Amsterdam

Well, I took Caroline and went to Amsterdam for the morning to get my passport renewed. She was so excited cuz we were "going on the train!!!" lol. She loved it. She was super good too. Just the perfect little angel and a pleasure to have around. Here we are-


On the train on the way to Amsterdam, she was being silly and she just loves having her picture taken! hehe


There's the good old American Consulate


Museum Plein where we ate lunch. I have so many good memories there...*grin*


The pigeons there are so tame they eat right out of your hand!


Caroline wasn't totally sure how she felt about them


Us on the train ride home. She was so sleepy :-)

Third time's the charm

Have you ever tried to do something and it just didn't click? No matter how hard you tried you just couldn't get the hang of it? Well that's how driving stick was for me. I had a couple people try to teach me and it kind of went like this...*vrrroommm jerk putter die*...Almost every time I tried to get out of first gear! The couple times I managed to get beyond first gear it went ok but those times were few and far between. It really frustrated me.

Anyway, there are certain circumstances coming up in my life that are most likely going to require me to drive stick so....off I went with Ineke to try once again. I admit I was actually dreading it. First of all, it's been pretty much a year since I've been behind the wheel of ANY car so I'm a little rusty at driving period. Plus, I'm a perfectionist, the kind where if I think I may not do something perfect I just avoid doing it. Not good, I know. But this was inevitable so I just sucked it up and prepared to fail miserably once again...

Only, this time I didn't! Somehow, I don't know if it was how Ineke explained it or what, but for some reason this time it just clicked. I was able to start and get all the way up to 3rd gear without problems. I killed the engine probably three time the entire lesson (which is a huge improvement, honest, the last few times I could've said I DIDN'T kill the engine three times the whole lesson and been proud of that! lol) But yeah, I'm so excited! I really felt comfortable, I honestly think I have this whole manual transmission thing down. Yea!

Just thought I'd share with all of you *big smile*

I love weekends

I had a nice weekend. We had a couple days of hot weather, as in like 30 C, and it was soooo nice!!! Unfortunately it's now back to being cold and rainy, blech :P Oh well, at least it was nice for a couple days right?
Friday, I got to meet up with a new girl, Denisa, from the Slovak Republic. She just moved to Rotterdam, about 10 mins from where I live, so I'm excited. She's really nice. We hung out, did some shopping, had apple pie at Dudok and then saw House of Wax (horrible, horrible movie by the way, don't waste your money. And had I known before hand that it had Paris Hilton in it I would NEVER have watched it...don't even get me started on her, lol) Saturday, a group of us got together because Anna had a couple friends from the States visiting. We had a lot of fun just hanging out and dancing. Here's the crew from the evening (I didn't end up getting a decent picture of Julian sorry...):


Anna Maria, Caitlin and I


Carrie and Erik


Chris


and Jamie and her boyfriend Matt (he doesn't like having his picture taken...)

So yeah, that was the group of us. Fun stuff :)

Fears

I was looking for a word today and stumbled upon a list of phobias. Here's some of the ones I found most humorous (note: all real words according to "The Phobia List")...

Arachibutyrophobia- Fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth.
(don't ever give a dog peanut butter by the way, this happens to them and they freak out! *guilty look* what? I never did that...)

Eisoptrophobia- Fear of mirrors or of seeing oneself in a mirror.
(I've had some very frightening experiences looking into mirrors first thing in the morning...)

Dutchphobia- Fear of the Dutch.
(had to include it, although I can't imagine why anyone would have this one, hehe)

Pantophobia- Fear of everything.
(who can tell me where that's from? *wink*)

and my personal favorite...

Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia- Fear of long words.
(now come on, that's just cruel!)

It's just amazing what frightens people...

2 Timothy 1:7 "For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind." (NKJV)

Little taste of heaven

Strawberries and whipped cream...mmmmmm!

Good times, good times...

Sunday afternoon was just so nice. It was one of the most pleasant afternoons I've had in a long time. I met up with Anna, Caitlin, Bea and Camilla and we headed out to Wijk aan Zee, a cute little Dutch beach town, and saw Illicit (a hip hop band that Kathrin's boyfriend plays in).


Here's the whole band


Pieter during his solo

They were good actually, I had a really fun time watching them play. So yeah, it was just a good day. Nothing too terribly exciting about it, we just chilled and I got to hang out with my friends and be silly and smile and laugh a lot. We also took some really nice pictures of us girls on the beach but unfortunately they're on Caitlin's camera so I can't post them right now. Caitlin, you gotta send me those! *wink*

So apparently I'm a liar now...

Or at least according to "anonymous commenter" on this post... I've never been called a liar in my life (well, since I was a kid anyways. I can remember my sisters chanting "liar, liar, pants on fire" a time or two but that's a whole different story, hehe). It surprised me and actually made me a little mad (which you will probably be able to tell if you read my response to the comment) but in the grand scheme of things it really doesn't matter and actually it's kind of amusing when you think about it. So yeah, I'm going to chose to laugh this one off and actually I had a really great day aside from that. I'll post about it more tomorrow since I have some fun pictures (which I actually took) from the show (that I actually went to) that I'd like to post along with it. But for now I need to catch up on my sleep so, g'night everyone! *smile*

Night Stuff

Boy, I hate traveling at night here. Not because I feel like it's dangerous or anything (although I definitely would not advise spending any more time than necessary at Centraal Station) most of the time I get home with no problems at all. The reason I hate it so much is because it takes soooo looooong to get everywhere. Normally it takes me about fourty-five minutes to an hour to get from my house to Anna's house in Scheveningen. Tonight however, because of having to wait for and take two night busses and a night train, it took me almost two and a half hours to get home. blech!

We had a good time going out and stuff though. We played a card game and just hung out at Anna's house for a few hours and then went out and ended up at a little Australian bar called Kangaroos. We had fun and laughed a lot. I'm so grateful that I have such a fun group of friends now. There was a period of a couple months when I first got here that I had no one at all to hang out with, that sucked! But now it's all good. My friends are great and I'm so glad most of them are sticking around for awhile. Except Anna who's moving to Spain in July :( Well I'm happy for her but it sure is going to be a bummer not having her around any more. *sigh* Such is life I guess...

So yeah, my evening was great, I just need to make sure I leave earlier next time or spend the night!

oh deer...

I just want to say that I watched Bambi today and cried like a small child when the mother died...again. I have seen that movie 87 thousand times (and that's probably not too big of an exaggeration) and it still gets to me. Caroline was very concerned and was like "it's ok, look the daddy deer is there", hehe. She's such a sweetheart. But yeah, I just love classic Disney *smile*

Pinkpop 2005

This past weekend I went to Pinkpop, a music festival in Limburg, and had an absolute blast! I'll let the pictures tell the story :)

Saturday 14 May-


We got up at 5am and had three hours of trains and busses (well, four hours really since we missed one of our trains and had to wait an hour)


When we finally arrived we set up our tent (in the rain) and explored things a little bit


Heineken, the official sponsor of, oh, just about every major event in the Netherlands, lol

The first night the best act definitely was The Chemical Brothers, they did euro dance mix stuff, it was great

and for good reason, I watched a girl almost break her neck crowd surfing during the Chemical Brothers :S

Sunday 15 May-


It rained until almost 3pm...so the ground was pretty wet and muddy, not to mention covered in trash :P


Beef, it's not just what's for dinner *wink* it's also a really fun Dutch band


The Prodigy put on a really great show


getting close to the fans


I enjoyed them a lot! It was great, we were right on the bar and I have the bruise across my ribs to prove it, hehe


After that show we called it a night and went to bed, notice I didn't say went to sleep. It was freezing cold (honest, I was wearing four shirts and three pairs of socks!) and every time we'd fall asleep we were awakened by some drunk tripping over our tent, *sigh* Oh well..

Monday 16 May-

The weather finally improved, no more rain, yea!

Everyone was enjoying the nice weather and just acting crazy


Wir sind Helden, a band from Germany and probably my favorite band from the festival. They were really good!


Bloc Party, another good band this time from the UK. We watched the show and then got their autographs afterwards, fun fun


Faithless, the last band of the festival

After them we headed home, we both couldn't stand the thought of another cold night in the tent, hehe


Notice all the confused looks and pink hats? Nobody really knew what was going on as far as the extra trains went. It worked out though and we made it home by about 2am Tuesday morning.

It was such a great weekend. Going into it I was unsure about how it would go simply because I only knew one band that was playing but now I'm so glad that I went. I heard so much great music and had a really, really fun time *smile*

Country Getaway

Last week I went on holiday with my host family to a little town called Oosterhout. It was a good time. The weather was pretty bad unfortunately but we still did plenty of fun stuff :) Here are some pictures from my week:

On the farm:


A real Dutch experience


with ponies


and chickens

Day trip to Breda:


Little Dutch street


buying shoes

The Efteling:


Caroline saying hello to the park's mascot


Timo, Caroline and Me on one of the rides


I'm such a little kid, I just love carousels :)


In the "Sprookjes Bos" (Fairy Tale Forest) a sign pointing to where we could see the story of Little Red Riding Hood


Our boat ride

It was a good week :)

Now THAT was an adventure!

*note: extremely long post...but it's a fun story :)*

About a week ago I got an e-mail from Ineke informing me that President Bush was coming to Limburg and the town was going to give away tickets to see him. On a whim I decided to e-mail the town and inquire about it, not really expecting much at all. I didn't hear from them for a few days so I had just about decided to forget about until Wednesday I got an e-mail from them telling me when and where I could pick up my ticket. Well, even though I had a ticket I had no idea how I was ever going to get there. The e-mail said that I needed to pick up my ticket between 5am and 6am Sunday morning in Margraten ie. nowheresville, Holland...I had no idea and so I asked Ineke and Robbert for help. Since no trains ran that early (or to that town for that matter!) I had to stay there overnight. We called around and for a long time it looked like I was fresh out of luck because everywhere was booked. Finally we stumbled across the website for a camp ground called Kamperen bij de boer (camping with the farmer) and even though at first they said they were also booked the mother overheard and said "Just one person? Oh there's always room for one person!" So...I was going! I was a bit nervous about going by myself simply because I still wasn't totally clear about how to get everywhere I needed to be but I figured I'd regret not taking this chance. So here's how it went...

Saturday, 7 May 2005-

8:15am: Finished up a bowl of Corn Flakes and Ineke gave me a ride to the train station so I could catch my first train.

8:45am: Caught my first train which would take me to Eindhoven.

9:59am: Caught second train to Sittard

10:55am: NS is doing construction between Sittard and Maastricht all weekend so I caught a bus to some itty bitty town where I then got on a stop train that took me the rest of the way to Maastricht

11:46am: Wonderful train ran late so I "ran" to the bus stop just in time to see my bus pull away. (What I was doing probably couldn't technically be called running since I was lugging a, I kid you not, 53lb bag along behind me!!! Honestly I wish I had a video of me hauling that thing up and down all the stairs and in and out of the trains and busses, it really had to have been a funny sight, lol) Checked the bus schedule and the next one was in an hour...:P

12:46pm: Caught the bus for my final leg of the trip into Margraten

1:03pm: I got off the bus because this was the time I was supposed to be at my stop (the signs where covered in orange plastic announcing the busses wouldn't be running due to President Bush's visit) I should've just asked, it was not the right stop...

1:08pm: Found a sign "Margraten 2 kilometers"! *sigh* Note: at this moment, as if on cue a nice little drizzle starts...I thought "man, my luck better not be this good the whole trip" I started walking (still dragging around that 53lb bag) and giving every car that passes the most pathetic look I could muster up.

1:20pm: An extremely nice man with a sleeping child in his back seat (so I figured that made him safe) pulled over and offered me a ride. I gladly accepted and he asked me where I was going. I reached in my pocket to pull out the paper with the address and name of the place and it was no longer there. I sheepishly told him I didn't know but it was the camping place by the cemetery (I am just oh so slick aren't I? lol) He was really cool, stopped at a bike shop and got directions and then drove me the rest of the way there.

1:35pm: The family that owns the farm/campground greats me and showed me the camping spot. The younger son offered to help me put up my tent which I accepted. Just as we were about to start the mother comes out and said, since it was raining I could set my tent up inside a shed they had so it wouldn't get wet and dirty (yea!)


not bad hé?

2:00pm: All set up...now what? lol


I'll just see how many times I can bounce this ping pong ball ( I got to 191...)

Then it stopped raining so I went outside and took some pictures of the farm




Beautiful isn't it?

After that I went back inside and met a little girl. We played inside for awhile.



7:30pm: Since I had to leave to pick up my ticket at about 4am (I needed to be there by 5am and I had to walk 3 kilometers to get there) I'm went to bed. Unfortunately I was without dinner. I didn't think about the fact that I'm in the middle of the country and there are no cafes around! Just another glowing example of my genius, lol

12:00am: I heard "are you asleep?". After an initial moment of panic that I'd slept in and missed the whole thing I opened my tent to see the farmers wife and his son outside my tent. They told me that they had a ticket for me already so instead of me having to leave at 4am I could ride with them at 6:30am. Yea!

Sunday, 8 May 2005-

6:25am: Down by the cars ready to go and after about 10 mins we were off. Since the farm is directly behind the cemetery we got stopped two different times, once by a police car and once by an army truck, and had to show id's and tell them where we were headed.

7:15am: We had finally cleared security and were loaded on a bus to the cemetery (we weren't allowed to drive there ourselves)


There were 10,000 people there...and all of them had to come by bus!


8,300 American soldiers from WWII are buried in here. Most of the crosses had the soldier's name and the state they were from on it...

but sadly there were a few like this:

"Here rests in honored glory a comrade in arms known but to God"

We got to the cemetery and had found our seats by about 8:00am (Bush wasn't going to speak till 10am!) I was a little worried about how late we were leaving because the ticket said "first come first seated" and that the first bus left at 5am...I figured it was a much better idea to get a ride with them than to walk on a narrow country road in the dark though. When we arrived we found out that the tickets were according to sections with the green ticket being the farthest back, then the red and then the blue. We had red tickets so we ended up with front row seats in the red section. Not bad hé?


Me in one of the little rain jackets they passed out waiting for things to get started.


My new friends that helped me sooo much!

8:30am: The son got a call on his cell phone from the nephew who gave us the tickets asking how we were and where we were sitting

8:35am: The director of the cemetery came up to us and told us that we're sitting in the wrong place. He lead away from the red section and all the to the front of the blue section to a sectioned off area! The only people in front of us were the WWII veterans and dignitaries! God is so good isn't He?!

9:00am: The ceremony began with different local groups doing some songs and things

10:20am: Finally, President Bush arrived!


The Prime Minister of The Netherlands, President George W. Bush, Queen Beatrix and Laura Bush during the playing of the national anthem


President Bush giving his speech

It was a good speech. Afterwards we walked around the cemetery and little bit and then headed back to the farm. I went inside and had pie and coffee with the family and then packed up my stuff. The son gave me a ride to the station and my trip back was fairly uneventful. It was such a great trip! I had a wonderful time, met wonderful people and now have a great story to tell *smile* I hope you enjoyed the story. Sorry about the length. This weekend I'm off to a music festival with Caitlin so after that I will post about my vacation with the family and everything. Have a great weekend!