St. Nicholas

Dec. 6 is St. Nicholas's birthday. Saint Nick and Sinterklaas (Santa Claus) are the same person. On his birthday Sinterklaas and his assistants the zwarte Piets (black petes) come to give gifts to good kids all over the Netherlands. John and I went to John's sister's house to see if Sinterklaas would arrive. Jane (John's sister) and her husband, Cor, prepared a very tasty meal of some traditional dutch food. We had two different kinds of Stampot (one was made of smashed potatoes, kale, and sausage and the other was smashed potatoes, carrots, and sausage), smoked sausage, meatballs, and homemade applemoes (apple sauce). We had various types of pudding for dessert. On the left is a picture of us after dinner (John's mom (Bep), John, Me, Jane, Joost (Jane and Cor's son), and Evelien (Jane and Cor's daughter ).

Sure enough, after dinner we heard a knock on the window and when we looked out side there were two sacks of presents! We all opened up our presents and thought we were all very lucky to get some thing. I even got something! I got a nice big wicker basket for my bike. Now I can ride to the farmers market and load up on all sorts of stuff. Cor got a nice pair of wooden clogs, that he let me try on. Even though the clogs were too big, they were pretty comfortable. I was trying to do a little dutch dance...