***
It has been an interesting 48 hours, culturally-speaking. I feel a little as though I've been standing at the Four Corners of culture, stuck at the juncture of various languages and customs and navigating them all without serious faux pas.
Take yesterday, for example: after having a delicious lunch-time encounter with mustard soup (a dutch favorite) and wandering an open-air market on foot and by bike, Carole, Michiel, and I then spent the evening eating pizza at a restaurant called Woodstone Pizza and watching The Dark Knight Rises at the Pathe' theatre across the street. Soup and biking were a breeze, though I admit there were moments of discomfort anytime I had to communicate with a local. I find that any time someone speaks to me in Dutch, I immediately freeze and look to Carole or Michiel for help, despite the fact that the Dutch person probably speaks English better than I do. Still, I feel out of place for not being able to speak the language and occasionally awkward for not knowing the customs. At dinner, I expended way too much mental and physical energy trying to eat a pizza with a knife and a fork, working myself into homesickness (I just wanna be home and eat with my hands). Eventually, at the encouragement of my hosts, I gave up on utensils. And it was good.
The movie was similar in culture-confusion: an American movie, cast with many UK/international actors, in a French movie theatre, surrounded by Dutch people, eating oddly-shaped bags of M&Ms and popcorn. On top of all that, I kept trying to read the Dutch subtitles (habit, I suppose) only to repeatedly realize that I cannot read Dutch. Not that I haven't been trying to pick up the basic elements of the language. I've figured out a few words here and there, but most of the time, the Dutch language might as well be background music.
So, as you might imagine, I spent a good deal of time at church this morning not listening to the priest, simply because I had no earthly idea what he was saying. He could've been preaching about Jesus's love, or he could've been giving rave reviews of the Fifty Shades of Grey books. For all I know, it was heresy supreme, and everybody was in on it. Meanwhile, as the possibly heretical liturgy unfolds, I'm trying to sit respectfully on what feels like half a pew, figure out where we are in the mass, and kneel at appropriate times on the uncushioned slab of wood by my feet. I pass much of the time looking over the Sunday readings/Liturgy guide in my Prions En Eglise (in French) and occasionally joining in with the choir, who is oddly enough singing mostly in German. At one point, I am so lost at where we are in the mass, and flipping so furiously (but quietly?) through my book and the Dutch handout, that I almost miss the Consecration. You know, the part where he holds up the wine and bread and consubstantiation happens? It's kind of an important part, I think. I am one of the only young people in the entire church, and definitely the only one who mispronounced the Dutch responses and songs as badly as I did. By the end of mass, I gave up on trying to blend in and took this picture of the church with my iPhone, officially announcing my tourist-ness to all the old people around me. Still, when it took an hour searching online last night and a solo reconnaissance mission at 8:30 this morning to figure out where the church was, what it was called, and when mass began, I felt vindicated. Booyah, Heemstede church, ik win.
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