Moving into Stage Two

Amanda, Grayson and I have been in Amsterdam now for a little over six weeks. While we are certainly still in a bit of a "honeymoon" phase, enjoying all of the little quirks of a different culture and city, the first official stage of our life here is coming to a close.

I would call this first stage, "settling in." Getting settled has involved:

• becoming comfortable moving around the city (bikes, trams, metros, etc.)
• making our apartment a home
• learning how to live every day life, such as buying groceries

Though our learning curve will continue, there is only so long one can spend merely getting settled. It is time to move on to Stage Two.

Let's call stage two, "language learning." Similar to settling in, language learning will be something that takes quite a while - it will actually take our entire time here. But, these next few months will be devoted to spending the vast majority of time to the process of language acquisition.

Here is a brief description of what (we expect) our lives will be like. I will be in class four days a week, for four to five hours a day. Amanda will spend that time with Grayson (as he is doing some language acquisition of his own!), and will potentially be able to develop some friendships that she's made so far. I'm expected to put in as much time studying per week as I am in class, so Amanda and I will do a fair bit of studying together. That way not only will we get to spend time together, but she'll be able to get a head start for when she starts classes next quarter. For the most part, the only other things that we will be able to give our time to is our team, small group, and church.

Please be praying for us, because we're about to enter into a very busy and diffucult time! But we are incredibly grateful, because without the Lord's provision this certainly wouldn't have been possible. About a week ago we thought that we would both have to wait until February to start language school...but here we are.

And God has been so good to have blessed us with an incredible weekend as we are ending Stage One. We got to spend time with our team: eating homemade Chipotle burritos together, talking about church, and laughing a lot.

We also got to visit a great bookstore in town, Amsterdam's version of "Barnes & Noble." Grayson loved the Kinderboeken section. We even bought him his first Dutch book. On the way home from the bookstore, the little guy fell asleep in the bike seat for the first time! In a proud parenting moment, Amanda even got him all the way upstairs and into his crib still sleeping.

But the highlight of the weekend by far was the arrival to the Netherlands of Sinterklaas. Yes, today is the day that the "Sint's" steamboat from Spain docked in Amsterdam. He, along with his helpers, paraded through the streets to much joy of all the children - most of whom were dressed for the occasion. Grayson will never remember this, of course, but we got plenty of pictures to prove to him that he saw Sinterklaas when he was a baby.

All I have to say is, I feel sorry for those of you in America waiting until Thanksgiving day to see Santa ride his over-sized sleigh through the streets of NYC. We've got the real guy here in Amsterdam! And yes, this is a picture that we took of Sinterklaas as he rode by...

Be sure to check out our facebook pages over the next couple days, as we're sure to upload a ton of more pictures from the last week or so. You're not gonna want to miss some of the Grayson pics - way too cute!

UPDATE: For a great description of my first day in language school, along with the very philosophical question, "what would you say," please read Julia's blog entry for the day.