I just posted a bunch of pictures on Facebook, as we are at Jeff’s office where we have internet connection. The kids are with us and playing “quietly” so Jeff and I can “work.”
My work consists of “playing” on Facebook and the internet and staying connected with my loved ones and writing my story. I should be shopping for furniture but this is more fun.
My story of the day today is that I am thankful for my new neighbors more than you know as we had a scare today that made me nervous, and they were there to help.
You see, we were all ready to go to town to get me a temporary cell phone and to pick up a few more kitchen items before heading to Amsterdam. We had been busy in the morning unpacking our suitcases (finally) and cleaning up the clutter and we were getting a later start than we had hoped. The kids were out on the porch and we were finally ready to go. Jeff locked the door, and then went to lock the deadbolt and that’s when the trouble started. You see in Holland, they have these locks on the door that once you close the door, the door locks automatically. This scares me because you can’t unlock the door from the inside either without the key. So we thought we’d leave an extra key inside the inside of the door just in case of a fire, right? Good thinking you’d think. But not so. The problem came when he was on the outside of the door, trying to lock the deadbolt and his key wouldn’t go all the way in, because the inside key was still in the lock and prevented him from getting his key in to lock or unlock the door.
And of course, us being the well prepared and scared Americans we locked all the windows and put sticks in the back door so that no one could get in, not even us!
That’s when the neighbors started arriving. And the rain came just to test our patience. And we called our relocation manager who called the real estate agent because the owner is on vacation and a lock smith was being sent at the cost of 95 Euros and would be there in a half hour and we had to pay him cash.
Can you see my anxiety rising? And the shiny smile on my face trying to keep everyone calm? Actually, everyone did quite well, and really, it’s not the end of the world – what’s the worst that could happen right?
The one neighbor who we hadn’t met yet, saw us struggling. I introduced myself and told her our situation and she was very kind and basically was pretty direct as most Dutch people are, telling us that what we did was pretty stupid! Not really, but Duh – obviously we shouldn’t leave a key in the door and that we’d never do that again. Duh. Stupid Americans. That was just me feeling that way – she was as polite and as sweet as possible and went to find a long stick with a hook on it and a hammer and a screw driver to see if any of those would help.
Nothing worked. Then Howard came over and took the kids to his house to get them out of the rain. The police also drove by and stopped seeing us trying to break in, when Margalith walked over to tell them all was all right that it was ok for us to be breaking in.
We were in luck when we noticed the top hinged windows were actually open. They open about a foot, maybe and we thought if we could unscrew the latch that Spiderman, AKA little C, could fit through the space and down to the floor to open the door for us.
Success! Our plan worked and Spiderman was so brave and we were relieved. We laughed at ourselves, thanked our friends and went shopping.
Spiderman picked out a new Holland Playmobil bus at the store – he was planning to spend his birthday money for a little bus he had seen at Blokker and had been bugging us for two days to go and get it. Today seemed like a good day for that. We also picked up a new local phone for me and bought flowers for our new friends.
It’s nice to live in a friendly community and to be loved.
All is well. Namaste. xo
Playing with his new reward and not being bored!
