See Why

I have no debts so far and I hope it stays like this.

My salary is nothing to be proud of, but it’s allowed me to take the first step: pay my own university costs for this year.

Now it’s the house (and all costs included) there and the health insurance.

For all you extra dieting, extra working out fans out there.

http://www.shapefit.com/overtraining-exercising-too-much.html

So yesterday I did my imburgeringsexamen. The part where you have to read was quite easy, the part of kenis samen leving or something like that was awfully hilarious!

One of the questions was that if my neighbors put a huge statue of the virgin Mary if I should sneak up at night and tear it down, I had a laugh. Oh and if I should forbid my daughter to kiss a guy because he kissed her or hit her. I was having such a laugh I thought everyone was thinking that the stupid questions were hilarious. That was until I came out of the room and I saw an old granny who had taken the test with me crying: one of her questions had been what to do if she saw homosexual men in the street and the right answer was to wave. She was saying that the answer should not have been to wave because if everyone had a right to do and think what they wanted, she should be allowed to think how she wanted as long as she didn’t insult anyone. I felt sorry for her, because she seemed quite perturbed by the video shown at the test. Honestly, someone that old can’t change the way they’ve been taught to behave.

I think the Dutch should put more effort into teaching the younger generations of immigrants and the sons of the original immigrants to be open-minded. There’s not much you can do with people who have already a firm set of beliefs. A Farsi girl and I were talking that the sons of immigrants here are sometimes more old-fashioned than the people in those countries themselves. She said it was probably the discrimination that pushes them into the most extremist sides of their culture.

In any case, I don’t think I passed on the spoken test. Not that I mind much, I got a letter from the gemeente 2 days ago (when I had already paid for the tests) saying that my Dutch and my knowledge of the Dutch society was good enough not to do the imburgeringsexamen. And now they come with that!

EDIT: oh, as a side note. I found a job and guess what? it’s all in Dutch because I’m selling bread at C’est Du Pain. For some reason I speak to all my workmates in Dutch (most of them are immigrant or Dutch from a second generation of immigrants) but I can’t help it. I always end up speaking in English to my boss, though. It’s because he’s more fun when we speak in that language ^^. I guess I’m getting a bit more fluent, at least with saying numbers and “wilt u cacao op uw cappuccino?” -laughs.