Schminken. Isn't that one of the coolest words ever? It means face painting in Dutch.
On Saturday there was a big bazaar to raise money for Romania. Kim and I happily allowed ourselves to be recruited for face painting duty.
We set our alarms for quarter to eight so we could be ready on time. We sure didn't want to be late for such an important event. Just as I rolled reluctantly out of my warm bed, the phone rang and Tante Joke called up that it was for me. So I dashed down the stairs as fast as my legs would carry me and found out that it was Stacy! It was so good to hear from her, as always, even though I still sounded like a croaking toad because I'd just woken up. She had stayed up until almost 11:00 for a chance to call me. I felt very loved, but I also felt terrible because I had to cut it short to a piddly ten minutes. It was not nearly enough time for a good chat with my sister, but I really had to hurry then to go off to the bazaar. Thankfully she's also very forgiving and still loves me.
So at exactly quarter to nine Kim and I pulled our bikes out of the shed and set off for the high school where the bazaar was. We were blissfully biking along when suddenly Kim exclaimed 'That's Hannah!'
Hannah is a friend from church (and our fellow schminker), and she was biking in the opposite direction from Kim and I. That meant that we were going the wrong way. Oops, it seemed we had biked right past the road we needed to turn on. Well, we sure were thankful that we ran into Hannah! She was more than happy to lead us in the right direction.
Thus we made it just on time, and happily assessed our many lovely face paints that we would get to work with all day. There sure were a lot of colours! And glitters! I experimented by painting a lovely little design on my hand.
I think some of the kids were a bit intimidated by my not-quite-up-to-par Dutch, but I did my best. And Hannah also helped sometimes with translating. We had lots of pictures to copy the designs from, so I could just get the kids to point at what they wanted. Almost all the girls wanted flinders (butterflies) so I did about seven of those.
When face painting business was slow there was plenty of time to walk around and look at the rest of the bazaar, and also to buy food. I got a hamburger, but it wasn't quite up to par with our Canadian hamburgers. It sort of tasted like a frikendel (hot dog). Other than that everything was very delicious though!
Elisabeth was one of very few girls who wanted something other than a butterfly. I'm not sure what that design was supposed to be, but it was on one of the pictures and it was the one she wanted. I showed her her face in the mirror when I thought I was finished and she told me in much surprise that I had forgotten the lips. The model had blue lips, and I'd been planning to ignore that part, but apparently that wasn't allowed. So she got her blue lips!
It was a long day, but very good too. Especially since the bazaar raised over 5000 Euros! In Canadian dollars that's over $7000.
But the activity of the day wasn't over yet. Kim and I were invited to a friend's house in the evening. So we went there at about 8:00 and played games with Rob and Sander. First we played Ligretto, which is exactly like Dutch Blitz, except with different cards. I lost very badly, but had a wonderful time playing. Kim creamed us all mercilessly. Then we played Dutch Settlers of Catan, and then Rob and Sander endeavored to explain the highly complicated Dutch school system. Kim and I think we get it now, but it's a bit intimidating how many different levels they have.
We didn't end up leaving until after midnight, and much laughter had been had by all. It was a good Saturday indeed.
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