Mijn Nederlands Les

That means my Dutch lessons. I am in a very remote part of southern Holland called Waalwijk this week in order to learn how to speak Dutch. It is not going so well.
Learning Dutch is no easy task. And for some reason, I have begun to associate learning a new language with learning how to speak Spanish, since that was the language I last had to learn. That coupled with the fact that we just recently took a trip to Spain where we had to rely solely on my ability to speak broken Spanish, has resulted in an irritating mental roadblock: I can only think in Spanish!
I don't know how this happened! But know my first instinct when someone expects me to think of something in Dutch is to think of what it is in Spanish! And these two languages have only one thing in common: they are both spoken in Europe somewhere.
Learning Dutch is a bit like learning how to ride a bike. At first you feel confident. Your brother, your sister, your friends - they all know how to ride a bicycle. If they can do it, you can do it. This is not going to be a problem. If anything it will be fun. That is, until you start riding into poles and skidding across the pavement. Before you know it you are bleeding and crying and you just want to go home.
My first couple of sentences were robotic, but to my ears they sounded pretty good. To my teacher's ears, not so. I think speaking Portuguese has helped me with the ggggggaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrreeeeuuuur sound which is in just about every word in Dutch (or at least Amsterdam Dutch, which is a bit rougher). It kind of sounds phlegmy and not so pleasant. I can also roll my r's. Also the annoying oooooo sounds in the Baltimore accent have prepared me in some way. But other than that, the sounds are completely foreign to me. And, similar to Chinese, if you mispronounce one of these little nuances in a word, it can completely change the meaning.
Yesterday we had what they called a ''working lunch.'' My 5 classmates and I (all from the E&Y Amsterdam office) had lunch with our teacher and some French dude that was also there to learn Dutch and his teacher. During this lunch we could only speak Dutch. As you can imagine, this was not a very interesting conversation: Where do you live? What is your name? What do you do? Do you have any brothers or sisters? Do you like biterbalen? Very boring. The questions were boring, and the answers were boring. This is not how you want to learn Dutch.
I have learned some curious words and phrases and some useful ones, and I would like to share these with you:
1. Het spijt me - I am sorry.
Interesting, you must be thinking. She has been in the country for nearly 5 months, why doesn't she know how to say sorry? The answer is that people don't say that they are sorry here. If they happen to stomp on your foot or elbow you in the head whilst in the tram (both of which have happened to me several times), if they even notice your existence, they mumble a pathetic "sorry.'' Aside from the fact that it is pronounced with a roll-y r, it is the same word as in English. But it is spoken so lamely, that it really means ''get over it.''
2. Pot verdorie! This is a nicer version of ''shit!''', kind of like ''darn!''
3. Borreltje - A shot. As in a shot of tequila.
4. Winkelen - This word is very important. It means ''to shop.''

Hopefully I will be able to share more Dutch with you in the future, but unfortunately that's all I have for now.