Summary of Day 2

Thursday, August 16, 2012

We sort of took it easy on Thursday. We walked around Velp as a team of 5 Americans and stopped at different shops to get things we needed like garbage cans, hangers, a laundry basket, and other little knick-knacks. It was Sarah’s 21st birthday so we had to take her out! We ended up eating dinner at what turned out to be a very expensive restaurant in Velp. We had to have our waitress basically read and translate the descriptions of the meals because their menus were only in Dutch. I ended up having this chicken and mushroom meal with applesauce and fries. Sarah had a salad with a variety of cheeses, Matt had like raw salmon or something like that which he later threw up, and Michael and Sav split the steak meal and an appetizer platter that looked delicious. Then they also had bowls a fries and “frites sauce” which is mayonnaise to dip the fries in. I do that at home a lot so I thought it was a delicious as always.

I tried a bite of everyone’s meal:

• a bite of Michael steak which was pretty dang good 
• a bit of Matt’s salmon, which I really liked but probably wouldn’t want for an entire meal and after hearing that he got sick from it, I’m happy it wasn’t my meal 
• Sav gave me one of their tuna sandwich things that was part of the appetizer platter 

And then literally the worst thing I have ever tasted in my entire life:

• the smallest bite of one of the cheeses in Sarah’s salad. 

To elaborate: Sarah asked me to smell one of the cheeses because she couldn’t tell if she was just being picky or if it actually smelled really bad. It smelled kind of unpleasant at first sniff but I said she might as well give it a try—when in Rome, right? WRONG. She thought it was nasty and asked me to try it, which I did. It was the most horrid, disgusting, indescribably bad thing I have ever tasted. And I couldn’t wash it down. And I kept getting a whiff of it in the breeze. What a terrible, terrible thing to ever think that that cheese was suitable to serve another human being. Yuck. Then, of course, we couldn’t stop there and had to make Sav try it. After having a small taste he immediately told Michael, “dude, don’t even try it,” saving Michael from the vomit-worthy cheese. But we ended the meal making Michael and Matt try it anyway. It was unanimous: the cheese was bad.

It was earlier on this day that we were shopping in Velp for the second or third time and the boys split up to go back to the grocery store and the girls went for more hangers since our first purchase wasn’t adequate. It was at this time that the boys got an assortment of Roses for Sarah’s birthday and while I was with her, we stopped at a bakery and I bought her a little treat. I don’t even really know how to describe her desserty thing but it was one of the best flavors my tongue has ever met. Our gifts were pretty average but we didn’t have a lot of planning time.

This is also when the Brazilians started moving in I believe. Also, we have one guy from Indonesia as well.