i am a busy little bumblebee.

so, dear blog/ participants of my blog,
don't be butthurt that i post sporadically and with seemingly no relation to how exciting the things happening to me are. some days, i do particularly exciting things like go to amsterdam and don't blog about them at all, and other days i do absolutely nothing, get deeply inspired by a dutch cookie, and decide to write a page and a half.
one really needs to be in the mood for blogging.
lucky for you, today i am! and, DOUBLE LUCK, i actually did something wildly interesting yesterday!
first of all though, i just wanted to make an announcement. i am one exceedingly large step closer to not being an outsider. the language barrier was only step one. now i've overcome barrier two.
drop.

so many different assortments of questionable.

drop, as we know, is the salmiak [read: salt] flavored chewy licorice candy that the dutch love and everybody else thinks is absolutely hideous.
it is, to say the least, definitely an acquired taste. when i first got here, i was sort of like "meh, salty, weird woodsy aftertaste, very chewy, decidedly not terrible, but not something that i choose to voluntarily put in my mouth where more delicious things could be."
but then i met autodrop, dropberen, and schoolkrijt.

autodrop.

see dat bus? its half drop, but half fruit gummy. a genius invention. first type of drop i will willingly eat.
and that black car to the right of the bus? half straight up drop, half yummy chewy dropness i-don't-even-know-what. also a thing i would chose, over another thing, to consume. which says a lot, because i have spent 90% of my life absolutely despising black licorice.
its weird, but salmiak-smaak is kinda...good. sometimes. i've grown to crave that weird, woodsysalty aftertaste. sometimes.

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these cute little babies are dropberen. i only like the blackfaced ones, because they're more drop-y. I KNOW.
the white part on the ears is sweet marshmallow-y flufffluff.

finally, with a sort of candy that i find to be the most enjoyable for normal people, is schoolkrijtjes. this means school chalk, for those of you without common sense. :) they are hard and chalky on the outside, then a layer of salmiak, then a minty, fluffy filling. they are wonderful. weirdly medicinal feeling, but still wonderful.
ANYWAY. that is a full description of my accomplishments. which, kind of aren't that big if you consider the amount of people happy to wolf down piles of dubbel-zout. but still, i am definitely in the minority by being an exchange student with a soft spot for drop.
okay so onto the real blog story here.
yesterday i did two interesting things.
first, we had a potluck for AFS oost-nederland to see how everything was going. i had to bring an actual food, and not a dessert, which made me very uneasy because cooking for people sometimes makes me uncomfortable. i decided to make slider burgers, because very few things are more american :D
the most difficult part was admittedly finding a type of cheese that wasn't gouda to put on them. cheddar is a rarity, and obviously american cheese is just silly and not real. so we i think did use gouda, which was still yummy :P
we put some mustard in em, grilled the buns, yknow. all classy like. they were yummy, i was proud.
everyone else made lekker dingen, too. empenadas, chocolate cake, pannenkoek, pasta, chicken, arepas,  etc. omnom.
after a gezellig AFS meeting, i went off to go do my first night of volunteering at metropool! for a sold out show, no less :O
so spannend. i worked in the coat check, which was quite busy and ridiculous and i was beginning to foster a hatred for people who's jackets didn't have hangy-uppy bits, but it went really well! i didnt lose anything :D and the other people who work there are chill. they didn't even know i was american until late in the night. so i felt quite accomplished. i have now reached the status of "probable shy dutch person with a limited vocabulary who is not very interesting". AND I WILL TAKE WHAT I CAN GET.
after a long [but cut short, everything quieted down earlier than planned] evening, i rode on the back of alex's bike back home.
and then we ate 1 am cinnabons, because wencke is amazing and made them! :D perfect post-busy night snack.
anyway, i think i'm going to go work there again next week, because it was good.
tomorrow i have a doctor's appt, then saturday it's jelle's sister's birthday, wednesday chorus, blahblah. busy nice week ahead :)