What were you grateful for this week?My cousin and her husband. 

What was the most challenging part of this week?Coughing so much. 

Tell us about a “wow” moment you had this week. I painted a picture for my host child as a sort of belated birthday/I haven’t seen you in a week gift 🙂

Tell us about your week!This week I was so lucky to spend it all with my cousin and her husband in the Netherlands while my host family went on their skiing holiday. I got a special museum card so we could go to all of the museums, including the Maurithuis, the Van Gogh museum, the Rijksmuseum, and a couple other less famous but still super fun places like a children’s natural history museum.

One of my favorite days was when we rented bikes and biked around the Hague in order to get the complete Dutch experience. I loved all the foods we tried, from bagels to ice cream to stroop waffles to amazing Belgian waffles when we took a day trip to Belgium. I honestly just fell in love with the Netherlands, it’s so beautiful. I got lucky and had incredible weather the first part of the trip. It was sunny and warm and perfect for exploring. Even when the weather went back to typical Dutch February/March weather near the end, it was nice to have time to just relax and hang out with family I don’t often get to see. 

The one downside to my week is that I’m still sick. I got sick a couple weeks back, and I thought I’d finally shaken it when I traveled up last week, but around Thursday/Friday it hit hard again. It’s hard to be in foreign countries when you’re sick. My cousin was super nice and helped me find medicine, but back in Italy now it’s sometimes hard to know what to look for in the pharmacies. Thank heavens for the internet and google translate. 🙂