Sunday, August 17 - Monday, August, 18, 2014

Sunday - Here is how a cool, rainy Sunday goes in Soest:

• Get up late, sit around and read, practice the sax, and eat a snack,
• Linda washes the clothes,
• Drive down the road to find a farmer who sells organic vegetables,
• Find farmer who is closed on Sundays and Mondays,
• Drive to the Hilversum train station and add money to our train cards. While we were driving out of Hilversum, we passed people walking down the street. They seemed to be going somewhere together. We asked one of them what was going on. She said the town was having a "silent walk" for the 15 victims of the Malaysia plane shot down over the Ukraine. Fifteen victims from the same small town in Holland.
• Walk down to The Proef for espresso in the rain, talk to the staff, and buy chocolates. One of the chocolates is called a Bittle: a hard ball of chocolate that you suck on in your mouth while drinking coffee and let it melt slowly. Not allowed to bite or chew.
• Cook and eat dinner,
• Linda finishes the jigsaw that she and Frank have been working on for the last 5 days,

• Watch TV and go to bed.

Monday -   Another cool, rainy day. We drove over to Muidenberg to return the sax but he's closed on Mondays. We knew that was a possibility. That is a common practice.

I ran the vacuum around and Linda mopped. Did some grocery shopping at Albert Heijn looking for capers. There were two types. Who ever heard of different types of capers? As we're studying our jars, a nice looking Dutch woman comes by, hears us talking and rips off her glasses to help Linda read the label, as if that would help with the language. We asked her if she knew what the difference was in the two types. She didn't know but seemed eager to talk to us. We decided to pick the less expensive product. Then she asked where we came from. That was followed by, "Why are you staying in Soest?" with a funny face. We told her about the home exchange and that we like it here. She just looked at us and grinned. 

Then it was lunch at The Proef.

Linda fixed a nice salad with bacon, watercress, sprouts, and onions. We wanted to eat lite so we could try the Bittels (chocolate balls) that we purchased yesterday with our coffee. Don't you know they worked out just right. Surprise, surprise.

Linda found a romantic comedy on Netflix for us to watch.