoke to the class about it today, and listened to our concerns regarding why we don't speak Dutch much outside the class. Some had problems with Dutchies getting snobby toward their bad grammar and switching to English. I mentioned that it's hard to express myself fully in Dutch. She suggested persistence and finding nice people to talk to (and implied that the mean ones shouldn't aren't worth being upset by), as well as speaking Dutch as much as possible at home, and switching to English for the complicated stuff. I'm scared, but I think I'm ready to give it a try.
She also suggested getting in touch with a volunteer outreach organization, since that usually involves speaking with Dutchies. I've already got an appointment for that, in a week or so. I had a pre-appointment last week with my integration person, and filled out a form. I needed some help with that still, since it wasn't the sort of form we practice with in class :-P Anyhow, she'd printed out a list of different volunteer opportunities, and there were probably around 30 that were fairly diverse. I think the one I'd like best is teaching computer skills to immigrants that don't speak Dutch. It's typically one day per week, which should work fine with my schedule.
A bit of trivia: The Netherlands is the country with the highest percentage of its population contributing money to charity or doing volunteer work ... 77%! Volunteering especially seems far more common than back in the US. Granted, people don't work 50 hours per week here, and part time work is very common for women.
The main thing now is sorting out the rules, and picking up as many new words as I can. One nice thing about Dutch is that a lot of words get recycled. One verb might have one of 5 or 6 different prefixes added to it that create a different meaning while still being related to the basic verb. And nouns can be stacked to form new nouns that are longer than the English alphabet. They're scary to look at, but easy if you break them down into their basic parts. Dutch word formation is actually pretty logical. Too bad the grammar is so complicated :-P
I'm still a lot more confident with reading and writing than I am with speaking. Our teacher spoke to the class about it today, and listened to our concerns regarding why we don't speak Dutch much outside the class. Some had problems with Dutchies getting snobby toward their bad grammar and switching to English. I mentioned that it's hard to express myself fully in Dutch. She suggested persistence and finding nice people to talk to (and implied that the mean ones shouldn't aren't worth being upset by), as well as speaking Dutch as much as possible at home, and switching to English for the complicated stuff. I'm scared, but I think I'm ready to give it a try.
She also suggested getting in touch with a volunteer outreach organization, since that usually involves speaking with Dutchies. I've already got an appointment for that, in a week or so. I had a pre-appointment last week with my integration person, and filled out a form. I needed some help with that still, since it wasn't the sort of form we practice with in class :-P Anyhow, she'd printed out a list of different volunteer opportunities, and there were probably around 30 that were fairly diverse. I think the one I'd like best is teaching computer skills to immigrants that don't speak Dutch. It's typically one day per week, which should work fine with my schedule.
A bit of trivia: The Netherlands is the country with the highest percentage of its population contributing money to charity or doing volunteer work ... 77%! Volunteering especially seems far more common than back in the US. Granted, people don't work 50 hours per week here, and part time work is very common for women.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)