Rain shimmer on Zeilstraat

Dutch lessons started this morning. Teacher Bart tells me that twice a week for four weeks should have me speaking very short and very simple sentences as long as I do all of my homework. I must say that the first lesson was a little overwhelming for this uni-lingual Anglophone student. I have no hope of keeping up as all six of my classmates in this beginners course seem to know some Dutch already and are fluent in at least two other languages.

The lessons are in a private language school that is only a little more than 1K from our apartment. The walk in the morning was quite nice. However, by the time class was dismissed it was raining steadily and the downpour continued well into the evening.

Being determined to shrink my growing list of errands I set out in the late afternoon in spite of the rain. It was dark by the time I was ready to start home, and although I was drenched I managed to stay warm in my hooded winter coat. The roads were quite busy with all kinds of traffic as people hurried to get somewhere warm and dry. This photo was taken with about half a kilometre to my own warm and dry apartment.