Teaching how to ride a bike

On my way to my favorite study spot at the harbor, something caught my attention. A guy, fully protected in pants, jacket, solid shoes and a helmet, trying to ride a bike. On the grass, in the middle of the park. I sat down for a while and watched his efforts to get on the bike while he pushed it. But every time he tried, he missed the second pedal and fell off. After 10 minutes of no progression I decided to share my Dutch natural skills and offered my help. He smiled thankfully and the first, most important lesson he got was: you need speed to find your balance...! So I pushed him, running along, coaching how to cycle the pedals and to hold the handle bar! We tried it over and over again but it was hard to him to do all things together. This guy, born and raised in San Diego never touched a bicycle before. Though, because he really wanted to learn this biking-skill, he rented a bike and started practicing. He didn't give up, I've watched en supported him for another half an hour and finally he could make it to almost 2 rotations, staying on the saddle. He kept saying: I will get there, I will get there! He was my hero. 

TOEFL course

This is a new challenge. The first week we did some reading en lecture stuff that made me panicing... I was listening and then got totally lost. Questions with 4 answer options and it seemed like all were good...We had to write an essay and got only 30 minutes..I needed an hour. But luckily, there are tools how to listen, how to read, how to interpret and infer questions. And we got a bunch of common vocabulary, used in TOEFL tests, to master. That helps too! I did better today and yesterday, I already get a bit used to the academic approach.

Volunteering at kids church

For 3 weeks I'll be trained for elementary kids church leader. It's quite the same as I'm familiar with, except the language. The leader is an English teacher and he likes to have me practicing;) He challenged me to teach at least one time...(Californian girls would say now: O, my God, really?) Yeah.. Anyways, we had a nice time and the leader asked me to teach some Dutch to the children. They liked to know the word "money". That was funny, I already knew this was gonna be hard. I said "geld", then they go " hheld" ; they couldn't pronounce the ggg.

Korean Culture Day

Besides exploring the American culture, I have the opportunity to learn about Asia - since I have many Asian students around. Especially from South Korea. Some guys in my house, study at the international business school and I was invited to their Korean culture day. It happened one day, they were in the kitchen, trying out some dishes for the party and asked me to try their Korean Kimchi pancake. I asked if it was spicy, but they reassured me, I didn't have to worry about that. Well, with that in mind I took a mouthful...and ran to the tap whooh, no spicy?! My tongue and lips were still burning after 10 minutes. They looked at each other and concluded that for European people the dish needed some adjustments;) I tried the pancake again at the event and yes it was much milder and they even had added cheese on the top to less the spicy taste. I tried a sip of the common rice drink of their culture but it tastes like childhood lemonade with too much water and rice grains swimming around. Not my preference;) We played some Korean games, I was taught in origami and I learned to spell my name in Korean. 

So far, never a dull moment,

I like to keep in touch with you friends and family! love and blessings,            마리 케  (Marieke)