Thursday, June 21, 2012

Studying Dutch and poison hemlock?!?

Oh my, this is difficult!  Trying to learn another language is hard!  Well, now I certainly feel more empathy towards people in the U.S. who don't speak English. Especially as an "older" person.....I certainly don't learn as quickly or easily as I did when I was twenty or thirty!

Our next door neighbor teaches Dutch at a nearby school. She is teaching a 5 week summer class next month that I've signed up for. It will be mostly speaking the language and hearing it spoken. All I can do is try, right?!?!  She gave me a bunch of websites to go to to help me learn, so I've been doing that for at least an hour a day. It's mostly familiarization and memorization of words and simple phrases. Andrew and I also have Rosetta Stone, so I've been using that too.

Everyone here speaks English, so we don't have to learn Dutch. But, I'd at least like to make a concerted effort to learn what I can.

This week I've been relaxing at home. Reading the book "The Art of Fielding" by Chad Harbach. It's an excellent book...I highly recommend it!  I will be going to a Book Club meeting in a couple of weeks and that is the book we will be discussing.

Last night I spent some time cleaning up the front entrance to the house. This morning I cleaned up the back yard. I trimmed the bushes and pulled weeds. Andrew planted some moss that is starting to "take"....it's filling in nicely!  We bought a little motorless lawn mower that we'll have to put together this weekend to cut what grass there is! Tomorrow the landlords' "Real Estate Manager" is coming to see the house with some prospective buyers. The contract we signed is a two year agreement. If they sell the house in the meantime, the buyers have to wait till the end of our contract to move in. We, of course, will have the house spotless to show, but we're hoping they don't sell right away!






Yesterday I received the nicest e-mail from the buyer's of our house in Pleasanton. They love the house and are making it their home!  That makes me feel good, knowing a nice family bought it. I hope they make many happy memories there!

The other day as I was walking in the park, I noticed these flowers! They are huuuuuge!  The stems are at least 10' high!  I sent a couple of pictures to Mom to see if she could identify it.......she believes it's poison hemlock.  See:

http://www.ipm.iastate.edu/ipm/icm/2007/7-9/poison.html






It's 2000hrs and the sky opened up and it's now pouring down rain!   Thissssss is the Netherlands!

2 comments:

  1. Learning to speak Dutch language is a very tricky subject, first we have to learn a lot of words and how to use them .Dutch language is the finest language spoken over the work. Learning dutch language is not much difficult .People asks how to speak dutch ? as this is not a big question , as with passion and a good teacher we can learn dutch language easily.

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  2. what your mom thinks is poison hemlock is actually cow parsnip, which is delicious. poison hemlock has much smaller leaves that look like water celery or chervil. the flowers are slightly different too.

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