Tudo bem (It's All Good): the Netherlands

Shortly after returning from Austria I went to the Netherlands with my amazing Au Pair friend Elske to visit her family. It's such a cute country. I communicated with a mixture of three languages: English, German, and Dutch. I can't speak Dutch though. Some conversations included all three in the same sentence. It was pretty sick.

I sort of couldn't get enough of this house!

Most of the houses there have a fancy kind of garden in their front yard or surrounding the whole house.

It has a straw roof!

This is a house boat chillin in the water. There were also some that looked like floating trailers, but I don't have pictures of those.

Another house boat. They have the coolest sail boats in the Netherlands! They legitimately look like pirate ships!

This is a war museum. We got there too early to see it though.

I don't even know what this is, but it's some kind of court yard in this building we discovered by accident.

Yes, we went to McDonald's...It's a lot more expensive here, and there are very few menu items.

My Happy Meal box. Interesting. I think we named him Earl, and he was the mascot of the day. He's also a ladies' man.

A BEACH! This is by the sea. It's the largest body of water I've seen in three months. We all enjoyed it so much!

"We are surrounded by clouds, but the sun is shining on us." -Elske (rough translation)

Sounds like a song. It was so cool! There were enormous storm clouds surrounding us on all sides, but directly above the sky was blue, and the sun was shining brilliantly.

This is the most adorable traffic light I've ever seen. They all have the rounded shield behind them, but the black and white stripes are just so cute.

The Netherlands are flatter than a pancake with the exception of the dykes that keep the country from drowning when it rains. The whole country's below sea leve.

Canal. Bare feet. Guitar. Sunshine. Perfect day. I think this is why my dad calls me crunchy.

The right one is an American Flag! The other is the flag of the Netherlands. Yes I leaned out the widow on the Autobahn just to take this.

Other cool/interesting things about the Netherlands:

Clothing swap! I got some pretty cool stuff from Elske and her friends.

Elske's family is the sweetest ever!

They're obsessed with chips!

I can understand a good amount of Dutch, because a lot of words are the same or similar to German.

There are deer fenced in like cows and pretty much no wild animals.

Sinterklaas is like Santa Clause, but painted black (like cinders), and they tell their children that the rest of the children in the world are being lied to. Santa is not real, and Sinterklaas is.

There was a kangaroo on one of the farms.

When I got home, I had two lovely ladies and one handsome young man style my hair.