Let's go Dutch!

It seems that being a Dutchman among Canadians, goes along with a certain image about our (lack of) generosity. That's what I learned lately, at the student coffeeshop. I was about to pay for the three of us. Then Gabriella, one of my Canadian class and coffee-mates, grabbed her wallet to pay me back. I looked at her, like "what are you doing" and she goes: "o, you're paying for me? haha, I wanted to split, that's when we say "let's go Dutch". Okay, thanks, so that's how we, Dutch, portrayed ourselves. Fascinating. Let's hope I've converted at least one person:)

The Dutch food habits                                                                                                                                                                                                      During the meals, we sometimes come across the interesting differences between the food habits of our home countries. Like Kehinde, our Negarian brother, who I see struggling with knife and fork, staring at a plate of boiled cauliflower, a substance he'd never seen before and is wondering that they might have forgotten the spices. Nish, coming from Sri Lanka can't believe all he can get for breakfast is the light cereals or toast&jam and he runs for the hot lunch, asking for a double portion. While I have my hands full digesting two hot meals a day. I was asked by Anish from India "what do you eat for lunch in the Netherlands?" Not aware of telling a joke, I answered "bread", what was followed by big eyes and then loud laughing. "bread?" "Only bread?" With cheese I said. They rolled off their chairs, this was really the joke of the week;)) "Did you hear of the Dutch, they eat twice a day only bread, whahaha". LOL.

Healing Life's hurts                                                                                                                                                                                                     That was the topic of our course last week. Nobody likes to look into our life's hurts. We are very effective in stuffing and avoiding and compensating. However, that's not the way God has meant us to live. We are made to love and to be loved, to forgive and to receive forgiveness. We are made to be our authentic selves. Unfortunately many people live in particular areas in life from a place of fear, hidden anger, shame or guilt or name it. To become a leader who helps healing, it's inevitable to first find healing for your own pains. Going through this process for 5 days was exhausting. But to be ministered by God the loving Father Himself is the best experience I can recommend. Yet, besides this heavy stuff, we laugh a lot too! Tonight we had a spontaneous African dance work out, fun.

Niagara Waterfalls                                                                                                                                                                                                              Very impressing. Never seen such high, huge waterfalls.. We drove for an hour and 15 min, all along Lake Ontario which gave me the nice opportunity to see a bit more than the industrial area where I live at the moment;) The weather wasn't that good (as you can see at the photo's- but not too cold. The Niagara Falls are actually a combination of three falls on the border with the US, falling from a height of like 60 meters. Watching these enormous water masses and listening to the thundering noise of hundreds tons of water is really spectacular! And wet...

Thank you dear readers for your support and the comments on my blog, I read them all, I appreciate it and feel happy to share my adventure with you! Tomorrow I'm gonna see downtown Toronto and then we're going into our last week, with teachings about prophesy. Will be back next week!   (To see the complete set of photo's of this blog, click on photo's in the menu.)

Enjoy the rest of the weekend, enjoy life:)