Upon Request
Since I have been posting on this blog for a while now, I have realized that really do prefer to use my other blog as opposed to this one. I have decided to not use this blog anymore and go back to posting on my previous blog for multiple reasons, including the request of some readers. This is the link to my other blog if you are unfamiliar with it:joelpilon.blogspot.comI plan on going to write a new post there now.
Anthing and Everything
There are many directions this post could go in terms of things to talk about, so this could be fairly long. This past weekend I went to Paris, France. It was a grand ol time. I ended up not wanting to take the time to figure out the public transportation so I decided to walk. Despite some really sore feet at the end of the day I would do it all over again. I ended up walking over 17 miles in 10 hours on Saturday. I posted pictures of facebook already. Over the past few weeks my host parents have been getting worn out from work. Coen is working really long hours and then it seems whenever he is not working then Jeanine has to work. On top of that Thom has more energy than I can humanly understand. He gets put to bed at 8, but does not go to sleep until 10. Then he wakes up by 630 in the morning and is ready to go. All this makes for even more tired parents. But now I am getting really irritated with Thom literally running the house. I have yet to see him receive in form of punishment beyond stern talking to and the very rare time out. But those are not working AT ALL! The little booger does whatever he wants. He stands on tables, he climbs on me like a jungle gym, he throws balls at me and the TV and everything else, he kicks the dog, he whines and complains, he refuses to eat his dinner and still gets dessert, and he runs around throwing toys like they are grenades. No consequences, that is all I have to say.And yet my position must remain not involved unless asked or circumstances require me to. By the way the difference in font stuff is my way of making paragraphs. So this weekend I am going to visit Germany to see Kyle. I can not wait to to hang out with him. Something I have found interesting is that Jeanine is pregnant and not allowed to smoke, but I think she typically smokes when she is not. But the interesting thing is that I think she is smoking anyway, but does not want me to know. There have been a couple different instances where I know she has been smoking and yet she tries to hide it. I do not approve, but it is not my place to say anything anyway.
Frustrations
I have lost patience with Thom! He is really good at being annoying. He knows what he is not supposed to do it and he does it anyway. Tonight at dinner he used his spoon and fork as drum sticks and then whined and complained when they were taken away. He did not like what was for dinner, so he refused to eat it and then said he wanted dessert and he got it! I am having a hard time staying out of my host parents business. It is their responsibility to parent/ punish him and NOT mine, but what Thom does tends to affect me. SO FRUSTRATING!Another thing is that I have been planning for a while now to be going to Ukraine for the second half of my semester, but Dordt had failed to inform me at any point that I was expected to pay for the flight (350 euro). Now I am having to deal with their poor planning. I am so annoyed that I don’t feel like writing this post. So now it is still up in the air whether I am going at all. I know I do not have enough money to pay for the ticket and the school here in Holland was never expecting to pay for it and then Dordt obviously did not feel the need to tell either of us who they expected to pay for it. SO who knows what could happen now? I am so pissed at Dordt right now.Outside of the frustrating things in my life, the weather here has been really nice lately. Today was the best weather we have had since I have been here, which is making the bike riding enjoyable. This past weekend I went to Brussels and had a good time on Saturday and Sunday. I stayed in a hotel with a friend who graduated from Dordt this past semester. She had booked a room with 2 beds and said that I could have the other bed if I wanted. Plus breakfast was included on sunday morning! But for some reason being in Brussels made me home sick. Honestly I think that it was so foreign that I just wanted something familiar. But just for a day. This weekend I think I will be going to Paris, but I still have to figure those plans out. And a week from this weekend I am planning on visiting a friend in Germany.I am really busy and I wish I had more time to do everything that I want to do. This includes homework. Time flies while I am here. This is the first semester that I really enjoy all of my classes and I want to do the homework. And yet still do not seem to have enough time. Good grief. I am really enjoying the people that are on the SPICE program this year. Apparently our group is getting along really well compared to other years. Our group as a whole is gelling quite well… accept for one that is. There is a girl that has not really fit in with anyone of us very well since the beginning and she is leaving the program. She apparently is struggling with depression, missing her fiance and she has a learning disability. I do not doubt all of this, but something that contributes more than all of this is her attitude. She has had the attitude that she knows everything about anything. Kind of a snobbish attitude, which has led to her not gelling as well as the rest of us. but now she is leaving the program and going home. Honestly I do not feel any remorse. the program is going to run much smoother now, plus she is probably better for it as well. So all in all things are at the extremes…I am extremely frustrated and enjoying myself quite a bit as well. Talk to you later.
The Basics.
I was not expecting to eat so much bread here, but bread is very common with both breakfast and lunch. The food in general is very good, but dinner is especially good. Coen (my host dad) is a chef and makes dinner every night. There is lots of variety and it has all tasted good so far. I told him he has yet to make something I did not like. The main mode of transportation in general is biking. Sundays we typically take the car to church, but I am slowly transitioning into not going to church in the morning and then meeting with some other SPICE students in the area for Bible study. We prefer this alternative for the simple fact that we cannot understand anything in the service unless it is a familiar tune to a song, which is rare. But I have continued to go with my family so far. I typically end up journalling through the service.I can really tell a difference in my leg muscles from all the biking. My bike ride to school is one of the shorter ones compared to where everyone else lives. Most us the group has about a 30 minute ride where me and a couple others only have a 15 minute ride. Our bikes only have one gear so that helps in building muscle as well.I have settled into my class schedule quite nicely. I do not have nearly as busy of a schedule as a usually do when I am at Dordt which is really nice for once. I have class on Woensdag, Donderdag and Vrijdag. Cross Cultural Issues in Missions on wednesday, Intercultural Communication on Thursday and Portfolio on Friday. The convenient thing is that I do not have class on mondays and tuesdays unless I want to sit in on some other classes, which allows me to have long weekends every weekend. At this point I am “auditing” entry level Dutch and Dutch Culture and Society(DCS). Tomorrow all of us in DCS are taking an excursion to Amsterdam for the day. But in many ways I am learning the most Dutch from my family in picking up simple phrases and words. Another convenient thing that the school has done for us is bought us passes to museums. These passes allow us to go to any museum in the netherlands for free by just swiping our cards.Things are busy, but good. In the next few weekends I plan on going to Brussels, Paris and Germany and then it is already midterm. Time seems to have sped up.
On My Mind- What Have We Become? by DC Talk
A preacher shuns his brother Cause his bride’s a different colour And this is not acceptable His papa taught him so It was love that he’d been preaching But this was overreaching The boundaries stretchin’ further Than his heart would choose to goLike an angel with no wings Like a kingdom with no kingWhat have we become? A self indulgent people What have we become? Tell me where are the righteous ones? What have we become? In a world degenerating What have we become?Speak your mind, look out for yourself The answer to it all is a life of wealth Grab all you can cause you live just once You got the right to do whatever you want Don’t worry about others or where you came from It ain’t what you were, it’s what you have becomeMom and Dad are fightin’ As Rosie lies there crying For once again she’s overheard Regrets of their mistake With Christmas bells a-ringing Little Rosie’d leave them grieving The gift she’d give her family Would be the pills she’d takeAn inconvenient child She wasn’t worth their whileWhat about love? What about God? What about holiness? What about mercy, compassion and selflessness?You know it’s true He is there for me and you Doesn’t matter what you doWhat have we become? Have we come undone? What have we become? Have we come undone? What have we become?Selfish… ??? With selfish… ??? Selfish people When you gonna learn? Everyone of us Gathered ’round in trust What have we become?
What’s new?
Last night superbowl 42 was broadcast her in holland around 1am. I could not convince my body to stay awake for the rest of the game. It was interesting to hear it announced in Dutch. I woke up almost sure that the patriots had won, but the giants had pulled it off. Amazing!Today is the last day of the Karneval celebration around here. I am not really sure what it is celebrating, but there have been tons of people on the streets the last few days and nights with ridiculous costumes…anything from an old man on a bike wearing an old ladies wig to two guys in matching pinstriped suits with pink hair. Maybe the old man really was an old woman. Not sure. This past week I only had one class. One of my profs was sick, and the other class I had we took an excursion to Maastricht. The city of Maastricht is the Southern most major city in the netherlands. Me and my prof from cross cultural issues in missions visited some really amazing people in a church plant there. The church plant is a ministry that is built on a foundation having Bible studies and people over for dinner. I wrote 6 pages of notes over the course of the afternoon and evening, and I will later give a presentation on the differences in this ministry we observed and another we are going to see in Rotterdam. I am tired of typing for now, but I will probably post again sometime today.
It has been a good week. I had all of my classes and I really like all of them, which is a first. When I am at Dordt there always seems to be a split between a few classes I love and a few that I really would prefer to not take. This semester is almost as if I am in quarters because of my trip to Ukraine. I only have 3 classes right now and I will have another 3 when I get to Ukraine plus an internship. Right now I have Intercultural Communication, Cross Cultural Issues in Missions and Portfolio. I also sit in on Dutch 100 as much as I can. The Portfolio class is designed to help us get the most out of our semester as possible and we get to choose some learning goals we want to achieve over the semester. One of our learning goals is something specific that we want to learn while we are in this different culture. Some have chosen to study architecture or about their Dutch heritage, but I have chosen to research the issue of homesickness and the issues related to it. ;I will explain more about portfolio some other time. Something that is interesting is that I really do no have class more than 3 days a week and they are on wednesday, thursday and friday. I think this will give me time to visit some relative is Amsterdam on a long weekend-monday-tuesday while the others have class. Today is monday and I do not have class. I woke up around 930 and have taken things fairly easy today. I need to do some homework before part of our group is having a Bible study at my house tonight. I am excited to have our english group together. I feel more relaxed because it is not nearly as hard to communicate. I think we are going to have wine and cheese with our Bible study. Speaking of wine, we had communion on the first sunday I was here and I was allowed to participate. The wine we had with communion was the best wine I had ever tasted and all the other SPICE students agreed. So that is the wine we will have tonight. I am looking forward to it. Today I am feeling real homesickness for the first time. I have been getting glimpses of it already, but today has been the first day with not much to do and as a result my mind has been Thinking about home. Someday I want to take a trip to Europe with my close friends from home. In other words, start saving up now. I really just want to completely relax. I am working really hard to be accommodating to the culture and the people, and it is going as well as possible, but it is hard work no matter what.If any of you have skype, I bought a headset and downloaded the program the other day. My log on name is joelpilon , but I am not sure how often time zones and availability is going to line up.For some reason I was really grouchy with Tom again this morning, but feel bad about it because I still am not sure what should expect him to understand in terms of what is appropriate behavior or not. Frustrating, but it is really teaching me patience which I have never had much of.I am going to go post some really amazing pictures from a day trip we took this weekend to Utrecht. It was really fun. (Check out Facebook for the pictures)May God’s peace be with you all.
Picture Problems
So I am having a difficult time uploading my pictures to wordpress’ website. As a result I will be posting pictures from Europe on joelpilon.blogspot.com . I will continue to write on spicypilon.wordpress.com but there will be no pictures here.
Today I had my first class here in the netherlands and it was awesome. A lot to take in because I am the only one in the class which I love. But it is hard to concentrate…the class is 3 hours and 15 minutes long with a 15 minute break for coffee in the middle. But it is really good for preparing me for ukraine!
I now have to go buy school supplies. Doi! (bye)
The swing of Things
Today is the 11 day that I have been here in the netherlands. Things are going well for the most part. Tom, the 2 1/2 yr old I am living with has been really annoying in the last couple days. I am not sure what to expect from a 2 year old boy because I have never lived with one before. It seems to me that he is smart for his age. He can count from 1-30. He can have a simple conversation with his parents and is the typical boy that climbs everything, including me. I have time where I want time to not have to deal with him, but the only place I can do that is in my room. My room is really nice, but I feel like a hermit if I spend too much time here. Updates on this issue are sure to come up later on.I have really been enjoying my time this past week at The GH (Gereformeerde Hogeschool) We have taken the week to get acquainted with living here and getting to know the people a bit about the culture. I have been semi-busy but it is exciting. The whole SPICE group is getting along quite well in my opinion, but there have been some bumps which I expect(ed). Today we broke up into portfolio groups, which I am not sure how to explain what they are. Basically over the course of the semester we will be working in these groups to address and study about issues and personal goals we have out side of our school work. This can anything and everything from home life to what we are leaning about the culture in general. So I am interested in seeing where that goes.One of my learning goals that I chose was to study the issue of homesickness. I figure that most of us will experience it at some point while we are here, and it will be interesting to see the the connections I can make that cause or prevent the issue of homesickness. I already think that it has a lot to do with spiritual support in terms of being away from accountability and support from one’s home church. Something else that I think is related is that there can be this feeling like there is nowhere to go that one is fully able to relax and just be because nothing is familiar. Being in a foreign country for an extended period of time is really hard work.Well I need to go work on my Dutch. I will write my next post with pictures, I promise.
