An American Halloween in Holland...

I've really grown to love Halloween over the last few years and was bummed to find out that the Dutch don't really celebrate it. They celebrate Sint Maarten's Day on November 11th (when we were in Spain), which is similar with the singing of songs in exchange for treats, but without the cool costumes. We attempted to do a Halloween Hash, but didn't get enough interest. The girls were happy to be able to go trick or treating on November 4th in the American enclave of Wassenaar. Somehow it just didn't have the great atmosphere that I'm used to. We contributed money towards candy and got a list of houses that would be participating. It was extremely crowded because there was lots of kids but not many houses. Nothing like the great times we've had in Cary, but the kids still had fun. Luckily it doesn't take much to amuse them. It's probably hard to tell, but Veronica was Jasmine from Aladdin and Ashlynn was a cowgirl complete with her own horse.

50 Cents Goes a Long Way...

...It might only buy a small cup of nectar at Avifauna, a local bird park, but it's money well spent because of how many birds flock to you. While the park isn't nearly as spectacular as the monkey park, it was a fun way to spend the end of our half term break with our friends Sally, David and Andrew. The kids really loved the massive playground with the high corkscrew slides and the flying bird show, but feeding these parakeets was definitely the high point.

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