Letters from the Netherlands: Education the hard way

As most of my family and friends know I love acquiring new knowledge, which is probably why being an expat suits me so well – there is always, always something I don’t know.

Add caption

I don’t have a photography memory, strong powers of concentration or even a particularly high IQ, what I do have is the ability to be excited by, thrilled even by finding or learning new facts the ways others might be by theme park rides. Right now, today, as I write this I’m at the top of the world’s highest roller-coaster. I’m trying to take in so much information that my heart barely stops beating before the rush of information arrives.

In the last few hours I learnt several new words, here are just four of them:

Ascriptions - the attributing of a relationship between something and somebody or something else

Carious- having caries, especially of the teeth

Interlocutor - a participant in a discussion or conversation.

Schematic- showing the basic form or layout of something (Really? It looks like it should mean something far more exciting like: a Jewish pudding or the science of toy racing cars)

I also found out that I was wrong to believe there are five vowels in English, there are five vowel letters in English but twenty vowel sounds – who knew? And bƱtʃƏ is the sound of butcher, rımƆ:s of remorse

Only a tiny drop, looks innocent right?

Another piece of education was that that water dripping out of a wall is a baaad thing, especially an inside wall. A bowl may catch the drips for the time being but sometime very soon we are going to have to open up the walls and locate the little dribbly bugger.

Nice

And the last thing I learnt today and the piece of information that sent me plummeting at neck breaking speed to the bottom of my own personal roller-coaster is that the friendly monthly estimates for your utility bills bare absolutely no relation to the actual amount you will have to pay after a year in the Nederlands. If it had only been double what we were quoted I might have been able to let life return to semi normal, as it is Mr Sunshine is wrapping his ill (again) self in a quilt to watch TV and I am writing this while, peering through the ice crystals growing on my eyelashes.