More Photos

Here's a few more that wouldn't fit on the last post!

The Great Cranberry Quest

Over the last two days, Johan showed me all around the town, and I took a bunch of pictures (although somewhat awkwardly - Rijssen isn't exactly as full of tourists as Amsterdam!). I even got to see the one and only windmill today, although I promise there were no lattes for sale inside. :) The town is beautiful, and we had perfect, gorgeous sunny weather for it: 18ºC! Yesterday, I also had a brief moment of bravery. We needed to hurry back to the house to start dinner, but we still needed one ingredient for the next day's lunch. So, Johan went back to the house, and I ventured to the store on my own to buy cranberries. I found them and checked out, even using one of the tiny handful of Dutch words I know (dankjewel!) to thank the cashier. Success!

Finally, today, we had a wonderful picnic in the park. I made my favorite sandwich (proving my "Sandwich Artisan Extraordinaire" title that I had claimed on Facebook) and we took the sandwiches to the local park and watched the ducks and other birds playing (or perhaps getting a bit frisky!) in the pond. Then we walked slowly through the park, enjoying the view, the sunshine, and of course one another's company. Here's a sample of the views from today!

What the duck?

On Monday, I got to meet the coworkers, who asked all sorts of questions about Seattle, and tried to convince me to follow their duck on twitter. Apparently a duck was laying eggs outside the office, and they wanted to set up a camera for a live stream, and create a twitter account for the duck. They even wanted my input on what to name the duck! Hah! I got as far as "Quackmire" before realizing that if the duck was laying eggs, it had to be a girl...

Later on, I finally got my first moment of the "you do WHAT??" variety of culture shock. I'm rather surprised it took this long, and even more surprised that it was something so random. We were washing dishes one night, and we had just filled a small tub with hot, soapy water, and begun the chore. Soon, the tub was full, and we turned off the hot water. "So, uh, where do you rinse them?" I asked. I was informed that rinsing was unnecessary, as long as most of the bubbles were off, and then drying them with a towel would suffice. I was rather flabbergasted, and proceeded to rinse the bubbles as best as I could with the soapy water.

"Are you crazy?" I asked. "Eww!! How can you not rinse your dishes?" I was again reassured that they were clean. Later on, I failed to get all the potato residue off a masher, and was told that for all my freaking out about the soap, I didn't even get the dish all the way clean.

"Well, I would have seen it if it wasn't COVERED IN SOAP!" I retorted. We "argued" about the soap until all the dishes were put away, and to this moment, I'm a little weirded out by it, but, well... all of my food has tasted fine thus far, and I haven't gotten sick yet, so... well, if it's normal here... still trying to wrap my head around it!

Hunger Games and Food Babies

Our four month anniversary was lovely. I woke up to a delightful breakfast in bed (AWW!!! ARE YOU SERIOUS!?) and then we enjoyed some hot coffee, and took a train into town for dinner and a movie. We saw The Hunger Games, even though I hadn't read the book. I will now! It was really good! After all the hype about Twilight (which I personally don't care for) I was skeptical about The Hunger Games. But as it seems, our generation got this one right. I very much enjoyed the movie (I laughed, I cried...) and will soon start the book. Turns out this book was one of my presents, so I may even start it on the plane!

Following the movie, we went to a Greek restaurant called Aphrodite (appropriate, ja?) and ordered blindly off the menu. Neither of us know much Greek, and I hardly know any Dutch, so we literally picked random items and hoped for the best. And the best we got! The food was plentiful and delicious, and we left with substantial food babies.

The next morning, it was my turn to provide breakfast, this time by cooking Johan and his sister real American pancakes! We had a little challenge with the scale (it kept turning off in the middle of weighing things!) but they turned out fine, and everybody enjoyed them. Even Chelsea got a little miniature one!

Ramadiebambambamie

On Friday morning, we packed up our suitcases and said farewell to the North Sea, and then hauled our heavy suitcases and other baggage through a series of trains, ultimately arriving in the town of Rijssen - at long last, I could see the town where all the day-to-day activities take place! It was thrilling to finally see the street whose name I had written so often on envelopes, the couch and the walls that were always in the background of our Skype dates, the stairs that I never imagined were so steep, the fluffy dog Chelsea that I had long ago dubbed "the pet dragon" for her impressive volume of snoring. We both just kept looking at each other and exclaiming, "I'm here!" "You're here!" Amazing.

I've also been listening closely to the DJs on the Dutch radio stations (and the Siri-like voice on the trains) and picking up a few words, namely "raar" (or more realistically, "RRRRAAAARRR!" with all the R's rolled dramatically) which means "weird." Definitely a good one to keep in mind! I also saw on a tweet or something, "Ramadiebambambamie," which means... well, nothing. But due to the adj+noun=onelongword format in Dutch, they do have some awfully long words, so I had to ask... but we're still laughing about Ramadiebambambamie.

A Day in Paradise

The sun was shining again when I woke up this morning afternoon, and after a nice cup of coffee (remember our MacGyver’d coffee pot?) we decided to have a relaxed afternoon on the beach. It. Was. Paradise! We spread out towels, brought some sandwiches (and heart-shaped gummy candies!) and relaxed in the sand for hours. It was a warm 18ºC, with a cool breeze blowing and the waves crashing on the beach. So relaxing. A million times better than stressing over homework and walking all over town in the rain! We even avoided getting pooped on by seagulls. All in all, a great afternoon

And then, at long last, we went out on our first real dinner date. We both got all dressed up (suit jacket, dress, heels...) and walked down to the plaza for a lovely meal by candlelight. On our way down to the restaurant, we stopped for a few minutes to watch the last few minutes of the sunset before the sun dipped behind the clouds. All these months later, we could finally share each other’s horizon.

It was an amazing, and almost unbelievable, experience to share a real dinner together. After months of Skype dates and screen names (remember when we were just TwelfthPrecinct and MissPhoenixElle?) we finally got to sit down across a table from each other, with no computers in the way, in the SAME TIME ZONE, and share a meal. Wonderful.

And, conveniently, Castle was on the Dutch TV, so we got to finish the evening by watching our favorite show together, complete with subtitles. Seems perfect, since that is how we met in the first place!

Some cities are better with a guide...

...but that isn’t where we went next. We got up bright and early to head to Antwerp instead, with lots of sleeping on the train. A bit too much sleeping on the train, in fact, as my coffee ended up alllll over the seat. Good thing I was wearing dark colors! I sure hope no one with white pants came to that seat next... But funny enough, at that very stop, two girls got in the compartment across from us while I was trying to clean up the spilled coffee with tissues. Five minutes later, her juice spilled all over her bag, and I was much less embarrassed. And was able to offer her some tissues! Apparently we were clumsiness twins destined to meet.

So. The city. Kind of weird. Not having any idea where to go or what to do, we started wandering, and per our amazing luck, wandered straight into the ghetto. After that awkward detour, we stopped for some sandwiches, then found our way into the better part of town, where we found a strangely-placed Disney store (and joked about being a princess and Captain America!) and then found a place with the famous chocolate-dipped Belgian waffles. YUM!

Other than that, we pretty much just wandered around aimlessly... considered going to the zoo, but decided it was too expensive, and so we just walked (and walked, and walked...) across town to the old cathedral and some of the more famous squares. Then we took some more pictures and went back to the station. It might have been better with a guide, but all in all it was kind of a strange afternoon. Based on the strangeness, we decided the day would best be finished with some Belgian beer, which was known to be really good. I can tell you right now, I am now officially spoiled and will probably never drink American beer again. Not that I did much to begin with, but now it will be forever overshadowed. Did I mention you can drink it in public? Very strange to me. But, as it was perfectly legal, we relaxed with our beer at the station, and took a train back to Amsterdam (and slept some more!)

The Funnest of Fails

Speaking of coffee fails, there was no regular coffee pot in our hotel room! *Insert totally shocked face here!* Not ones to give up that easily, we tried to set THIS up:

Yeah, that's toilet paper held up by a hair tie over a carafe. Well, that broke in about 30 seconds. So, several configurations later, we can up with THIS ingenious method... it still took freaking forever to brew, but oh boy did that coffee taste good when we finally got it! SUCCESS.

Also notice that this time it's set up on top of the electric burner. The burner is on low, so the coffee stays warm while it brews slowly. That part was Johan's idea! Good one!

After a leisurely breakfast, (at, you know, 3pm) we moseyed down to the tennis courts to practice for our world championship match. Uh. Well. Let’s just say I think I’ll stick to gymnastics!! We probably did more flailing and chasing after tennis balls than actually hitting them, and when we DID make contact, it was actually with my knee... (it has a REALLY cute waffle pattern on it now...)

Once the Worst Tennis Match Ever Played was played, we cooled off with a nice dip in the pool, and subsequently warmed up with the hot tub! It was even outdoors. Talk about paradise. Got me thinking about those springs in Iceland... hmm... maybe that’s where we should go next...

Adventures in Amsterdam

After returning from Germany, we went into the city on Monday morning (well, afternoon, you know us night people!) and explored the sights and took lots of pictures. We got lucky yet again with the weather – beautifully warm and sunny again!

First we found one of those “coffee” shops to lighten the mood and loosen the tension, and having completely relaxed (or should I say, “spaced out”), we wandered into the Red Light District where we...

OH COME ON, you know us better than that!!! =P

No no, the scariest place we went was the heavy metal section of a record store. Or, we listened to it while standing in the Classical section. Awkward. When I meant to say, “I’ll take the second CD,” meaning the second record I had previewed, he thought I meant I wanted to listen to the second disc (it was a two disc set). More awkward. Skipped through the tracks quickly and moved on!

Next on our list of sightseeing was the newly-opened Apple store – WOW. Apple people, this is a sight to see. It was huh-yuuuuuge! At least 5 times bigger than the one in the U-District, and with a spiral staircase. Very very nice.

By this point it was getting cold, so we went into a coffee shop (STARBUCKS! GEEEZ!) and attempted to get coffee for “Rick” and “Kate” but somehow ended up with “Greg”...? Well, we’ll try again spell it next time... don’t know who the heck Kate and Greg are...

Tears

The great city of Frankfurt and Fló welcomed Lauren, May and me with some lovely weather! But today the city new we were leaving. The city shed some tears for us in the form of rain.

The last day that the awkward 4 were together we visited some dino's at a museum. (Pictures will follow)

After that we finally saw the place where our superhero lives. Fló lives on a little, but beautiful village.
It was great to see where Fló lives, where she walks, where she drives too hard!

As final thing what we did with the four people that met trough the tv-show Castle, was......visiting a Castle!!
In the place where Flóra lives is an old castle (where a happy ghost is floating around every day) As there are no castle's in the US, she took her change to play the tourist and shot a lot of pictures (soon to come)

And then there were more tears. The moment of goodbye and the train leaving from the station...I hate goodbye's!!!
May, we miss you!!!! ❤
Flóra, we miss you!!!! ❤

And right now we are heading back to Zandvoort. Still close to 4 hours to go now...