What do you do when you are staying with a family in a foreign country where only the two adults know how to speak English and the two kids (Kevin 7 and Benjamin 2) speak only Dutch? You would probably ask yourself how do I communicate with them when all you know is yes, no, thank you and ice cream. We soon realized that just because we could not speak Dutch doesn’t mean we can’t have fun. Kevin and I played a game called Guess Who? Instead of talking we would use our hands and point to something and use made up sign language instead of talking. It was just as fun maybe even more fun because we had to guess what each other meant. We had such a good time we ended up playing 5 rounds!
One day we biked to drop Kevin off at school since it was his last day. Since everybody bikes here we decided to rent bikes to join in on the fun! That day happened to be around 80 degrees-which is really warm for Holland so everybody was wearing super short shorts and flip flops. All the things that you can’t really do at our school in Texas. We were so surprised. Saskia (mom of Kevin and Benjamin) explained that it was because they never have heat waves and people were celebrating!
Well, now you know how to communicate and have fun with a family when only the adults speak English.
You saw Saskia!! I remember her from Houston…. if you are still there, please tell her I say ‘Hi’!!
Will do! We had an amazing time with them – not hard to catch up – just like with us! We were so glad to connect after all this time…it made me realize it’s never too late to catch up with old friends!