The day after we arrived in Rotterdam was Christmas day. We were allowed to ‘jump in’ on Paul (our grandma’s cousin) and Wendaline’s (his wife, pronounced Vendalin) Christmas. We arrived at their house at roughly 12:00 and were the first to arrive. We were shortly joined by Noor (Paul and Wendaline’s daughter) and Geert (her husband) and their children David, Clara and Vera and Bernt (Paul and Wendaline’s son) and his wife Ellen and their children Marius and Roland. (Sorry if this is confusing, it was really hard to get around at the time).
When everyone had arrived we had a big-ish morning tea and then went out to do some ice-skating. We went to a small rink next to the big canal (but not on it :( ). Everyone had fun, but I got sore feet from the skates and a sore knee from falling while avoiding some (maniacal) little kid.
Once we had finished ice-skating we headed back to Paul and Wendaline’s house for the (apparently traditional) Christmas Quiz. This was ‘inspired’ by our travels and so included many questions from around the world. We were split into three groups, two Dutch and one Australian. In the end we lost, but received a book as a consolidation prize.
We then had a large dinner consisting of various ‘traditional’ Dutch foods like roast turkey with apple or cranberry sauce and a chocolate cake for desert. It was nice, though, because it was a traditional European Christmas dinner.
On the whole, Christmas in Holland was really exciting, mainly because of the chance to meet up with some relatives who we really didn’t know existed until before, but also because of the different experiences of a white and European Christmas.
People are, clockwise from me: Gemma, the back of David's head, Roland, Clara, Marius and Jonathan.
Clockwise from me again are: Ellen, Jonathan, David, Vera, Noor, Geert, Roland and Bernt.
No comments:
Post a Comment