Letter #31 from Holland

Sorry for the delay...we are getting many letters these days and also keeping busy repsonding to people who want to join our project. :)

Letter #31 comes from Suzzane, who lives in a small city in the south of Holland.She is a remedial teacher (has anybody noticed that we are getting a lot of letters from teachers?) at a secondary school and helps children with autism and dyslexia.That is a wonderful job.My youngest daughter has learning problems,so it is nice when there are teachers who choose to help the ones that need more help because kids in a big class never get the help they need since the teacher simply doesn't have the time needed to help each student to the best of his/her ability.Suzzane enjoys writing letters,cards and reading.She also loves postcrossing,which is our favorite site to visit.

Here are some facts about Holland that she shared with us:

-Holland lies in Europe,next to Belgium and Germany

-Holland has 16,515,000 inhabitants

-About 18% of Holland is water

-The capital of Holland is Amsterdam

-Holland has a queen named Beatrix

-In Holland people speak Dutch

She also shared some dutch words with us,these are just a few of them:

*In English* *In Dutch*

Holland - Nederland

cheese- kaas

letter -brief

write - schryven

stamps - postzegels

cat - kat

She also told us about some famous people that are from Holland that some of you may know:

Anne Frank,Vincent Van Gogh,JohanCruyff (football player) & Rutger Hauer,who is an actor in American movies,such as "Sin City","Batman Begins" & "Buffy the Vampire Slayer".

She said it can get very cold in Holland and that it snows and rains a lot.When she wrote the letter is was zero degrees outside.Burr!In mid summer the temperature is around twenty-five degrees celsius.

And finally here is a recipe she shared with us for apples and yogurt (please note that you will have to convert the measurements if you are in the states like ourselves):

Ingredients:

4 apples

500 mL vanilla custard

2 spoons brown sugar

2 spoons flour

30 grams butter

Preparation:

-Preheat oven to 200 degrees

-Peel the apples,divide them into 4 pieces and remove the core.Cut all the pieces through the middle to now give you 8 pieces.

-spread the vanilla custard over the bottom of your baking dish.

-Lay the apple pieces over the custard.

-mix the sugar,flour and butter till it's a crumbly consistency.

-Place dish in oven for 15 minutes or till the apples begin to change color,then remove from oven.

Suzzane says they are best eaten warm with ice cream!

That sounds like a wonderful recipe...thanks for sharing and thanks so much for your lovely letter & all the goodies!In the picture you can see the items she shared with us-tea,postcards,dutch napkin,magnet & some stroopwafels.We have actually been wanting to try stroopwafels for so long because we hear a lot of people love them,so thanks a bunch!