It has been 3 days now and I think we are starting to get adjust to the time difference here in Holland. (8 hours ahead of Utah) Yesterday Gentry and I decided that we would be adventurous and we went to the grocery store as well as the gas station all in the same day. First we had to go to the bank and get bank accounts set up which by the way is very difficult here in Holland since the US government doesn’t allow them to give Americans accounts here unless you are going to be here for a long time. Thankfully 2 years is sufficient… After setting up accounts we decided we better get some food for the next few days and took a trip to the grocery store. This was an adventure as the store is very small and as we soon noticed everything is in Dutch. Needless to say we will be translating some items before going next time. The highlight of this trip was I found some Dr. Pepper! I thought I wouldn’t see this wonderful beverage until the next time we flew to the states, but I was pleasantly surprised. Our grocery shopping experience was interesting as we found you have to pay for a cart as well as bags for your groceries. Oh ya you also have to put everything in your bags and bring them with you every time you come to the store. Once we move into our apartment we will be about 3 blocks from the store so Gentry will ride a bike down a couple times a week for grocery shopping. (We will make sure to post a picture of this.) Oh ya you also have to pay for parking wherever you go here which I can tell is going to get both annoying and expensive.
After our trip to the store we had to get some gas which was also a new adventure since my company car is all new to me I didn’t know what kind of gas our what side the tank was on, but we figured it out and oh ya gas is killer expensive here. 1 liter is 4 euros. It cost about $100 to fill up a normal size car like a VW passat…. Good thing we are buying bikes here! Anyway to finish off the day there was a priesthood session for the stake which by the way was most of the country. There were about 50 men and it was all in Dutch so I didn’t get much, but it was nice to meet some of the people in our branch. It is amazing how the church makes the world a smaller place. All in all so far so good! We will keep you up on what is happening today we have to go and get visas and fill out all the paper work so we are legal residents here in Holland. We miss you all and love you thanks for taking some time to read our blog.
1 comment:
So much of this reminds me of our experience in Italy. Your grocery shopping trip was exactly like ours. I hated that you have to pay for bags and carts!! You will get the hang of things quickly though. We found that gas was expensive, but the car that we drove was small and stick shift and you filled up with diesel and the gas seemed to last forever!!! We rarely had to fill up. We walked and used public transportation for just about everything in Italy. Do they have good public transportation there? Good luck and keep us updated!
Trisha Goodman
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