Yeah! Veronica Got Her "A"

Veronica missed the official test for her first swimming diploma when we were in Spain (sorry, still waiting for those photos from the lab), but the instructor was nice enough to give her a private test. The exam starts with her dressed in shorts and tests for a variety of survival skills (treading water, floating and underwater swimming) as well as stroke skills (breaststroke, inverted breaststroke, crawl and backstroke--her strongest stroke). This photo shows her after diving in and swimming underwater for 3 meters. She was quite excited when she was presented with a diploma and a stuffed hippo (must be some warped Dutch humor that an animal known for killing swimmers is chosen as a mascot for a pool, but at least he's cute).

Survival Swimming...

Yes, you are actually seeing Veronica intentionally jumping into a pool with her clothes on. Swim lessons here are very different than what we were used to in NC. In fact, they are quite intense as they primarily focus on survival training. Luckily we were able to squeeze into some lessons taught in English back in April. Veronica was the oldest in the class and could already dive, but had to learn breaststroke and inverted breaststroke in order to move up to a more advanced class. In preparation for her first test, she was switched in September to a twice weekly Dutch class with mostly 6-year-olds, and Ashlynn moved along into beginner Dutch lessons. While Ashlynn's swimming hasn't improved greatly, at least she can now ride her bike the 15 minutes to the pool (although she still can't start herself or stop without jumping off, which is obviously not so safe--too bad we can't put her in Survival Biking lessons).

First Family Portrait...

When we first got a glimpse of this calf, we knew that he was fairly young. As we got closer, we realized that we were watching him take his first steps. He was still wet from his big journey. We were so distracted by watching the labor nurse eating the afterbirth, that we missed our turn on our hike in the Ardennes (we spent the final night of our holiday in the northern mountains of Luxembourg). Luckily we had a topo map and were able to find our way back.

A Roman Ruins Daytrip...

It was just an hour by train to Trier, Germany which had several interesting Roman ruins to see. While we'd seen Roman baths and amphitheatres in Italy, this was our first chance to explore the tunnels below. Also thought it was interesting that there were vomitoriums at the amphitheatre. I thought it meant that there were troughs placed around because people would get sick watching the slaves being fed to lions, but actually it was the type of exits built as passages under the seats since people "spewed out" after the carnage was over.

Reflections on our 1st Year - Part 2

(Apparently Blogger isn't fond of my long lists of highs and lows, so I've split them up)

Highs:

* Travel
*Chateau with friends at Easter
* Fulfilling Veronica's dream to see the Colosseum, eating the best ice cream in the world
* Pompeii
* Vasa Museum in Sweden with Ariana & Max
* Caves in Luxembourg
* Indoor skiing in Maastricht
* Getting lost on the beach in Valencia, Spain
* Buckingham Palace, London Eye, Marks & Spencer picnics in London
* Mudrucking along the Thames in London and the beach in Ischia, Italy
* Making new friends, especially Hannah, Ma'ayan, David and Andrew
* School including learning, going on field trips and science investigations
* Getting cute British accents
* Living on the river--canoeing into Leiden, diving off the dock, watching the boats go by
* Lowering our carbon footprint--1 year without a car!
* Morning chaos getting on trains and trams
* New foods--yogurt drinks, pannekoeken, poffertjes, uitsmijters, oliebollen (oil balls), Old Amsterdam cheese, Sultana crackers, loempia
* Fantastic museums
* 6 weeks of PAID vacation
* Grandpa & Grandma's visit was solid quality time--we were sad when they left (although Ashlynn didn't miss Grandpa's "blah, blah, blah" radio programs on the computer)
* Leiden market
* Ice skating on outdoor rinks
* Riding bikes
* Starting the Dutch Treat Family Hash
* Non-dubbed US TV & uncut movies with few commercials
* Living outside the US bubble (other than TV & consumerism afforded by having an APO box)
* Windmills
* Flowers--biking through the tulip fields
* 7th Heaven Festival and silent headphone dancing
* Throwing messages in a bottle off the ferry to England
* Brielle and Leiden Liberation Festivals
* Queen's Birthday and Prinsjesdag
* Grandpa reading to Ashlynn's class
* Adjusting to our new lifesytle
* Starting a blog

Reflections on our 1st Year in Holland...

It's hard to believe, but today marks our 1-year anniversary since our big move to Holland. I'm sure it sounds corny, but we decided to recreate our first night with drinks at the Boulevard Hotel (where we lived for 5 weeks last year) and then dinner at the Italian restaurant in Scheveningen where we ate on our first night. We put the pressure on the girls by asking them to think of the highs and lows of our past year (rather than the highs and lows of the day like we usually do at dinner). The list is long, but here goes:

Lows:

* Missing our friends--call us! visit us! write us!
* Missing Adams Elementary
* Missing our house, especially our new screened in porch and firepit
* Missing the creek behind our house
* Missing the crickets and frogs singing in our yard
* Stinky scooters passing by while biking
* Our horrible washer/dryer combo (after almost 5 months of no dryer, we finally got a new horrible combo unit)
* Can't have a pet in our rental house
* Rain, wet, damp, windy rain

Experiencing Technical Difficulties...

Sorry to all who have checked my blog in the past week and have found nothing new. For some bizarre reason, I've been unable to post anything from my home computers. Definitely suspect it has to do with my carrier after trying multiple machines with different browsers, but the language barrier makes it hard to figure out what to do.

I'm at a friend's right now, but forgot to send myself the photos I wanted to upload, so you'll have to make due with this apology. Thanks for your patience! Hope to be up and running soon.