Impressions, feelings and such
Sunday, February 28th, 2010Impressions, feelings and such… well, there are quite a few of course.
Let me start by saying that the feeling I currently have is a sick feeling as I got a fever here 
How did the fever start? Well, at first I couldn’t really get into the new day and night schedule, a jetlag so to speak. A jet lag isn’t that bad, as long as you sleep and try to get into the new rhythm, and if that goes well, you can get rid of that jetlag in no time. But unfortunately there is a little girl that wakes up at the most impossible times (well, in Hawaii, because of the time difference, these are the normal times) and who then needs to be fed. So I stayed tired and my natural resistance became pretty bad too. My other daughter, Larissa, had a pretty bad cold, and she got us also infected. My mom got the cold a few days later, the same with Isabella, and me too. However, unfortunately I also got a 102.2 Fahrenheit fever (39 Celsius) next to that, and that’s something that I still suffer from..
Nope, that aint much fun if you ask me.. I haven’t been in the Netherlands for almost one and a half year, and when you get ill for 2/3 of the time that you’re here, that isn’t so much fun
Right, did I get some impressions and such besides the fever and cold? Well, first I want to say that it was extremely cold here!! It is becoming a bit warmer outside, but oh oh oh, this was much worse than I expected at first. You can really get used to the warm weather as it shows. Here a picture of the cold air:
Something else I noticed, and this I noticed quite fast after we left the airport, is that it seems as if everybody is in a hurry. Especially on the freeway people seem to have turned crazy. Of course I know that it isn’t much different than when I was still living in the Netherlands, but it looks so much worse since people are taking their time more in Hawaii.
Sometimes, on Hawaii, you can hear people say that there is hardly any ‘aloha’ left between the people on the islands (’aloha’ has many meanings, such as: love, compassion, affection, peace, mercy, etcetera), but when I compared it with the Netherlands, I always knew there was still aloha between the people on Hawaii. And now that I am in the Netherlands, I noticed this again. The people here are much more turned inward, which gives a very distant feeling in my opinion.
The lack of aloha here in the Netherlands is something you can see with more things. When you want to cross the street, for example. When you’re at the curb with a stroller, do you think anyone stops for you? Of course not. In Hawaii, about 99% of the people will stop for you, but it looks like 99% of the people in the Netherlands just drives on. Of course this is pretty dangerous for people like me, I got used to people breaking and I really had to be careful when I crossed a street over here.
Of course there are also other things in traffic which you have to be careful with after living in Hawaii for a while. For example on the highway when I went to the Hague, I drove on the third lane (out of four), and kept myself to the maximum speed.. what do you think, somebody drives a little bit faster on the far most right lane, comes all the way to the left to gain on me, and then goes all the way back to the right again, just in front of me. At that point I realized that it is not normal to keep your lane in Europe, but that is a bit different in the US.
I also forgot to let someone go first at a crossing, even though he came from the right, but I was like ‘I am first on the crossing, so I’m in my right to go first’, like it usually is in Hawaii: first come, first served. And then I became a bit ticked also when that guy honked at me haha.
Nah, I am already happy that I did think on time to stop in front of a red light when turning right, which is something you mostly don’t have to do in Hawaii (after a full stop that is) haha. I think I would hear a lot more honking if I did ignore the red.
I finally understood why Michelle always told me that she didn’t dare to drive in the Netherlands. I have no problems driving, but I do see where the fear came from haha.
And well, I don’t think there are many more new impressions, most of the things remained the same. I also followed the Dutch news all along while I was in Hawaii, so there were not much new things for me, I think. It might be different when we’re a few more years down the road, though.
