hoi, nederland!

soo it is my second day here. it's been good, if not totally overwhelming. i traveled through iceland on the plane [the airport which looks like a giant friendly ikea] and wound up here eleven hours prior to starting. i woke up at noon yesterday. me and my mom went to borne to do the grocery shopping. it's so cute here! they have strawberry [aardbei] juice, which i hadnt seen before. also, SO MUCH HAGELSLAG, which are sprinkles. people eat them on bread here for lunch and breakfast and stuff? yum, well balanced :> i am also totally in love with stroopwafels, which are like wafers full of syrup [sugar]. i got a back from AFS when i arrived, they are like heaven mixed with dreams. so, obviously, i am going to get very very fat. i've eaten six desserts today. VERY VERY FAT.

hagelslag!

stroopwafel.

after going shopping, we went to hengelo with my sister, wencke, to buy a phone and some school supplies. hengelo is pretty trendy and pretty, so i like it. there's a concert hall, and H&M, and wencke's favorite store, newyorker. also, there's an amazing store called HEMA? i got my notebooks there, it is really cheap like walmart, but wayyy better quality. it's my favorite~~ so excited to shop.
while we were walking around, a teenage boy called out to me "mooi haar!"which means ""beautiful hair"but i didn'know that, so i walked right by? and then my mom told me afetr. even so, i wasn't sure which thank you to use ["dankjewel"? "dank u"? "bedankt"? idk.] so i just smiled really big.
when we were at home later, a girl came up to the door asking for our help. i asked what happened, and wencke told me that a turtle got hit by a car and was cracked, so we were gonna call the animal ambulance. I KNOW! the netherlands is awesome like that. so we went outside, and it was so sad. it was trying to move, but it was wayyyy broken and bleeding and stuff ;o; i was like hang in there, little dude! but then the ambulance came. i hope it lived!
um also, some things you should all know about my new life!
-i live like 1 mile from ikea. yeah, i know C:
-everyone here is mad stylish. and euro. lol it makes me feel quite fat and frumpy
-everyone here is also quite tall. i'm too short for every bike we have, so i have to look on ebay! wencke called me a midget. LOL :P
-learned about "space cake"
-my room has a lava lamp, a bunk bed, and yarn from the last exchange student. score!
-WE HAVE A WII. telling my mom to ship me cooking mama from the us. sooo pumped! i thought i wouldnt be able to play :P

but duuuude. my brain hurts. i'm so so tired all the time from listening really hard to what people are saying and coming up essentially empty handed. like, i understand maybe 5% of what people say. i try to make out the words, but i don't understand any of them anyway! it's so easy just to tune everything out, but I WONT LEARN ANY DUTCH that way.
sooo ja. real tired. real happy. good times!

well UM im gonna go eat a cookie. ciao <3 <3