Happy Solstice! (And half way through our journey)

So...today is the winter solstice. Sunrise was at 8:48am. Sunset is at 4:36pm. It is disconcerting that it is still VERY dark at 8am. But it hasn't been so bad for our family. We are taking vitamin D and we have a sun lamp that Alex uses some mornings. We are early morning people and it hasn't really phased us to have it dark early. Maybe the worst part is that it is dark when Alex bikes to school in the morning and on the nights when he has activities after school it is dark when he bikes home. His bike has good lights, though. And he doesn't seem to mind too much.

By the time school starts again after the break it should already be a bit lighter in the morning.

It's a little colder here than in California. The average high is probably 46 degrees. This has been an especially mild winter - fewer days below 45 than usual. We are good about bundling up. It can feel a bit cold when riding our bikes, but with good gloves and good hats, we do ok. So far we haven't had a ton of rain.

We went to the Amsterdam Christmas market last week. It had rained during the day and the ice skating rink had a big puddle (a small lake?) in the middle. It looked miserable - if you fall, you end up soaked. We opted out of ice skating, but enjoyed the hot chocolate, yummy food and festive atmosphere.

At the Christmas market in front of the Rijksmuseum

We also went on a canal Christmas light tour. That was quite fun. Here's one of the pictures Mike took.

We're halfway through our time here! We've been really thrilled to have done this. To be honest, I assumed I would just grit my teeth and get through it, but I've actually found this enjoyable. I like learning about other cultures, the travel is fun, and it is great to experience a different way of life.

Speaking of which, I've written before about how the medical system works here, but I now have more experience with it. I've never had an HMO in the states, but I think things here are similar to that where you have to get a referral for everything. The difference is that the doctors really don't like to make the referrals. The usual response from a doctor is "let's wait and see if things resolve on their own."

As an example, I had an issue that required antibiotics. I took the antibiotics for seven days as instructed and even waited a couple more days, but the issue didn't resolve. When I called the doctor to tell her, the response was "You have to wait another 10 days to see if it just takes the antibiotics that long to work." Of course, my issue didn't get better with another 10 days of waiting.

And I can't go to another doctor. To see a different doctor I'd need to unregister with the doctor I have, find a doctor who is taking new patients (most have a wait list of several months) and then re-register with that doctor. I've been told the best thing to do is be super pushy and maybe even cry (actual tears) to get the doctor to move things forward. This is super hard for me. I am someone who respects a professional I'm dealing with and I don't like to tell them they need to do their job differently. I also struggle with being pushy. If I have to deal with doctors more here, this is going to be a big challenge for me.

What isn't clear to me is whether the Dutch think this is "just the way things go" or if they get impatient and frustrated with it as well. I have a goal of talking to Dutch people to see what they think of this system. We did talk to someone from Sweden who said their system is the same. He said "In most cases it is best to wait to see if things get better before taking any medicine." It is likely that Americans take medicines too often, but this seems to be the other extreme.

For Christmas, we bought a small fake tree since we wanted to have something festive. Our neighbors are having people over to do a Christmas walk tonight followed by a bonfire in their backyard with soup. We're looking forward to that.

On Christmas Day we are leaving for India for 10 days. We figured it is a lot easier to get to India from here than from the US, so we need to take advantage of the shorter flights. We're looking forward to seeing another country (and Asia) on this trip!

Happy holidays to you all!