pretty awesome.

I have been feeling pretty awesome lately. A little stressed, recovering from a bit of a cold, cold from the unseasonably chilly Dutch winter and cycling in the rain from my house to Amsterdam Noord this morning, but nonetheless, pretty awesome. I think it's because I feel like things are starting to come together, research-wise, at long last. I think 28 (my verjaardag was this past Wednesday), is going to be a good year.

First of all, I am feeling more confident about my Dutch. In part, this is thanks to starting an amazing speaking partnership programme two weeks ago. I found the SamenSpraak programma offered by the Gilde Amsterdam group a long, long while ago. The Gilde is an organization whose goal is to make Amsterdam a better place to live. They do a few different things around the city which seem to range from general volunteer work in schools and such, to integration-related work, but also sponsor activities like free walking tours (neat!) guided by real Amsterdammers (which shows you a much different city than what you would see if you took a conventional commercial tour). Anyway, I finally called up the SamenSpraak people and arranged an interview, and then last week met with my very own Amsterdammer to work on my Dutch. I know I still need a lot of work, since I make simple mistakes and often forget words, but I think that Dennis and I have had some pretty good and relaxed conversations so far. And, I am happy to say we're not only talking about the weather and vegetables (though I think we've covered the weather a few times - I mean, hey, this is the Netherlands afterall)!

Secondly, I am volunteering more. (Yay!) I think that I knew volunteering at places was a good idea, a great way to meet people and show my face around the 'community' a long while ago, but I just never quite knew how to go about doing it. My fieldworking partner-in-crime so to speak, Ms. Long, had the volunteer-thing in the bag since the get-go, but she has also made a lot of contacts in her own neighbourhood in Rotterdam (the woman knows her butcher!) and volunteering opportunities have been easier to find for her. I don't live in the neighbourhood I plan to study, so making contacts outside of academic-circles has been a bit more of a puzzle for me. Thankfully (and to make a long-story short-ish), I happily stumbled upon the Vrijwilligers Centraal Amsterdam (Volunteers Central Amsterdam) website last week. While I may have actually seen this site before, my now much-improved Dutch skills have meant that I actually understood what a vrijwilliger was and what the site was about: basically, an excellent resource for anyone looking for any kind of volunteer opportunity in Amsterdam. Although the site is all in Dutch (so you need either some level of comprehension or a friend who can help to navigate it), there are many vacatures that require little or no knowledge of Dutch (just click the 'Anderstaligen' box in the search engine and, voila, literally hundreds of opportunities pop up indicating that 'geen of weinig Nederlands is ok' - that is, 'no or little Dutch is ok').

So, last Friday I volunteered to help out with leisure activities at a senior's home in Amsterdam Noord. I sent the reaction email via the website, and literally, within a minute of hitting send I got a phone call from the volunteer coordinator asking to set up a meeting! I had the meeting this morning - also nearly all in Dutch - and hope to start doing handicrafts, drinking coffee, and talking to lots of older Amsterdammers this coming Wednesday. I am pretty excited, and feeling (especially now that my feet are dry and I am warmed up again), pretty awesome.

doing things the hard way

I have never really been a fan of doing things the hard way, but I seem to have often been an unwitting disciple of this method of living.

Case in point: all my complaining about banking in the Netherlands.

Turns out, I just tried the wrong bank at the wrong time (ING before I had all my residence documents in order) and then the wrong bank - or at least the wrong snooty customer service representative at the wrong bank - at the right time (Rabobank). After hearing of the seemingly miraculous feat of a fellow Canuck researcher getting an account at ING, I thought I would try again for myself. So, today I had an appointment at ABN-AMRO and walked away, after only 6 months of living in the Netherlands and 45 minutes of sitting in a bank office, with my very own Dutch bank account!

So simple. So friendly. So easy. Damn.

I can't help but scold myself for not just walking out of the Rabobank and down the street to another banking institution to try again all those months ago. (October, I think.)

However, this experience in the school of hard knocks - fieldwork edition, has made me think about taking people at their word. The snooty Rabobank guy assured me that I was out of luck if I wanted a bank account in this country, since I do not have either a university- or work-contract. As a person in a position of some authority, a seeming expert on the area of banks and such, I believed him. Of course, now I know he wasn't really correct. And I am reminded of all the anecdotes from my long ago methods courses detailing the perils of not getting a second (and third and fouth...) opinion. While the logic in this has undoubtedly always been in the back of my mind, I think that I needed this experience to kind of remind me not to be stupid or naive, and to get multiple views on the subject before thinking I know all about it. (I'm an anthropologist, for crying out loud! Isn't this kind of what we're supposed to do?!)

On the other hand, I think I am in good company since the school of hard knocks seems to kind of be the norm around here. At least, as far as my observations of Dutch parenting compared to contemporary North American parenting are concerned. From what I can tell, Dutch kids today are treated kind of the way that my parents talk about their childhoods: if they are going to do something stupid, and if they get hurt, then they will learn not to do it again. (Not to mention the old adage "Wie niet horen wil, moet voelen." In English "who doesn't want to listen, must feel" - roughly akin to the more familiar English "If you don't listen, you're gonna get it.") My experience growing up was a bit different. If it looked like we (my brother, sister or I) were going to do something stupid or unsafe, for the most part, an adult would stop us, tell us we would get hurt, and that we needed to be more careful. Now, I'm not saying that we never did stupid and potentially dangerous things growing up, but I think that the culturally, expectations for parents to guard their kids against all kind of physical, emotional and every other kind of potential danger are much more heightened in North America than here.

Take for example, the reaction of my brother when he visited me in September. On the Museumplein there is a great big sign with the slogan "I amsterdam." The letters are probably about 8 feet high, and understandably tempting to climb all over. In fact, I don't think I have ever seen it without children climbing on it. But, when my brother saw a little girl standing fearlessly on top of the 'd' he was incredulous! she was going to get hurt! Where were her parents? He was really not impressed. While to me, it had become normal to see this, his reaction reminded me that things were very different where we came from. In Canada, it would be, I think, considered irresponsible and a mark of bad parenting to let your kid climb on an 8-foot high 'd'. In Canada, there would at least be a sign saying "climb at your own risk." But maybe having to take account of yourself, even at a young age, is a good thing.

As painful as it can be, I think the fieldwork process is a little bit like growing up all over again, just this time in the Netherlands. So, when in Amsterdam...

januari 2010 and the search for the missing link

December has been a long month. Long in an enjoyable sense. After Sinterklaas at the beginning of the month, and a few meetings with other academics, most of my December 2009 was given over to holiday-related activities, namely, eating, drinking and being merry. It was loads of fun, and kind of nice to have a bit of a vacation, visiting friends (and their family) in a couple different places around the Netherlands. But, even a long December can't last forever... and January 2010 is now here, begging, chiding, and encouraging me to eat more vegetables (and fewer sweets) and do my research!

While I am excited at the prospect of talking to new and interesting people about what they think it means to belong here - and all the related issues to pour out of such a question - I still find it a bit intimidating to take the initial steps of introducing myself. It's one of those endlessly useful practical things you don't learn in a methods class: how to simply go about the doing of the research. Now that I have an idea of who I want to talk to and why, and even have a sense of where specifically I can start to find them, how do I go about actually getting them to talk to me? Is it really as simple as sending an email/ calling them up/ walking into the office and saying something like, "Hi, I'm an anthropological researcher from Canada and I would like to talk to you about what it means to be Dutch?" I feel like I am missing vital information about how to go about making the link between research plans and actually researching. How do I introduce myself and my project to the the people I want to study? Literally, what is it I am supposed to say?