People, Place, Beer, Language

 Team management having post-post-game beer in town square. 

(Now you understand why I write rather than post pictures)

Tuesday

The climate here is very comfortable, at least for the summer. It reminds me somewhat of a mix between Minnesota and Kentucky but cooler.  It is right between cool and warm but the humidity from being close to water. The climate makes everything green. It is mostly deciduous trees and the grass on the fields is in great shape. 

The people have been very welcoming.  They speak English almost all the time around me and when they don’t, one of them will usually fill me in. Their English is very good from their formal school learning and from UK and US television with subtitles. I am very lucky because Dutch is haard. (pun intended) I started my Rosetta Stone courses today and I realized its harder than I thought. Nothing is written the same way as English, there are sounds I have never made in my life and the spelling isn’t even similar to English. There are consonants that make vowel sounds, silent letters, and some of their nouns are like five syllables long just to say something like paint or paper. I think it is an accurate comparison to say, in comparison to English, learning Spanish is like learning to ride a bike but learning to speak Dutch is like learning to ride a bike while juggling and whistle Dixie. 

Being a “real American” baseball player is serious currency here. I have been invited to eat and of course drink every day except yesterday. Monday seems to be taken as time out where you might drink slightly less to rest and catch up from every four day party that finally climaxes on Sunday. I tried to keep up this weekend but my liver is out of practice. It is also hard to get used to being outside having a drink after nine and the sun hasn’t set yet. It makes for long nights. As a side note, my team starts its practice around seven tonight. 

That’s all for now. The team I coach lost on Saturday 20 to 10 (offensive game here) and the team I play for “won” on Sunday and I pitched four innings. I’ll save the details for later. I have some great baseball commentary in store so if you read this far I will make it up to you with my next post. 

Duij for now!