Celebrate!

I am sitting here this evening just full to the brim with celebrations. Today is my 25th anniversary of immigrating to Holland. It does not seem possible that 25 years have passed in the blink of an eye. You can read a little more about my becoming Dutch here.

Jos picked up typical Dutch 'gebak' (pasteries) for with our coffee tonight. He also bought a little bag of Leonidas chocolates which he teasingly gave me. For us both, Leonidas are our favorite dark chocolates. But they also remind us of a funny thing I did within a month of moving over to Europe.

We lived for a couple of months when I first arrived in the city of Brussels, Belgium. I used to write diary like letters home to my parents about everything that I was experiencing. One of the things I found humorous was my daily grocery shopping at a tiny Nopri just two streets from our little rented studio apartment. It was so small that it felt like a clothes closet. And the woman would come in dressed in very expensive clothes with their poodles to shop. The poodles would spy each other and the yapping was deafening.

I had decided one day that I would wander down into the city to a large grocery store for my ingredients for dinner. I had been trying to pay attention to how we walked there in the evenings so I could find it on my own. After walking in circles for 1-1/2 hours, I finally dared ask a Belgian man if he could tell me where it was. I had been circling around it all that time. *sigh* I was very young and very leery about approaching people so it was not easy to ask right away. Needless to say, I would no longer do that!

I did know that if I left the large grocery store from a certain side that I was right across from a Leonidas stand. I wanted to bring Jos home a box of the same chocolates he bought for me when he picked me up at the airport. We had a favorite one in the box so I asked the woman for a kilo of that particular one. She turned away and was busy packing a box that only when she turned and politely informed me that she could not fit a kilo (approximately 2-1/4 lbs.) in a VERY large box and could she place the remaining chocolates in a separate box did I realize that a kilo was a LOT of chocolates. I was so embarrassed about this that I said it was fine, paid and quickly made my way back to our apartment.

Jos got home and I told him about my adventure. We had dinner and I brought out the boxes of chocolates. He asked why I bought so much and I told him the story. We still laugh about it today.

And guess what? I never underestimated what a kilo is again! *wink*

Jos was unable to buy our particular favorite kind of chocolate as they do not sell them here in Holland at Leonidas but he bought some since he thought that was appropriate to celebrate my 25th anniversary of becoming Dutch.

Note: The stitched piece is a gift from a dear friend (thanks again Saskia!) and you can read about by clicking the link at the beginning of this post.