I finally got back to running today after vacation and it sure was beautiful outside. I’m thankful to Patty for asking me to go running with her before our indoor tennis lesson.
Here are a couple pictures taken while running, so they are a bit off center. It was very windy off on the polder, but we saw lots of ducks, geese, sheep and birds.
I love running in open spaces. Life is good!
The sun peeked out again today and I wanted to do my happy dance! When I don’t see the sun for awhile and then it shows up again, it makes me extremely happy! I am a warm weather girl! When Jeff was looking to go to business school, I begged for Stanford and not Chicago or Harvard! I don’t do well with the cold and gloomy skies.
Today I showed up at a function with a lavender, North Face down vest (trying to add a bit of color to my gray and black outfit), and my long, black, down filled North Face coat(that I wear everyday!!) and my friends teased me saying it wasn’t THAT cold! They just don’t know me well enough yet and they’re from Minnesota, so they just don’t understand! 🙂
Here are some pictures of the beautiful sky that cheered me up today, as I’ve been homesick since Friday. I also bought some Vitamin D tablets today. I feel better now!
So beautiful, right? I would take pictures of the grey skies so you can see what most days look like here in the winter. No wonder people look so forward to the spring here! At least it’s starting to stay lighter, longer. Summer is coming!!
Ooh, doesn’t the title of my day just sound so romantic? Maybe for a middle life couple with kids!! I guess any time alone together could be considered a date, right? So today was one, long heck-of-a-date!
Jeff and I are taking a Dutch class together. We decided to walk to class today from our house. Half way there, we remembered we had bikes! Why didn’t we think of that? I felt so dumb! We are so not conditioned to using our bikes as a means of transportation. Jeff still thinks of riding a bike as something that children do around the neighborhood or something you use for exercise. It’s a good lesson though, how our minds think in ways that might limit how we actually see the world from our own narrow vantage point when there might be better options we haven’t even considered.
We are so not Dutch yet and must stay here longer until riding our bikes becomes a natural choice to get around this small town. I’m kind of embarrassed that it’s not already! Maybe when the weather gets warmer.
As we walked home, we stopped to buy some frites to share from the organic market that takes place on Tuesdays. They were so sweet and delicious and hot! We walked a bit further and close to our house is a cute little Japanese store with limited hours. It was open today so we peeked in and learned that they serve meals too.
We enjoyed a spontaneous sushi lunch with hot tea, and shared what we loved about Sunnyvale and Holland and what we missed and didn’t like too. I’m always assessing what’s best for the family and think about the choices we are making and have to make moving forward. I sometimes get confused with the details and wanted to bounce ideas off him. I’m sure Jeff thinks I think too much, but he humored me nevertheless.
It was a great conversation, and what I discovered is that we have to live in the moment and enjoy where we are and what we are doing no matter what. Sounds obvious but sometimes I really long for home, and get confused because I have two homes now. And the grass isn’t necessarily greener somewhere else, right Julie? So instead of longing for something else, I choose to refocus on the gifts of the present and to continue to be thankful.
I think that’s a good lesson for anyone.
“If you are depressed you are living in the past.
If you are anxious you are living in the future.
If you are at peace you are living in the present.” – Lao Tzu
My present moment at 1:30 pm was exhausted from 3 hours of Dutch drills and my “psychology” appointment at lunch! But I was content, and maybe delusional, to agree to go to Ikea this evening. I don’t like shopping and I don’t like Ikea, but Jeff needed a few things for his office and I figured we might as well extend our date after work.
I wanted to see if they were advertising their meatballs, but they weren’t of course! The news just reported that some of their meatballs contain horse meat. Yuck! For some reason, that disgusts me and made me curious. Notice what’s missing from their menu!
We spent way too long there, as always, but had a much more pleasant experience than usual and actually enjoyed some friendly customer service. We drove over to Jeff’s office to deliver the loot late at night, so we could park on the sidewalk without too much traffic! His office is looking great and the nighttime view of the Amsterdam canals made the present moment perfect.
How is your present moment? If you feel stress, practice what Charlie taught me: 7-11. Breathe in for 7 seconds and blow it out for 11 seconds. Cool, right? Namaste.
It’s vacation time and it’s freezing cold outside! My kids would happily choose to look at an electronic screen all day, if I let them. But the mean mommy thinks kids should be doing other things besides focusing their eye balls all day on flashing lights and images. Back in California, I’d just say go outside and play and get some fresh air. But here it’s really cold, and even I don’t want to be out there, nor do I really want them playing by the partially frozen canal. Yes, I know they can put on layers and gloves and scarves, and hats and that there’s no bad weather, just bad dressers… But I guess we’re just lazy dressers and really not used to this level of cold.
Yesterday I told them that they were going to “have” to read before getting on their computers and video games. You would have thought I asked them to do 8 hours of chores. Our family has a motto, work then play. But all they wanted to do was play! Eventually they came around, but man, it was a challenging parent day!
Today, we actually enjoyed family reading time together, and the pain was gone! They got to have their screens back because they did the work first. I was content. But then I said it was time to do something else after an hour+ of e-play time, and they should do something together like play a board game. They said I was old fashioned, and that maybe I played games as a kid but they didn’t think that was a fun idea at all! Really? Am I that (old) fashioned? Probably so. I didn’t insist that they play a game, but I did insist they choose something other than electronic devices.
Th good news is they did find some great ideas. They went outside and juggled a soccer ball for awhile together. As it was really cold out, this didn’t last long. So they came in and asked if they could make guacamole. I said yes, as long as they cleaned up after themselves. it was cool to listen to them work together and to observe the process, without interfering which was challenging for me!
After they were done, and some friends came over, guess what they wanted to do again? Yep – you guessed it! Back to the computers to play Minecraft together. At least they were practicing sharing and had done research learning how to build different structures. I don’t get it, but maybe I’m just old fashioned! Where’s my Atari?
And the girls? They were upstairs being creative with technology too – downloading the Harlem Shake song, making up their own dance and recording themselves with an iPod Touch! I guess i do love it, but I sure do miss my tape recorder and stereo!
What do you think about kids and technology? Is it a good thing? Do you set limits? I’m still learning by doing and don’t quite have it figured out yet. If it was warm outside, I’d say go outside and play!
Our friends left today. I didn’t sleep well last night, thinking about them leaving and not wanting to sleep through my early alarm to get them to the airport on time. There was no need to worry. I woke up before the bell went off, and we had plenty of time for last minute hugs and kisses.
It was sad to see them go after 14 days together. It was also ok for them to go back home. There was that swirl again of yin and yang. Happy and sad. Ok and not so ok. It’s how life works, and slowly I feel like I’m getting the hang of this part of it at least. I understand it and flowed with it, and transitioned more quickly than usual. Knowing we’ll see them again in 4 months helped a lot. It provided hope and anticipation that filled the gap of sadness and emptiness, looking forward. It also helped that we had dinner plans with our friends in Amsterdam tonight.
After doing several loads of laundry, relaxing and reading a bit, the kids and I ventured out to the Friday market for some true Dutch treats, before shopping for appetizer fixins’.
Frites with sate sauce and one order with fritesaus.
The other little one chose a hot, freshly made stroopwaafel.
It’s still freezing outside! I can’t wait for spring to arrive!!
The fun part of having guests in town is being a tourist again. It was fun to explore some familiar sites of Amsterdam again, even though we’ve already see them, but this time with a little more depth.
We went with April and Steve and the kids through Amsterdam today, walking down PC Hoofstraat, Museumplein, and Vondelpark. We were wandering around while we waited for our 1:00pm departure on the Blue boat canal ride. We had been on the cruise before and love it every time. It gives you a great view of the city.
We stopped for a warm up lunch at Wagamama!
Life is good! I hope you enjoyed seeing another bit of Amsterdam with me. What’s your favorite tourist place?
Finally the weather warmed up a bit to above freezing and walking around town was more enjoyable. I knew it was going to be cold in Holland, but it has been colder than I expected this week. The good news is my definition of cold has changed, and I think I’ve acquired a higher tolerance level to the cold weather!!
On our way up to the flower market area for dinner, we spontaneously decided to get off the tram so that we could start the evening with a quick viewing of the Night Watch at the Rijksmuseum. It was 5:30 pm and our reservation was for 6:30 pm. I checked the hours for the museum and we had 30 minutes before closing and no kids with us. We could do it! The security guard thought we were crazy, but I told him we only needed 10 minutes to see Rembrandt’s work with our museum passes. And we did just that…headed straight upstairs and through the gift shop to see the magical masterpiece from 371 years ago! It was great going there at the end of the day when there was no one else really there. It was like our own private party!
We still had five minutes to see my favorite exhibit, the simplest of all and one that makes me smile.
It’s this cool clock with a video projection of a man inside who controls the minute hands with a dry erase marker and eraser, literally changing the clock minute by minute. It makes you aware of time passing and I absolutely love it, because it looks like nothing but makes you think.
We were out of the museum and back on a tram exploring more of the city before dinner.
Coming into Amsterdam before dusk was beautiful. I loved watching the changing night sky and bright lights.
We were on our way to enjoy an Indonesian rijstaafel, or rice table in English. Indonesian food is my favorite type of cuisine. A rice table is an assortment of several different small dishes, that everyone at the table shares. We probably tried 15 different types of food, including chili eggs, shrimp and tofu, red curry green beans, rendang, gado gado, mango salad, satay skewers, cucumber salad and a couple chicken dishes.
The dinner was delicious and fun to share, although hard to tell from these dimly lit pictures.
Hope you have a great, light filled weekend!
Do you feel like you are part of a village? Do you look after your friends and neighbors and help one another and celebrate each other? I always say the expression, “It takes a village.” And today I felt like I belonged and was thankful for our diverse village.
At our international school, we celebrated Global Village Day. This is a day for celebrating the cultural diversity of our school. There was entertainment, a parade of nations, and “villages” set up by the parents of each community to help the younger children learn about some of the various traditions and foods and activities from each group.
The United States of America created a large village with multiple booths and was well-received. We had surfing from California, flower lei making from Hawaii, camping in the woods, baseball throwing, football throwing, popcorn, chocolate chip cookies, fair- like games, arm tattoos, flag making, butter making, etc.
Jen and I ran the California Surfing photo booth. We had a lot of fun with the kids, teaching them to hang 10, and to squat down low to catch a wave. They were smiling and laughing and gathering friends to take pics together. The day was a lot of work, but it sure was worth it to see their happy faces.
I took a break to check out the other villages and loved how much fun the adults and kids were having in Africa, Australia, South America, India, Japan, and France to just name a few.
One group that made me think was the Global Citizens group. What I’ve recently learned is that, some expat children don’t relate to one specific country. Teachers should not ask kids where they are from, because sometimes that can be stressful to them when they are not really from one home town. I can understand that.
Today I felt like a global citizen. I cheered for Holland and Italy and USA and all the countries with only one or two students representing their home towns. I chatted with the Caucasian mom next to me observing the parade, who cheered for Japan, saying that her baby was born there. She was from Germany and her husband was from France. She speaks German to her baby at home and her husband speaks French, and their friends speak English to the baby, who will be starting school at a local Dutch school in the next couple of years!
I missed home and our own International Night and potluck dinner, celebrating the 26 different languages spoken in our little Silicon Valley school. And I appreciated being where I was, in my new global village with my new friends, while my husband and April and Steve were in Germany for the day exploring Dusseldorf. Life is amazing…. exploring, learning and sharing, playing and laughing in our small world, together!
Namaste.
It’s still so cold out today. Luckily the sun was shining, which makes me smile.
While April and Steve were exploring the Anne Frank house, I wandered around nearby since I’ve enjoyed Anne’s house twice before. I enjoyed admiring all the entry ways to the canal houses and imagined who lived there and what life would be like living along the canals. Here are some pictures from the day.
Hope you are having a good day, exploring and learning and enjoying the moment. xo
Happy Chinese New Year! Over 1.3 billion people in China and millions of people around the world, including us, celebrated the first day of the Chinese New Year today. Gong Xi Fa Cai is a traditional Chinese New Year greeting that means “wishing you prosperity” in Mandarin. This is the year of the snake, and is meant for steady progress and attention to detail. Might be a challenge for me!
April and Steve arrived today with their girls and we wandered thru Amsterdam’s small Chinatown and then towards the Bijenkorf to catch the tale end of the dragon dance.
I can’t believe we’ve been living in Holland for 200 days already! I’m very happy to have our family friends with us for two weeks. They came with all kinds of goodies from home and with gifts and greetings from our friends and neighbors. Thank you Brenda for all the Valentine’s day candies. Thank you Val for the beautifully, handmade scarves and warm socks for the kids, and shirt for Christian. You all are so thoughtful! And thanks A&S for coming all this way to enjoy Europe with us! We’re so glad you’re here and are going to enjoy every (freezing cold) minute with you!
Happy Chinese New Year, friends!!
here i am 