Tea at the Tulip Hotel and Halloween

Last Thursday, I was able to go out with 8 of the 10 people in my Dutch class for tea after class. One of the students, who is in management at the restaurant in the basement of the Tulip Hotel, invited us all to come for tea and cookies. He introduced us to his manager,and we were able to each share a little bit about where we are from, what brought us to Holland, and what we plan on doing. It was a great time to get to know all of my classmates in a more casual setting and hang out together. I was also able to invite them all to our house for "an American Thanksgiving" on Saturday, November 29th. They asked what that meant, and I said that you basically all get together to eat (We'll share the deeper meaning behind it with them later). We will, however, not be able to watch football since they don't play it here. So now I am on a hunt for a turkey! Cooking a whole Thanksgiving meal myself ?! - this could be interesting!

Friday, night we invited Angela and Jeroen, and their 10 month old son, Angelo, over. They don't celebrate Halloween here (they have their own version on the 11th of November which Kaylie is busy getting ready for - we'll blog about it later), but since Angela is American and this is Angelo's first Halloween, she wanted to at least dress him up for something - so we invited them to come trick or treat at our house. Of course, our kids theb also wanted to dress up, so they trick or treated with Angelo at our front door. Here are our last minute costumes:

Our cowgirl country singer (her Little Bo Peep costume was way too cold!)

And our super-hero kid (Thanks Aaron for the cape!)

Unfortunately, our super-hero is slightly destructible as he slipped and fell, biting down below his lower lip and requiring some fancy bandaging.

We watched the Winnie the Pooh Halloween special, and then all the kids crashed. Looks like they had a good time - doesn't it?!