At about 4:30 we walked next door for Peter's and Duco's birthday party.
We were introduced to several of Liesbeth's 4 sisters and her one brother. Her brother is a professional painter and has been working on their house for about a week and still has a few more weeks to go. Then later two more sisters showed up - five siblings in all and they all live relatively close. I lost track of the children but there were some Duco's age and a few others who were teenagers. One of the 16 year-old girls, daughter of the youngest sister, spoke English very well. She told me she was in a special program at school where some of her regular classes like history and geography were taught in English. Maria, one of the sisters, is a criminal law judge. We had some interesting discussions with her about immigration in the EU in general and The Netherlands in particular.
The husband of the youngest sister is a sailor, so we talked about boats and sailing in The Netherlands and sailing in the Gulf of Mexico. He didn't seem to be bothered about shallow water. We have a lot of that around us in Florida, but I guess its not a problem here. Nice thing about The Netherlands is that there are no tides, so no current - all you need is wind.
The brother was the griller. He started the fire by using small pieces of wood soaked in some type of flammable liquid. Once the fire was hot enough, he added irregular shaped pieces of charcoal he said were from Austria. They have briquettes like we do, but this was special. At just about the time he was ready to start putting the meat on the grill, it started raining hard. Everyone dashed into Liesbeth's eat-in kitchen and dining room. The grillers stayed out for awhile but eventually moved the grill under the eaves of the house to keep the fire going.
There were burgers, beef and lamb on a stick, sausages, pork steaks, and small cubes of pork marinaded in something on a stick, two salads (Linda brought her peanut salad) and a peanut sauce to put on the meat. There was a lot of food. I hope they didn't make all of that just because the Americans were coming. They kept trying to get us to eat more. It was all good.
Of course, after all the cooking was completed, it stopped raining, but everything was wet so most stayed inside.
Here we are in the dining room stuffing our faces.
The eat-in kitchen where some gathered to eat and stay dry.
And one of the teenagers trying to get his share of the food while Liesbeth looks on.
This is Peter. He always seems to be moving, so he's a little blurry coming up the driveway.
We left about 8:30 and watched some silly TV.
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