Thursday, September 09, 2004

Kloof Story and Other

Tuesday at de Kloof, my homeless volunteer gig, at was behind the bar. We serve coffee, tea and herb tea. All tea is free. coffee is ten cents, and worth every penny. A Black woman, one of the very few women who is ever there, was at the bar. She pointed to the flask of herb tea. She said, "Is that herb tea?"

I said, "Yes."

She said, "Yesterday it was cherry. Cherry's not an herb."

She just turned away as if we were trying to pull the wool over these people's eyes by giving them fruit tea instead of herb tea. It was beautiful.

Having not spoken much Dutch in that past like four days, I went to Riekerhof this morning. Oh my God. I really need to make a point of speaking Dutch. We've gotten off of doing it and I was so out of practice. Of course reading and writing extensively in English doesn't help. It was just really difficult today and there's a guy there now, Freddie, who is interesting to talk to. He's straight and extremely plain. Half Indonesian and half Dutch I guess, or Italian, I don't know the whole story. But we speak in English. But he's fun to work with, cooperative.

I think I got into the next level of Dutch class. I haven't heard from the school and I think today is the day. I really need to learn Dutch.

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