Happy New Year!

It was strange celebrating the holidays without Jimmy, but we were happy to be able to spend them with friends. Darlene had us over for a tradi-
tional Christmas dinner, then we slept over at Sally and John’s for New Year’s Eve. Things weren’t quite as wild in Heemstede as in Leiden, but we had a great time lighting off some sparklers and watching fireworks at midnight.
Then we took a nice long walk on New Years through the near-by woods. Was quite surprised when we happened upon this Scottish cow wandering loose with several of his buddies.

Blue About Not Being Green...

I really try to be green. I use public transport to get the girls to school and for travel all around Holland. I ride my bike to the grocery store. After I fly, I purchase carbon offsets from Greenseat. So it was with great trepidation that I purchased a fake Xmas tree this year. As I look at it with our favorite ornaments that I brought from North Carolina and the cute Thalys train set around the bottom, I feel guilty. Guilty that my tree came out of a box from Thailand (at least it wasn’t China). Guilty that it never gave off any oxygen or sweet pine fragrances. Guilty that eventually it’ll end up in a landfill for at least a few hundred years. At least it makes two sweet girls smile, so I don’t feel entirely guilty (although I do feel guilty that I forgot to take a picture of them in front of it).

Frozen Canals...

We were very excited to see the canals in the area frozen for the first time in the 2 years we’ve lived here. We stopped to talk to some skaters, then walked on the canal ourselves. The guess was that the ice was about 2 inches thick, but it’s still disconcerting when you hear noises as it settles on the water. Sadly, we’re now having record warmth and lots of rain.

An Early Freeze...

We could tell that winter arrived early this year as the field next door froze for the first time since we’ve lived here (it was flooded with water around the 1st of December). On the first day of winter, it opened for the weekend as an outdoor ice skating rink. Luckily, Veronica’s skates still fit and she enjoyed going skating twice while Ashlynn followed her around wearing snow boots.

“C” is for Celebrating ....

It seems like a long time since the days when Ashlynn couldn’t swim or ride a bike, and we had to walk 25 minutes to the pool for her lessons in the shallow pool. It’s been very exciting to watch her progress in a fairly short time from only being able to dog paddle to being able to complete her “C”diploma which included 4 laps dressed in trousers, long-sleeved top and windbreaker, diving, a 27-foot underwater swim through a hoop plus 10+ laps of mixed strokes along with an occasional somersault or obstacle, as shown above. She’s now in the highest group at swimming lessons during PE at school and is the first in her class to earn all of the beginner diplomas. Next up, she’ll join Veronica’s snorkel classes--yeah, they’ll finally have lessons at the same time!

Victorian Day...

Each year group at school gets to have a dress-up day once a year. Veronica’s this year was during her studies of the Victorian Times in England from 1837 to 1901. She dressed up as a posh student, proudly wearing her Auntie Leigh’s old Granny Sax dress. She had a great time seeing what it was like to go to school over 100 years ago.

Valuable Lessons Learned - Part 9

* Don’t use the shower to judge if the water in the house is still turned off unless everyone in the house knows the difference between on and off. After deciding we didn’t want to stay in a house without water, we had a rude awakening when we returned the next day from Darlene’s. The first hint that something was wrong was water on the kitchen counter. Then I noticed the sound of water running. Turns out the shower was on full power at 100 degrees for over 12 hours! Our 2nd floor was like an indoor sauna. Thank God for Darlene--she stayed with me and helped squeegee the walls and ceiling for 2 hours.
* Don’t try making homemade soup when you’re already stressed out. After spending the afternoon cleaning the water off the 2nd floor, I got to clean tomato soup off the kitchen walls when I put too much in the blender and couldn’t hold the top on. Next time I’ll buy pureed tomatoes in a can.

Old-Fashioned Urinals...

In a city that is lacking in public toilets, Amsterdam mas modern outdoor urinals on various corners. There are also several old-
fashioned urinals around town. This one has the best signs of any I’ve seen so far as well as a nice view of the Oude Kerk. If you use your imagination, you can figure out how it can be used by women as well as men. Of course, you wouldn’t want to swim in the canal down below.

Visiting Amsterdam...

No visit to Holland is complete without a day in Amsterdam. Like many of our typical tours, our day began with a walk through the Red Light District. For the first time, we stopped in the Oude Kerk, which dates back to the 14th century. We particularly liked the unusual wooden carvings teaching moral lessons over the choir seats from 1480. Our favorite was the above “Money doesn’t fall out of my arse” which means that money doesn’t grow on trees. We also visited the Van Gogh Museum and the Anne Frank House, which Veronica got to visit for the first time since Ashlynn wasn’t along (I think it’s important for children to be old enough to understand the significance of what happened there, so Ashlynn won’t go for another few years).

Two Years in Holland...

Since we would be celebrating our 2nd anniversary in Holland without Jimmy but with visitors Kristine and Carolyn instead, we decided it would be a great time to go to our favorite pannekoeken restaurant Oudt Leyden and collect our special plate as frequent visitors for the restaurant’s 100th anniversary. We chose to postpone doing our annual highs and lows, but enjoyed sharing our favorite restaurant with our friends.

Thanksgiving Visitors...

While fall weather in Holland wouldn’t entice most visitors, Raleigh hash buddies Kristine and Carolyn didn’t let the wet and windy weather scare them away. They arrived on Thanksgiving and stayed for 4 days. Of course, part of experiencing a new country is trying the local foods. On their first night, they enjoyed trying pannekoeken, traditional Dutch pancakes.
In honor of Thanksgiving, we toured some of the Pilgrim sites in Leiden on Friday, then I invited the Busches to join us for dinner. With my tiny oven, I never considered cooking a whole turkey; instead I made cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes and a crock pot meal with turkey. It was hardly a traditional American or Dutch dinner, but luckily it was tasty.

Those Wild Zwarte Piets...

This year we went with Camilla and Tristram to see Sinterklaas arrive down the Vliet in the town of Voorburg. It was somewhat uneventful compared to last year’s big parade in Den Haag, but still fun since we were with friends. And it’s impossible not to laugh at this politically incorrect custom.
I also got a good laugh from that Monday’s paper. Apparently some of the Zwarte Piets elsewhere in Holland had a lot of fun as they mooned the crowd gathered to watch their arrival. Can’t imagine what the kids thought of those funny people with the black faces and white bums.

Sint Martin’s Day...

While we opted not to go trick or treating in Wassenaar this year, we were happy to go out for Sint Martin’s Day on November 11th with David and Andrew in Heemstede to celebrate the saint who gave half of his cloak to a beggar before the city gates on a cold winter’s day. Traditionally children make lanterns, but ours were store-bought. Similar to Halloween, the kids go door-to-door and receive candy, but in this case they earn their reward by singing traditional songs. There were lots of comments about the cute English accents while the kids sang in Dutch:

Saint Martin, Saint Martin,
The cows have tails,
The girls are wearing skirts,
Saint Martin is arriving now.

Sounds pretty silly in English, but apparently rhymes nicely in Dutch.

Colorful Sweden...

It was great seeing all the colors of fall while in Sweden, which is something we don’t see much of in Holland. We saw this waterfall on the grounds of a castle (unfortunately it wasn’t open to the public). Afterwards we visited a traditional Swedish Christmas market. On our last day in Scandinavia, we took the ferry back to Denmark and attempted to get into another closed castle. Despite not getting inside, we thoroughly enjoyed walking along the water’s edge and seeing the beautiful views. Overall, the combination of amusement park, big city culture and walks in the countryside made for a great vacation.