Weekend Plans

Our friend, Butch, is in town this weekend. He came in on Saturday morning very early. He managed to stay awake for the entire day and we had dinner with a friend on Saturday evening. At nine o'clock, his body finally gave in and I drove him to his hotel. (We had rented a car for Sunday. We did not buy a car.)

Our original plans were to go to Belgium (Brugge) on Sunday afternoon, look around and return to Amsterdam on Monday afternoon. Fortunately/unfortunately, I got a job and the little trip was truncated to a little trip on Sunday.

We went to Dordrecht and then to Kinderdijk. Kinderdijk is totally touristy, but it's a nice area and it's nice to see the windmills all lined up. (Look it up on Wikipedia.org - maybe I'll make a link later.) Dordrecht is in the Bible belt and was completely closed up, as it was Sunday. Still, it was a nice little drive on a very gray day.

The down side of all of this was that I had no time to prepare for my lessons today. I have to talk about the Native Americans or something. Plus I have lots of papers to mark where the little Dutch children made grammatical or other errors in their writing.

Other than that, all is well. It's amazing to me how fast a weekend can go. Fortunately, I have no classes tomorrow as it is Prinsjesdag.

This is what Wikipedia has to say about Prinsjesdag:

"The day of the speech from the throne. Literally: day of the little princes. On Prinsjesdag the Queen speaks the speech from the throne in the Ridderzaal and the minister of finance proposes the next year's budget to parliament. Parliament officially starts a new year on Prinsjesdag. Prinsjesdag is held every third Tuesday in September. This one of the most traditional events in Dutch politics, involving the royal family's ride around the Hague in a gilded carriage, a meeting with all members of both houses of the Staten General, and cabinet in the Ridderzaal, and a final balcony scene where the royal family waves to the gathered monarchists.

On this occasion male MPs wear their most formal dress, while female MPs try to out do each other with extravagant hats."

I was hoping to go and see all the hats and formal dress, but it's a work day for teachers and we are obliged to be at work for the morning.

I'm still enjoying work. I was reminded by my mother last night that both of my maternal grandparents were teachers. Also, my cousin Barbara is a teacher. It's an honorable profession. It's much more work than I ever gave it credit for.