Zeeland

And here are a few more pictures of this past week! We drove about an hour, to what could be a different country due to it's differences! Apparently the people dress funny (uhh, I think they are the typical farmer clothing...? Makes me wonder what they think about my clothes...), are very conservative, and apparently have a different (to Rotterdamer's the more politically correct term would be Weird) accent. I say apparently because I can't understand Dutch in the least, never mind distinguish accents on top of that! I guess there must be some sort of rivalry going on, but as long as they're friendly to Canadians I guess they're alright! The country side here is made of small cottages, sheep, and open land. We went to the small town and went window shopping, but hey, pictures always tell the better story :)

Your classic old-time candy store

(and I can report Mom that we had the self-control to not buy anything ;)

Typical Holland

We walked around the harbour and stopped to talk to a gentleman who had sailed across the Atlantic to the St. Lawrence channel. hmm, maybe next adventure will include buying a sailboat...

A glimpse of God

And I found this while jogging in the middle of nowhere yesterday morning! This is probably just about the coolest thing I've seen yet. That rectangular thing is a massive rock-climbing wall. From the top is a zip-line across the canal, that leads into an outdoor survival park, on the left of the photo. Basically it's all inclusive to the outdoorsman. There are 25 foot rope swings over mud pits, sketchy bridges over canals that require almost superhuman balance. There are fireplaces in teepees at the start, and huge rope hammocks high in trees. There's tire monkey bars, forts with precarious ways of getting up (to say the least), mountain bike trails, frisbee golf, kayaking, and the list goes on for 14 kms! While checking everything out I was so interested I forgot to look where I was going. Fortunately one of the creators of all this stuff was 'training' (yes, on a rope swing :) and so he told me all about it. Basically its an all-day race through all these obstacles. Too cool! And to do this stuff for a job, wow! It is pretty chilly now, and the race includes a lot of mud and cold and wet. I will definitely have to check out the race a little later on in the year though!

Also, one not so great thing (actually it's super crappy) is that my bike got stolen while parked at the university. Alas, a real Dutch experience. They tell me now that everyone has two bikes, one to get stolen and one for backup. My only backup is a man-bike that is about 2 miles too high or so, and really uncomfortable to ride. And we have a 40 km round trip tomorrow which means all day on the bike... we'll see how long I can sit down on the wooden benches in church on Sunday!

Anyway,  I hope you have a great weekend!

Kim