Windmills. Tulips. Wooden shoes. Marbles, shuffleboard, soccer. Cube houses. hundreds of bridges in Amsterdam. A huge coffeehouse culture with a violent opposition to Starbucks or any chain! These are some of the things we learned about the Netherlands. The most important fact I learned was that Holland is not a country. Holland is a part of the Netherlands. I have had that confused for, I guess, my whole life. Did you know that they have a huge canal system in Amsterdam? and that they have the world’s only cat boat, the Poezenboot, which is a houseboat that is a stray cat refuge.
We spent the week learning these cool facts and more. Some of the kids made windmills, and yesterday, they made these awesome trees out of paperbags. The willow tree is the tree they use for klomp, the wooden shoes.
We had a relatively unsuccessful attempt at making windmill cookies, speculaas. Hugely successful in taste! not so much in the windmill shaping department. My fault. I didn’t try it with the dough first. But man, did they taste good! nice and spicy. They are supposed to have almonds, but you know our nut-less rule~so we used some oatmeal instead.
Altogether a good week. and now we have some stamps to go in our passports. very nice. Check back with us next week, we are going to outer space to study planets and gravity and what the Mars rover is doing. Happy Weekend.
brightideasexplorersclub 