Life in Lent, Part 2

In our last post, Stacy described our home and neighborhood (although, try as she did, mere words cannot capture Ian's primal Braveheart-meets-300 yell that he gives as he runs to the other line in the neighborhood games of Red Rover). I wanted to describe a little bit more about the town we live in.

We are loving life in the Netherlands. What's not to love about a place where rides bicycles everywhere, everyone speaks English as a second language, and all of the restaraunts serve pancakes at every meal!

We've been getting into Bike riding-- the family that we are renting from lets us use their bikes. Back home in California, the boys don't ride bikes much since our road is a steep hill. Dom and Ian both have really done a great job learning to ride, although when we ride long distances, Ian rides on Stacy's mega-bike.


Our town, Lent, is a small little town, but it's just a 15-minute bike ride over the River Waal (it's the Rhine) to Nijmegen.
Nijmegen is the oldest city in the Netherlands, with ruins from some Roman settlements dated at 17 A. D.


The city is really beautiful, even though there aren't too many old buildings left-- during World War II, the U. S. Air Force accidentally destroyed about 80% of the old town when they bombed the city, thinking they were bombing a German city of Kleve just over the border. They've forgiven us. In fact, a few days after we arrived, they celebrated the 4 & 5 Mai (the 4th and 5th of May), when they remember the days that the Netherlands were freed from Nazi control in 1944, and they still honor the French, Canadian, and American forces that helped them.

The oldest standing building is the Valkhof, built in 1030 A. D., and it is still used as the location of city festivals.

This has been a great place to live in because people are incredibly friendly. In fact, some of the neighborhood kids are in a local soccer team, and one day when some kids were sick, Dominic and Ian were invited to join for the day to fill in the roster. We didn't win, but the boys had a great time.
We spend time most days tutoring the boys on some school work, now that they're no longer in German schools (and I spend time working on research and writing lectures for next semester), but during these last two months we have had a lot of flexibility to take advantage of cheap train tickets and cheap RyanAir tickets (don't get me started about RyanAir...), visiting places like Florence (staying for a week at the amazing villa of our good friend Elizabeth, hanging out with her and her wonderful dogs Althea and Macchiata),

Paris,

Berlin,

Amsterdam,

Dublin,

and the Lakes District of England.

Well, our year in Europe is just about over. This Friday, we take the train back to Heidelberg so we can spend a bit more time with our friends there. Then, next Monday we fly back home. We have had incredible experiences, but we are all really ready to get back home to our friends and family.

Life in Lent, Part 1

We've been in the Netherlands for almost a month now. It's gone by really fast. We're so pleased with where we're living and are glad to be here. We're finding whereever we go around here the people are friendly and patient, and our neighbors seem to be especially so.

Here's our "street," Dokter Huijgenhof. It's a group of 36 houses situated on an oval where the front of the homes look out onto the oval street and the green space and a playground in the center. It was all built 3 years ago and only one house had been sold in that time, so everyone knows each other. Also, there are tons of young kids around; we were told around 50.

Almost all the homes have a bench or chairs out front and often people sit out and talk or sit on the grass to visit. I think our home definitely needs a bench out front and we need to get our tushes in it. It is a great feel in the community to have everyone out so much.
Lots of homes are close together to save space and go straight up. Here's the tall view of our place.
Outside people ride bikes and other wheeled things in and around the oval, and kids run around playing games. Last Saturday it was warm so there was a great water gun fight most of the afternoon.
Below are kids at play again. Ian is in the red shirt with the ladybug umbrella and Dominic is the one hanging 1/2 off the platform. Steve and I have been so impressed with attitudes here. Everyone is generally calm, kind, friendly, and accepting. We even see it in the kids. Ian wanted to play "Red Rover" one day, so Dominic taught everyone and now we hear them playing it sometimes even when the boys aren't outside. Here someone has taken down the line. They play for keeps!

Here's a tour of some of the inside of our place. We really enjoy it here. On the ground floor there's the entry way - with a purple wall, even!

The living room...
And the kitchen. We both think the green cabinets are really fun. And there's a little garden area outback that also has the shed where the bikes and things are.
The we have some steep, slick stairs up to the second floor.
For the first time ever, they boys each have their own room. Here's Dominic's. He enjoys being about to look out the window every night as he's falling asleep. Which, by the way, is difficult because it doesn't get dark until after 10 p.m. here and their bedtime this summer is at 9.
And Ian's room. Ian really likes to look at the big map above his bed.
I guess I either ran out of camera batteries or steam here, but I don't have pictures of our bedroom, or the third floor that has the laundry, guest bed loft, and office.

And I'm out of steam again, because that's all for today. I'll do a part two soon about riding bikes, the area around here, and the animals and scenery we get to enjoy here.

Thanks for indulging all these pictures. We really miss you all and wish you could come visit, so this is my way to share and feel like you're here, too.

Take care!

Stacy (and the rest of the family, too)

The threw us quite a going away party, according to the letter... (again)

During the nine months that we've lived in Heidelberg, we've learned to discount several myths. For example, we had heard that Germans tend to be fairly distant toward strangers and nonexpressive, but this couldn't be further from the truth. We've had to say goodbye to so many people who have really become special to us this year.

To start off with, it was hard to say goodbye to our students-- we really feel like 57 new cousins have been added to the family. We can't believe it went so fast and we're looking forward to getting together again in August in Malibu. Many of them are keeping up with us on Facebook and we love it.

Unfortunately, Daniel Daugherty, the program director, was sick for the final banquet with the students, but we were glad to have time to spend with wonderful colleagues and friends like Mary,

Ulla,

Christina, Martin, and Bruno. Along with Daniel, these colleagues have warmly accepted us, and it's been a pleasure to work side-by-side with them this year.

Outside of the Pepperdine community, though, we've been shocked by how many others have warmly accepted us, helped us, laughed with and at us, and made us feel like we have another home.

Thanks to Stacy's friend Verena (you'll find out more about her below), she's been part of a book club "Literaturkreis" this year. It makes her laugh to go to a German book club because she doesn't even attempt to read. She goes and listens, nods, and smiles. And the women have become friends and been accepting, tolerant and patient. Not to mention lots of fun! To show her thanks for the great year, she invited the club to the Moore Haus for a dinner. Oh, yes, and to discuss yet another book she didn't even try to buy much less read. So here's the faithful six (down from about 15 the first night - including the "founder" of the club who I think was able to come once): Sitta, Nicole, Verena, Meggie, Stacy, and Gabriela.

Steve said goodbye to his Monday-night Kegeln club. One of his best sets of memories of this year is of this bowling club. One tradition of this group is that a person will bring dinner for the entire group on the week of his or her birthday. Since everyone was on Christmas vacation at the time of Steve's birthday, he never cooked them dinner, so he took this chance to make an American dinner for them, complete with tacos, mojitos, and brownies. They gave a very kind speech for him, and gave him the coolest book we've ever seen about Heidelberg. His biggest accomplishment, however, was that he was finally-- on the last night-- able to drink the pre-bowling shot of schnapps in one single drink-- that's strong stuff.

I hope I'm not mis-spelling any of the names, but my kegeln friends were (back row) Phillip, Hanspeter, Karl (thanks from inviting me and driving me every week!), Siegfried, Heinz, (middle row) Doris, Hedi, Rosa, (front row) and Gerhard.

The boys said goodbye to the friends that they made at school.

Ian's wonderful teachers (Miriam, Carolin, and Melanie) had the kids in his kindergarten make a memory book for him, where each of them told him what the were wishing for him. Two of his best friends are Kai (who wished for him something about a chocolate and a white house-- I don't think anyone really had that figured out), and Alex (who wished that he wouldn't have to leave).

Dominic said goodbye to his great teacher (Frau Attree), and his favorite memory of his last day of class was that all the boys rushed over to him and lifted him up into the air.

In addition, one of the families that we've become very close to (the Koch family) threw a goodbye party so that Dominic and Ian could have one final party with some of the friends they've made.

We also had several families that we wanted to spend time with before we left. We went with Daniel, Karen, and Lisa Daugherty to Europa Park-- a really cool amusement park, where each region of the park was designed to look like a different country in Europe.

We went out to eat with the Drehsels, who introduced us to a great restaraunt that was well-known for a springtime delicacy called spargel-- white asparagus that is apparently very complicated to prepare, but can be made into wonderful soups and side dishes.

Finally, we had dinner with Verena, Mattius, Luis, Joni, and Tino, a great family that we have really become close to.

Another family who's meant so much to us this year is Tilmar, Meike, Bente, and Sander Hummerich. Bente and Sander befriended Dominic and Ian our very first week in Germany, long before the boys were speaking much more German than "my name is...". Just a few weeks later Meike ran into us on the Hauptstrasse. It was Dominic's first day of school and we thought Ian's too, but Steve, Ian and I had just found out that the school fell through and we were all three sad for Ian. She walked us to what became his Kindergarten, took us to the Director, and helped us both with paperwork and with Ian. She also helped us with some things at Dominic's school. They invited us to celebrate both Tilmar's 40th birthday and Christmas Day (Weihnachtstag) in their home. We walked on St. Nicholaustag to find a statue of St. Nicholaus and never found him, but had a nice walk, anyway. And in April after the students had left, they came for dinner, with the four boys having fun adventures all over the big, empty house. And in all that, no picture!! I'm still not sure how that happened. Hopefully we remember to take one of all of us when we visit again in June before we return home. If not, Stacy will be forced to draw a picture and you will be forced to make heads or tails of it!

Church at Gemeinde Christi was another special group of people for us. They've been gracious to us in a thousand ways including taking the time to get to know us, and by inviting us to their homes or to do things with them. They do an invaluable service by welcoming any student or faculty and their family that choose to visit there during their time in Heidelberg.

It's been really hard to say goodbye to so many people who have become so important to us in such a short amount of time.

Well, now the title of the blog isn't accurate anymore-- the Rouses are no longer in Germany. We're going to spend the next two months in the Netherlands, and we just arrived at our new temporary home in Nijmegen two days ago. As soon as we get our bearings, we'll update this blog again. Several people have asked how to be in touch with us while we're here, but we still have easy access to our e-mail (steve.rouse@pepperdine.edu and stacy.rouse@pepperdine.edu), and we are still using skype (our username is stevenvrouse) and our Skype phone number (310-929-5828) still costs no more than a phone call to California (and you never have to worry about getting time zones confused because we only have this running when we are awake and our computer is on).

We love hearing from you! Take care!