Bram has shared his snotty nose with me, so I'm a little slower than normal. Also, a bit more boring than normal. I am already getting better, last night was the worst. I'm confident it will be cleared up for Thursday's flying.
If I get to fly. Alitalia (my flight from Amsterdam is Alitalia to Milan, from Milan to Atlanta) has cancelled many flights the 22nd and into the 23rd due to a scheduled strike of the air traffic controllers and Alitalia flight attendants. It looks like things should be normal for the 24th, as if maybe the strikers are just flexing a little muscle and not trying to shut down the airline.
Yesterday was quiet. The house was cleaned, we went to the market, I knit, we hung out. Beautiful weather.
Today was Annemarie's birthday! Quiet morning. The weather was perfect and we opened the windows and the french doors onto the balcony. Warm, sunny, breezy, filled with birdsong and kids playing at streetlevel.
Folks were invited over for cake and pie after 2pm. They came in small waves. I'd met everyone (except Annemarie's mother's friend) at Annemarie and Martijn's wedding celebration, so it wasn't too overwhelming. People were thoughtful and included me in conversations and I did chat with some folks one on one, but I was the only non-Dutch speaker at the gathering, so conversation was mostly in Dutch. I have a tenderly held delusion that I can understand some Dutch, so I tuckered myself out trying to understand what was being said. I'll catch only a word every 20 and understand only enough to be dangerous, but my grip is ever firmly held to my delusion.
The first time I heard Dutch, I thought it sounded like someone speaking a stream of syllables that blended together beautifully, but couldn't possibly be made of separate words. I can hear the words now and it still sounds like an almost seamless stream of sound. My understanding is enough to want to participate while knowing that I cannot. I sympathize with a 2-year-old - they know almost enough to express their desires and opinions. They know just enough to know what they want to say, but don't quite get it right.
1 comment:
That amused me greatly about Italy -- they'd have big signs that say for example "BUS STRIKE, starting on May 22 at 08:00 and ending on May 23 at 19:00." If they know when your strike's going to be over, doesn't that kind of reduce your bargaining power? (Unless, as you say, they just want to *remind* people that they could shut the whole place down.) Either way, yeah, I bet your flight back will (knock wood) work out just fine.
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