Good Things

Normally, I just email my close friends the good things that happened to me. But yesterday's were so lovely, I thought I would publicly share them.
1. I arranged a play date for Tessel with her friend from school. As I was talking to the friend's mother in English, Tessel stomped her foot and said, "NAY! You moet in nederlands praten! Kate spreekt nederlands nu." which means - "Speak to Kate in Dutch because she speaks it now."
Since Tessel and I had a ton of problems the first 4 months I was here because of the language barrier, it was really nice to see her defending me and telling an adult to talk to me in dutch. One of the biggest struggles about talking Dutch is that all adults here speak English so well. They automatically switch to English when they realize I am not a native speaker. It was nice to practice my Dutch with her after Tessel reprimanded her. :)
2. Since Friso and Tessel both had play dates, I spent most of the afternoon with Hidde. Since my Dutch is a lot better now, he and I actually have real conversations (last week's big conversation was about how deep and good Miley Cyrus' lyrics are...). Yesterday we searched things on the internet about the Great Wall of China and then pulled out the drill and started making a "podium." There is probably a reason I was never allowed to use power tools unsupervised in shop class in high school, even when all the other kids could... But it was fun to try and build it and just spend some time with Hidde.
3. i have WONDERFUL WONDERFUL teammates who let me borrow books 4-7 of Harry Potter so I can continue to feed the addiction. Whoo whoo!
4. i got to spend all day by myself yesterday, doing tiny little things like picking up my residence permit (I'm way over halfway in my stay here, but finally just got my residence permit!). I haven't spent a whole day by myself since the day before the roadtrip. Was really lovely and really needed.