Biggabeckuhbemma

Some notes from the low countries:

• Grayson's new favorite word is "biggabeckuhbemma." Last week it was "buh." He's advancing fast - he's already learned the Dutch art of compounding smaller words into endlessly long ones. Here are some great examples.
• Amanda took Grayson to the pool today for his first swimming lesson! They had a great time, and he even successfully went all the way under the water.
  
• My brain is fried from trying to learn almost 200 Dutch words a week. Two weeks down, five years to go.
• Check out Brooke's blog post, "re-creating a holiday in holland" for an account of our Thanksgiving here in Amsterdam.
  
• Sinterklaas is this weekend, and the whole city is going crazy for it. The "Sint" and two zwarte Pieten even came into our class today, handing out peppernoten. Yum!
  
• Eric preached at the Utrecht Vineyard this past weekend, and just hit the ball out of the park! I'm so glad to be a part of this team...
• Yesterday was the first Sunday in Advent - the anticipation and hope of the coming of Jesus into the world. Here is the prayer for the day (slightly revised by me), from the Common Book of Prayer:

Almighty God, give us grase that we may cast away the works of darkness and put upon us the armor of light - now in the time of this mortal life, in which your son Jesus the Messiah came to visit us in great humility - that in the last day, when he shall come again in glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to immortal life. Through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.

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.

Movie, Map & More

Movie

For those of you who know me and Amanda well, you know that one of our great joys in life is to watch a movie at the cinema. Well, after more than five weeks here in Holland, we were finally able to make it out last Saturday night. Rachel Baransi came over to our flat to watch Grayson as we made it out to see the new James Bond film. Here's a quick recap of our adventure:

• 8pm - Leave Grayson & Rachel; bike to the metro station
• 8:15 - Hop on the metro
• 8:25 - Arrive at our stop & walk to the Pathe' movie theater
• 8:35 - After waiting in line for almost 10 minutes, we find out that the two showings of Bond in our time range are sold out...sort of. Apparently there is an online reservation system, and so all of the seats were accounted for. However, if you reserve a seat online you have to arrive at the theater at least 20 minutes beforehand to buy your ticket - if you don't, the ticket is up for grabs!
• 8:36 - Wander around outside trying to kill time until 8:55 (20 minutes before the showing we wanted)
• 8:45 - Impatient, we get back in line
• 8:55 - Buy two tickets that were left unclaimed!
• 8:56 - Wait in line 20 minutes for popcorn & soda
• 9:16 - One minute late, we enter the theater and find our seats (Row 7, Seats 17 & 18...they are assigned)
• 11:30 - Leave the theater fat and happy, and make the metro/bike ride home.

It's a bit of a different experience than back home. Plus, there are Dutch subtitles during the film. That makes it sort of difficult when the actors on screen speak a language other than English - yet another reason to learn Dutch!

All in all, though, we had a great time, and were so happy to finally get to see a movie. And now that we've had our first movie-going experience, I think the next time will be much smoother.

Map
For some reason, Grayson loves maps. Here's some evidence:
Too stinking cute. If you keep reading, there is a link down below to a video of the little guy crawling around on the map. Why was he crawling on the map? He just loves Amsterdam so much.

More

• Language School Update: I got in to the class this quarter! One spot opened up, and I just got an email today inviting me in. So I start this coming Monday (the 17th). Very exciting, and very scary at the same time. Please be praying that I'd be able to absorb it all quickly. Amanda will be waiting until February to jump in, but I'm sure that she will help me study until then. Julia is still sorting through her options.
  
• The Netherlands football (soccer) team is newly ranked 4th in world! The USA comes in at 24; down a few slots from the last rankings.
• Along with the video referred to above, I have uploaded several more videos (mostly of Grayson) onto youtube. Check them out.
  

Language School

Just a quick update/prayer request. Julia, Amanda and I have all hit a slight road-block for language learning. The three of us were trying to get into the Winter quarter at a university here in Amsterdam for a Dutch as a Second Language program - but we have all been wait listed! Please pray that we would either somehow sneak into the course, or find something else soon...

With language learning in mind, I thought I'd pass along a blog I just found called Dutch Word of the Day. Check it out, and learn some Dutch with us!