Author Archives: bentleyjw

We walked to a cafe near our house for dinner. We went in one door and they told us that it was just the fast food/grill door. If we wanted real food, we needed to go through the other door. So, we went around to the other door. The same person met us there andContinue reading “Lunchtime?”

We need a van and home internet. Those are my two most immediate priorities right now. To get either one, we need a Dutch bank account (it turns out you can’t buy a car or pay for internet on your credit card here). To get a Dutch bank account, we need a residency permit. ToContinue reading “Waiting Game”

Before coming to the Netherlands, I listened to a “Learn Dutch” audiobook. It didn’t have a ton of vocabulary, but one of the phrases it kept repeating was “de kerg straat”, meaning “the church street.” I thought that phrase was a little odd to use when teaching a language. There aren’t that many “church streets”Continue reading “Church”

There are a lot of things that are just a little bit different here. Each one has its own unique learning curve. For example, our oven is a combination oven, microwave, and grill. You can even do fancy programming, such as “microwave for 5 minutes 5, then bake for 15 minutes at 200 degrees Celsius.”Continue reading “Learning Curves”

It’s been quite hot the last few days, getting into the high 80s and low 90s. However, most Dutch homes don’t have A/C. So, we’ve been opening our windows at night. The open windows allow in a nice breeze, but with that breeze comes (a) humidity (it rains almost every day) and (b) flies. LuckilyContinue reading “The weather”

The town streets are different from those in the US. First, they are brick roads. Second, they have a single lane for cars, but often have two lanes for bicycles.

Just across the street is a wonderful little park. I took Adelaide and Henry over there to play. Some other kids were digging a big hole in the sand. Adelaide wanted to help. So, she asked me to use Google translate to tell her how to ask “Can I help you dig?” Thus, our firstContinue reading “First Conversation in Dutch”

We started renting our house on August 7th. However, JJ (age 12) had a camp until August 12th. For a bunch of reasons, we decided to split our party into two groups. Linda took Timmy (10), Adelaide (8), and Sarah (9 months) on August 10th. I came with JJ (12) and Henry (5) on AugustContinue reading “Across the Pond”

Tilburg has been a huge help as we’ve been moving out. They sponsored us for residency and they hired a company, P&DCare, to help us find a house, get bikes, etc. Unfortunately, it turns out that the Netherlands isn’t quite equipped to handle families of more than 5 people, and we’ve run into some difficulties.Continue reading “A Big Family”

One of the best decisions we made on this adventure was to split up the “move out” and the “move in.” The kids finished school early June. We packed up everything we thought we needed for the next year into our van (we didn’t even use a luggage rack). We put everything else in theContinue reading “Moving Out”