Sleep....

So since I have been here in the wonderful world of the Netherlands I have noticed that they like things a bit different than from the states. They allow beer in church, have crazy toiletts, eat extremely healthy, enjoy biking, and don't seem to mind the cold. In fact, many american students I have talked to have expressed the same feelings of perpetual chill here in the Netherlands, and therefore I am under the understanding that most Dutch families seek to save their money and like all good Dutchmen do not spend it on trivial things like heat.


Anyway, this is a picture of my bed. I made it larger this time so that you can get a detailed view of the sheets and covers making up my bed. The first day here my family was all excited about my bed and telling me all about how sheets and blankets are so outdated and therefore they use this modern contraption when they decide to enter the horizontal time accelerator (Danny Fergen's name for a bed). Well, as you can see, the top cover has a zipper and I therefore was under the belief that in America we have had these "modern" looking beds for a long time and they were so modern in fact that we reserved them for those few weekend excusions to nature which we call camping. I was under the impression that this was as sleeping bag, and a rather odd one at that being as the top and bottom didn't fit together all that nicely. Yet, as I have already noted, they do things differently in the Netherlands and I just thought I would get used to it.
Well it turned out to be extremely cold! I was amazed as to how my host family was able to sleep in such a place. I slept with socks on (which is a horrible experience!) sweat pants, a tshirt, a running jacket, and occasionally on really cold nights i put my winter jacket on top of me just to keep me warm. I would also frequently curl up in the fetal position and pull my covers all the way over my head in order to trap my warm breath in with my body heat and hopefully prevent frost bite.
Finally, last night I sat in bed cold as all get out and decided I had enough. No longer was I going to tell myself that a draft was comming through the window, or "I will get used to it" I was going to finally take action. I sat back for a while and then realized that below the bottom half of my sleeping bag was my blue cot. But then I also realized that my blue cot was not actually a blue cot but a sheet covering my cot. It then dawned on me that the bottom of the sleeping bag which I thought was extremely thick for padding purposes was in fact in extreme "modern" blanket which keeps you exceptionally warm! Wow, was that a good nights sleep. Previously I would wake up and slowly stretch out only to feel the pain of my overbiked legs screaming out as they unfolded from their self heating fetal position. Now no longer must I wear socks, and I can stretch out as I desire. Sleep is once again a wonderful event in my life. Oh how crazy these beds are over here in the Netherlands, almost as crazy as their toiletts, but the beds don't smell as bad.