Tot Ziens to Leiden

"Tot ziens" means "goodbye" in Dutch, and it was sad saying goodbye to Leiden.  It is a beautiful city.  Both my sisters thought it was one of the nicest cities in Holland when they came to visit.  They said that they were particularly impressed by all the water.  Several tributaries converge in Leiden, and it is amazing to see all the boats, bridges, and Dutch brick houses with painted shutters lining the sides of the canals.  It was sad to ride the train one last time through the green pastures with sheep.  The lambs weren't so little anymore, but I remembered a few months before when they had just been born.  The bulb fields around Leiden were now mostly empty, but some of them had been planted with summer flowers.

There were also waterlilies growing in many of the canals, including some right across from the library.  I would see them each time I walked over the bridge on my way back from doing some studying.

The Leiden Botanical Gardens were overgrown with ferns and large trees--a huge contrast compared to the sparse scattering of crocus that were there when I first began to visit in February.  I took a break to eat lunch in these gardens many times.

You could watch the Japanese koi fish in the pond.

And sometimes it was nice to sit in the Japanese tea house and do some work for class.

Here are some iris lining the edge of the Zen garden.  I thought they looked really nice against the sand--like a painting you'd find on a Japanese folding screen.

And here is van Siebold's statue, the one who brought back many of the oldest trees and shrubs in the Botanical Gardens from Japan.

Here is a picture of the herb garden.

On the last day of Dutch class we took our exam.  We waited for about half and hour or so for our professor to finish the grading, and then he joined us for a little party.  Nu kunnen wij Nederlands praten!