New Years Eve was fun because we were invited to a coworkers home. I finally got to talk to and get to know the Dutch. Everyone was extremely kind and inviting. They were great conversationalists and I loved being able to ask them questions about their culture and experiences. They had a traditional New Years Eve treat called Oliebollen (oil balls in English), which is a fried dough ball with raisins in it. It was delicious.
We played the "Chair Dance" game, which Andrew and I thought sounded a bit too grown up for the children, but ended up being "Musical Chairs". We also tried to chime in on "Charades" in Dutch. We rang in the New Year with fireworks. The four days prior to New Years, we constantly heard fireworks. We thought it was the beginning of a possible civil war. The fireworks were set off by the citizens on every street. They go off for hours. The hosts were kind enough to offer us sparkling juices while everyone, even the children, sipped Champagne. It was quite loud and very festive. Everyone was in the streets and our group kissed each person individually 3 times on the cheeks while wishing each other a Happy New Year. Apparently the men don't really do the kissing cheeks thing to each other but Andrew didn't know. The men were nice enough to go along with him though.
Husband/Wife/Partner
We noticed that many of the couples there at the party had children together but called the other person their partner. It is common to never get married in Europe but rather live like you are and have children together, keeping separate last names of course. They didn't wear marriage rings. It is common to live that way all over Europe and is becoming more and more common in the U.S. nowadays, all the paperwork you fill out, especially for maternity related stuff (yes, even in utah), asks for your partner's name. This is more evidence that the world is tearing down the traditional, family unit. Andrew's co-workers kept calling me his girlfriend before I came over here even though he called me his wife. We wonder what little 13 year olds call their puppy love first kiss-type relationships. Since Andrew is much younger than the average married person here, they are surprised that he is married and having a baby at 26.
Andrew and I loved telling people about how in our Mormon culture it is pretty common to see people meet, date for 2 months, get engaged, and married 3 months later, only to find out that they are pregnant within the first 6 months of marriage. That would take a European, on average, maybe 7 years instead of 1. We get to tell people about why we are married young, and what things are important to us. We talked about how if you have similar religious beliefs it helps a lot of views on life fall into place. You can know through spiritual confirmation that this person is someone you should marry. We also reminded them that we do not engage in sexual intercourse before marriage so that urge hurries things along for some couples. We also explained that having a family is one of the major reasons we decide to get married so why wait too long to get that family started. It so fun to me to learn a new perspective of looking at things and I love sharing those with others as well.
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