The North Sea and the city of Delft.

This the only sunset I ever had a chance to take pictures of. It was so awesome!!

These are in the Netherlands on a beach of the North Sea. Most of the pictures I took from myar because it was so cold and the wind was just brutal!! North Sea, what do you expect I guess...

Delft, the Netherlands



This is a chuch in the city of Delft in the Netherlands.
We paid a couple euro and got to climb to the top of the tower via the mostly original spiral staircase. It was an amazing view from the top!!

We ate lunch down here... in fact I was standing down there taking the picture to the left.

In side the very narrow spiral staircase.

Mark at the top... I'll add some more pictures to this soon.

Later.

Venice, Italy

Actually it seems my head has been wrapped around Venice, Italy lately so I'll start there for now. I'll try to add more pictures as I come across them.



Lets see, we were in Venice for 3 nites I believe. Between the two of us we had mixed reviews of the city. It didn't start out great, we got off our train on the land 'side' (for lack of a better word) of Venice (yes, there are two 'sides', you don't here about the land 'side' of Venice for a reason, yuck!). So after some confusion we hoped another 30 minute train to the Canal 'side' of Venice. Much better. Sadly due to carrying our luggage I don't have any first pictures of anywhere we went and that is a shame because arriving in Venice you step out of the train station and on too a huge platform looking on to canals! It is pretty striking!
So I say we have mixed reviews of Venice and that is because Mark didn't really like the place at all and I agree with him on a lot of his reasons but I can look past a lot of the bad and say that it was just bad luck and bad circumstances. I would like to go back and give it another chance...

By the time we got to Italy we had made two stops in Germany and one in Switzerland, the weather had begun to warm and we knew we needed to unload some clothing and such plus we needed to do laundry, we were getting ripe... So there was a lot of buisiness to do at our 1st stop in Italy.



This is one side of the famous Rialto Bridge. Its amazing how hard it was to photograph - it is just so massive!! If you'd like to know more about it you can check out this link


We arrived and it was drizzly and dreary most of our stay. We got off our water taxi at the Rialto bridge and lugged our very heavy luggage over the bridge (which is all stairs and tourists)only to discover that we were suppose to be on the other side of the bridge (the side we exited the taxi on). We find our B&B (two blocks off of Rialto) and climb a typically narrow stairway to the lobby and then discover we are in the top (attic) suite; more narrow stairways carrying our luggage. I think Mark slammed his head on a low beam going up if I'm not mistaken. The room was small but nice enough, until you open the bathroom door. The sewage smell was sooo strong you could barely stand to do your own quick business. The door had to remain shut at all times which made the smell worse but to open the door and air it out would stink the whole room! We had yet a few more stairs to access our own personal patio that overlooked Venice roof tops.



It was nice but the mosquitos were terrible! We had no a/c to speak of and it was hot and stuffy and smelly in this room!

Anyways, we discovered rather quickly that the service and personel everywhere (accept at our B&B) was terrrible!! Merchants of Venice aparently do not care about repeat business because they know that if its not you someone else will be there to pay them... its really sad. This is the 1st place that you really felt the tourist trap, everything is priced up because it's Venice. I'm sure if you got away from the main canal it would be better but doing our trip as fast as we did I planned to be in the heart of everywhere we stayed.

When we finally settled down to do laundry we found out how windy and claustophobic the allies of Venice can be. There is no kind of standard grid for the allies or anyway to even look out above to find a land mark to get your bearings. This is what Mark had the biggest problem with. We took off to the laudry mat which appeared to be about a 10 minute walk from our BB and it should have been but the buildings are all so tall and the allies so narrow and nothing is really labeled well... We got there and got back but it was a challange. (The post office was done the next day and had it's own unique challanges).


St. Marks Square was nice, just like the movies minus some construction to one of the buildings. There were pigeons everywhere and plenty of vendors to hand out some sugar juice you could hold which would cause the winged rats to climb all over you and your loved ones - GROSS!! We saw a couple get engaged in the middle of the square! That was Great!! He dropped to one knee and handed her a ring and she started crying and hugging him saying yes, yes - it too was just like the movies - it was sweet.

Lets see, we had 2 small cups of coffee there at the square for the kick ass price of about $30. EXTORTION!! It was crazy, you are paying just for the experience to sit down in the square.

We didn't do the gondola rides, we'd heard from everyone that they were too overpriced as well and besides, all the gondoliers went on strike Friday while we were there... ptttthhhhh!

The last day the sun began to peak out from behind the clouds and it's light, I think, really didn't brighten up the city. I could ramble here for days just about Venice. It is an old, sinking city with vultures for shop keepers but it has its charm and I think if the stars would have lined up differently for us we would have enjoyed it better. I guess some where has to be the least favorite place... Next time it will be better, I'm sure of it!! :)







Me at one of the canal/ally crossings.


















I have to stop for now... I'll try to get back on and add some more pictures very soon...

Haven't been here in a while

...well I guess nothing has changed here... the page does not infact automatically update itself through my telepathic comands... hmm I guess I'll have to do the old fashion way.

Its officially been 5 months that we have now been home and I have been lazy/too busy to post photos. I honestly haven't even gone thru them all myself in any great detail. I'm still fighting regular life, not wanting to commit to the fact I'm 'home' and not picking up and going anywhere for quite a while. I guess that's okay in the long run, I have enough happy memories and warm fuzzies to hold me over for a time.

We have both been working an insane amount of hours and are currently on opposite schedules; he's on nights while I'm locked in my own cage during the day. That too is for the best, xmas is coming and we still haven't fully paid for our European adventure.

I guess what I will try to do is get them posted and not worry much about the order.

So, without further ado lets see what I pull out of my hat...

TEST pics

Us on top of the leaning tower of Pisa in Italy!!













In front of the tower

Regular Life

Well we went back to work this week. My job was nice enough to work me in slowly but I miss the fresh air and the natural light from the past 2 months. Mark got slammed from the minute he walked in the door at his job. I was proud of him though - he didn't let it affect him at home and we had a nice, productive evening.
Its a tough transition to come back. I think it will take abit to work into it. We've brought back alot (psychologically) that we are going to try to apply to our daily lives...
So, as soon as I balance the check book from the trip I will start posting pictures. We probably have close to 5000. :0 I won't flood you with all of them, just the highlights.

Jen

We're home!

2 months in Europe, 6 countries, 6 languages (I think), over 10 major cities, in even more hotels, over 42 hours on a train and approx. 20 hours on a plane... And we made it back safely, in on piece! We had no major medical issues, we never got mugged or robbed, we didn't loose anything (that we know of), never got in trouble with the law - and with driving and road structure what they were that is amazing, we never got lost or missed a traveling connection and we came back more in love and closer than the day we left. We are going to call this trip a complete success! Some day I'll add up the miles - I'm sure it will be wild.

We had a GREAT time but we are so happy to be home!!

We arrived yesterday around 4pm. We left Paris in jackets and arrived in Houston wishing we were naked. hahaha - it wasn't that bad but it was hot and thick. Mark's parents picked us up, supplied us with our 1st American Starbucks and drove us across town, fed us some much longed for Chick-fil-a and dropped us off with our kids. (Thank you so much)
The furballs were all smiles and paws!! We woke them up so Devlin was a little slower to realize what was going on - he thought it was a dream. I think he is still having a hard time believing we're real - he hasn't spent much time away from my side all morning. My parents left us a welcome home package full of food basics to get us through the first few days. You know just the basics; some bread, lunchmeat, milk, oj, bacon, eggs, Captain Crunch and ice cream--yummy! Thanks - it was great to come home and not have to leave for food!

We had such a great time we saw sooo much- there is so much to catch up on, pictures and stories but I'm sure you all will appreciate my need to just be home and relax. I'll start trying to get pictures up in a few weeks! It is nice to have the internet back at my disposal though!!

Talk to you soon

we are in italy

We have made it safely to Italy. We arrived in Venice yesterday after a small trainstation mix up. We will be leaving here tomorrow and headed to Pisa. We are hoping for a better food and people experience there and in Rome. I am glad we came here but will be happy to move on. Just stopped by an internet cafe here in town to check our mail and grab a couple of addresses to send out postcards (that we picked up in Amsterdam -- sorry -- we tend to procrastinate). We will probably make it home before the cards- hahaha. All right, we are off; we still have to pack and figure out the postoffice thing over here. Talk to you soon, later in Italy!!!

p.s. We saw our 1st European Rat!! SWEET! (it was across a canal so there was no risk involved)

Love,

Mark and Jenni

Europe ~ by the seat of our pants!!

Below is a quick list of where we will be and when. I'm not sure what rooms have internet access so I don't know where I will be able to get on and at least say hi but please keep checking! We'll communicate when we can.

Mark & Jen


April 21 & 22 (fri & sat) = Berlin, Germany
April 23, 24 & 25 (sun, mon & tue) Heidelberg, Germany
April 26 (wed) = Zurich, Switzerland
April 27 & 28 (thu & fri)= Vencie, Italy
April 29 & 30 (sat & sun)= Pisa, Italy
May 1, 2, 3 & 4 (mon, tue, wed & thu) = Rome, Italy
May 5 (fri)- travel day to Paris
May 6, 7 & 8 (sat, sun & mon) = Paris, France
May 9 we fly home.

So feel free to suggest things to see - we have very little planned - we are just going to tour by the seat of our pants, impromptu style!!

p.s. We have started our day here in Berlin and Mark does indeed feel better today! We have eaten and are headed for the zoo with temperatures in the upper 50s (scattered showers). Talk to you soon!!

We're off!!

We have officially left for "vacation"! It snuck up on us but Mark finally was released from work on Thursday afternoon after a wonderful send off by the plant out here. I went to work with him that morning and one of the head guys at the site took us out to Delft to see the Delft Blue Factory (http://www.royaldelft.com/). "Royal Delft is the last remaining Delftware factory from the 17th century still producing entirely handmade Delftware." So we had a quick tour of the factory there and they were generous enough to buy us a piece to show their thanks for Mark's hard work. It is being shipped to our house as we speak.
They were all so nice and accommodating to anything we could possibly need. One of the guys even gave us a small suitcase to use for our trip thru Europe because he heard we were going to buy one. Amazingly friendly people. I'm excited to be on the road but very sad that we had to leave Holland. There was still so much in that little country we didn't get a chance to see... Oh well, I guess we'll just have to go back!! :)

So, as I was saying, we are officially on our vacation. We left this morning at the Godawfull hour of 4:30am to go to Amsterdam and turn in our rental car and catch our train out of the country. We of course (true to us) got about 3 hours of crappy sleep before we set out. After his send off at work we went to Madurodam (http://www.madurodam.nl/default.php?language=1&sqlmode=1&fid=479) in Den Haag; its the amazing miniature replica of Hollands top sites and it has a really cool ice sculpture section too.... AAAAGGGGHHHHH.... man I can't stay focused. (<-- that was all very cool but ate up our afternoon and then spent 1.5 hours going home -usually takes about 30-40 minutes) We met our Englishman, Danny, for dinner and a few beers to say good-bye at our local restaruant and bar there in Citta Romana. Of course one beer rolls into three and before you know it its 9:30pm and we have to get home an pack!!

Thankfully Danny is staying a week longer than us and is doing us a huge favor of mailing off some of our belongings that we just didn't have room for in the downsizing of our luggage.
*~*~*~Man, I have so much to say that I haven't even touched on and just not enough focus or time to get into all of it - its going to take me a year to finish by vacation blog for this trip*~*~*~
He's a saint, that one, we kept adding the famous, 'Oh, and one more thing... Oh, and if you don't mind, could you...oh yah we forgot, whatever...' and he just kept nodding and assuring us he would take care of it. Hell of a nice guy!

So after we got finished packing it was damn-near midnight and we laid down for our 3am wakeup call - UUUUGGGGG! We got up about 3:25am, grabbed all of our shit and were out the door. Surprisingly once we got the tickets validated we did pretty good with the whole train thing. A very nice stranger found us looking lost at Central Station and stopped to offer some assistance and guidence to get us off and then we sat accross from another very nice gentleman that we spoke to at the end of our 1st train who offered up some nice vacation points and some basics on train travel throughout Europe. Incredibelly nice folk out here!!

We arrived in Berlin this afternoon about 3pm. Our only actual plan for this city was their zoo. Zoo Berlin (http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.zoo-berlin.de/&prev=/search%3Fq%3D%2Bsite:www.zoo-berlin.de%2Bberlin%2Bzoo%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26client%3Dsafari%26rls%3Den%26sa%3DX) is noted as one of the biggest and best zoo's in the world!! And us being the freaks that we are, if we only have 1.5 days in the city what do we want to see??? Yeah... I hope that doesn't make us shallow. We are truely interested in the crumbling of the wall and all of the history associated with Berlin (and there is tons of it) but... they have Pandas!? I can experience the zoo in one day - I can't truely experience the WHOLE city in a single day - so, you make choices!
Unforturnately Mark and I have come down with a small cold and I have been battling some kind of stomach 'upset' off and on for a couple weeks. I don't know if I keep eating something icky or I'm just picking up stomach viruses but it definately sucks and Mark definately caught it this morning as we were leaving! :( He woke up feeling crappy and it has progressed all day. So, although we have been able to push off a cold with out modern medicines such as Nyqui & Dayquil (they have never heard of it) I have found that the only remedy for this stomach crap is lots of water, pepto, advil and sleep. So as I type to you on our 1st night in Germany, my love sleeps 10 feet from me trying to fight off somekind of Holland Bug. Keep your fingers crossed that he wakes up bright eyed and bushy tailed!!

Yeah, so, although we finally hopped the boarder via train I don't have much to report. The countryside is definately more rolling - Holland is pretty flat - but the houses and farms we saw on our way were pretty simular. I snapped some pics but I'm not sure if I'll be able to paste them in this post or not. We were both surprised - although Holland had begun to warm up to around the 50s the last couple days when we got off the train here it was almost hot! Too warm for our jackets (although some still are wearing them - habit I think) I never caught an actual temperature but wow! I shouldn't have sent my capri's and sandles home with Jason and Ashley! Maybe southern Germany will be cooler! We don't have room in our luggage to buy new clothes! Traveling this time of year (at least for us) seems to be a great big Catch22. The city obviously isn't as noticibly old as the other places we have visited but it was all but completely leveled at one time or another in its history, so its easy to forget, as we walked from the train station to our hotel, that we are indeed in another country.

Before Mark laid down he asked me to tell everyong hello for him. So, 'Hello"! Well, I too, am exhausted - It has been along day. I'm going to go curl up with my husband and will him better by morning. Due to computer difficulties I'm not going to try to post pictures now - it would cause too much frustration. I'll try to get some attached tomorrow evening if we don't go do anything.

I'll talk to you all soon, wish us luck!

Love,
Jennifer

p.s. just so you know, I rarely reread these before I post them (I didn't read this one), you are lucky if I remember to spell check the thing, so don't judge to much on the flow of the document, take it as a glimps into the workings of my mind, no matter how frightning that may be!! Good night!

We're going to Amsterdam!!

Central Station


SATURDAY
Today we are off to Amsterdam!!! After a few hurdles...
Its is rainy and dreary and cold!! Just really yucky! No worries though, most days start like this and clear up by noon - so we get a little wet... That isn't going to stop our trip!
Next, food...
We have found (via a whole nother storey) that inorder to eat breakfast at the club house you must 1st make a reservation. We have a very nice restaurant and bar up here that we tend to frequent, the night staff know us and are very friendly... do you feel where this is going?
We made reservations after dinner last night. We decided to eat here because of the convience for an early start and because they have a pretty decient breakfast menu (namely pancakes! :) ) We wanted pancakes, it has been almost 4 weeks!!
We get there for grub and find an almost empty restaurant and a table for 4 nicely arranged... with food... we haven't ordered yet. : There is a basket of bread rolls (hard as rocks), a plate of sliced meats (possible proscuto) and cheeses, a basket of jellies, peanut butter and butter, some watered down OJ, a thermos of plain coffee...
~*~*let me stop here for a second~*~*
We have been here almost 4 weeks and out side of what I make at home have not been able to find a plain cup of coffee anywhere in this country. Not to complain but occassionally a girl just wants some 'joe'; no froth, no need for sugar and damn-it, a normal size cup. This 'joe' which has been so elusive that I have finally put it out of my head is now in front of me with all this other crap, that I did not order, and all I want is come pancakes and cappachino.
...so, I see a waitress, one, and decide I'll go find out what is going on and see if we can order something to eat since we did not order the stuff on the table. 95% of the population here speaks almost perfect English and everyone else speaks enough to conversate with, this lady clearly spoke the language I needed but we were having some communication problems still (I will even take the blame and say it was my fault, I tend to talk very fast). As our brief conversation unraveled my 'point' kept getting smaller and detailed. I went from wanting to understand how this breakfast/reservation/menu thing worked to just wanting to order off the menu to just wanting cappachinos for the table... finally a cord with her was struck with the cappachinos and I recieved a rather loud, very forceful "Nae, it is not possible" and she was gone. Wide-eyed, I hung my head and returned to my friends with no better breakfast and worse, no fancy, european cappachino. Hmmmph! Mark later, after we resigned to our less than desireable meal tried to go smooth over the problem and figure out how to do this next time and came back with no better resolution but brought a bill for 40-some-odd Euros!! We finished 'joe', licked our wounds, touched every roll on the table so they could not be reused since we paid for them and with our tails limp walked to the car in the most rain we have seen since we arrived to make the treck to Amsterdam. We got a little more chipper! No problem! We'll eat in Amsterdam!!
We piled in the car and were off. The drive is about 1.5 hours so basicly accross Houston, no problem, we'll be there in no time! The rain slowed us down some but what really took it's toll is when we were almost to the parking garage where we were going to catch the train and my husband said, 'just take the next exit..'. Somewhere my brain vetod his comment and I went straight. I told him that didn't look like what we did last time. That was all until we passed under the overpass and I saw the stadium to our left! OOPS!! sorry love! I figure no biggy, I apologized to all, we'll just take the next exit and u-turn. As most of you can guess, it never works like that when you are in unfamiluar territory. We ended up taking a 35 minute detour, not senic, just a detour.
We did finally get there, we were able to park and finally get on a city train to Amsterdam Canal district. As typical, our timing couldn't have been better. The weather cleared up within 30 minutes or so of our arrival and we had about an hour to go before we could check into our apartment for the evening.
I had tried to book us a hotel but was too late to find anything decient for a reasonable price and had reserted to B&B (which I were cheaper anyways) and the first one that had something I jumped on! We didn't get the B&B treatement because we didn't stay in their home but rather in an apartment around the corner that they also rented out. This ended up being the best idea because you get to see what at least one or two of these little houses look like on the inside! I didn't get a good picture of the outside (I carry the camera all the time but tend to get caught in the moment and forget to use it) but grabbed a few inside. I would definately recommend these guys. They were very friendly and helpful and the place was well kept. Barangay has 8 thumbs up!!
Here a few pictures of our trip - there will be more on our photo site by the end of today - I'm posting something like 330!!! I need to figure out how to get paid doing this - its a full time job!



our living room

stairs leading to the bedroom. The ones leading up from the street were just as steep!
nice room


the bathroom is typically small with an odd, full length window view of the person bathing
this is how you get to the loft bed (Mark & I slept up here)

it was kind of like sleeping in a tent


this is the view of the loft if you are lying on the blue bed.

Okay, this is getting long! For the rest of the pictures you will have to hit the picture link. I'll work on getting them up and will label them all later.

We had a good time. We just roamed around. We took a night time tour of the Red Light District which I would definately recommend. It was very informative and it makes sure you see the whole district. We went down some allies I know we would never have dared on our own. I wish we would have taken a 2nd one to see what other info. we would have gotten. The next morning we also went to the Anne Frank House and took a canal tour. The Anne Frank House was very well done and organized and a real experience worth the 7.50Euro each I think it cost us. The canal tour was okay but you couldn't really hear or understand all the points of interest and it was hard to see unless you could hang out a window taking pictures, which I did. I guess I would do it again though because it lets you see areas you probably wouldn't cover on foot.
We left the city around 6:30pm on Sunday and were exhausted - I don't know how I got us home, it was a looooonnnng 1.5 hours back.

Anne Frank House

Hello - I'm back

Again I appologize for the delay. As I said, we had some friends in town and then I have been trying to prep pictures for posting and then you would not believe the hoops I had to jump through today with this computer to get to be able to post anything!!! I think I am going to be able to attach pictures with this post but it will still be time consuming.

Well lets get you updated. One of our best friends, Jason and his wife Ashley, came for a short visit this past weekend. They arrived on Friday after some plane headaches that occured before they even left their home town in Oklahoma. They were suppose to arrive here at 8:20am but instead landed at 11:00am. Not too much time lost. We got a cappachino and hit the road. Schiphol Airport (pronounced: skip-ole) is a cool air port, they have quite a bit of shopping, food, a grocery store and train depot as well as a museum all within its walls. If you're interested you can check out their web site here.

We took off to Brielle for some authentic 16th & 17th century Europe sites and a little shopping.






1620!! I've becomed almost obsessed with finding dates on buildings. This is one of the oldest I've found.

I think we met Mark for dinner at the club house and had a few beers and called it a night. The next day was our journey to Amsterdam!! We needed our rest.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

sorry its been so long

Wow, its been awhile, sorry. I had to get our train arrangements taken care of and reserve all of our hotels for our actual vacation. It was extremely time consuming and frustrating but I am happy to announce that we are officially 'booked'!!! Yeeeeaaaahhhhh!!! :) I really just need to stay focused thru that. Look how long it still took me, almost a week!! And it ended up being more expensive than we (he) thought it would be. I told him not to let me do it alone... I have expensive taste... :)

Just so you know I have pictures of Rotterdam that still need posted as well as some from Hellevoetsluis and some from a sunset at the beach I took the other night. It is just going to take awhile to get them up; now that I have our reservations taken care of, I'm fix'n to walk out the door to go pick up Jason and Ashley from the Amsterdam Airport!!!!!!!!!!!! They got screwed on their flight! They were suppose to be landing at 8:30am but their plane from Oklahoma to Atlanta had problems so they had to rework their entire itinerary and are now landing at 11:00am. Not too much lost time just a pain in the ass for them. But, they are coming to Europe so that should erase some of the pain for them, hopefully!

Lets see, what else... Mark has been working late every night this week, pulling 11 & 12 hour days, not exactly the 8 -10 we were told but still bearable. He's actually worried about getting off tomorrow... keep your fingers crossed for us!!!

Well, I'm sure there is a ton more but I have to get out the door, it's about 1.5 hour drive and the weather is kind of shitty this morning.

Talk to you soon, don't give up on me!!

Jennifer :)

fyi

My mother-in-law sent me this and I thought it was pretty cool!!



On Wednesday of this week,
at two minutes and three seconds after 1:00
in the morning,
the time and date will be
01:02:03 04/05/06.

That won't ever happen again.

We had a GREAT weekend

*~* I still can't post photos within my post so you'll have to check out my picture page for photos. *~*

Mark had to work on Saturday until about 1pm. That totally sucked! We had planned on going over to Brielle because they have a festival/party every April 1st to celebrate their 1st victory over the Spanish in 1572 (I think). The original town is adorable! The town has since expanded to accomodate modern times but the original was a walled city surrounded by a moat! It all still stands. It has a big church, houses store fronts and a few small canals! Great town! We got there late and the celebration was wrapping up and really getting into more of a party so we missed alot of it but it will still be a neat town to visit and shop in later.

We also went to Rotterdam on Sunday. We were told they had a great shopping square so we hopped in the car with our map and took off. It took a little roaming around, in the rather large city, before we found it but it really is a GREAT shopping experience. It is probably 4 city blocks big and has everything from an outdoor flea market to big department stores and inclosed malls!! The weather for the day started out raining and dreary but cleared up rather nicely! That is a pretty cool city and I can't wait to get back their as well. The clock is offically starting to tick so we had better get a move on!

Lets see, We also spent a little time in Hellevoetsluis. I have pictures of all of this but my computer is still acting up and it won't always let me on the internet. :( As it does I'm posting pictures and typing blog posts but I'm getting down to the wire and have to get our actual vacation planned and rooms reserved. Plus Jason and Ashley fly in Thursday!!!!! So I will be pretty busy in the days to come! But bear with me and check back often! I'll get things posted as fast as I can!!

Gotta go make some reservations!

Talk to you soon,
Jen

Friday 3/31/06

I am so bummed over this computer thing! It won't let me post pictures! In case you haven't noticed I really like to post pictures. I think I have just wore it out... I don't know, Mark said he would look at it when he comes home tonite.

So far he hasn't had to work very late but he keeps warning me its coming. That bums me out! I knew I would have some time alone over here and it's kind of cool but I just really like him around! Oh well, our time will come in a few weeks. Its better now (when he does start working late) because we had the whole 'spring forward' thing last weekend so it's light until around 8 - 8:30pm. This house creaks alot and I think dark would freak me out a bit. You know the front door doesn't have a peep hole!!! How do you know who you're opening the door too??? Trusting Dutch...

I wish I could record sound and post it. I don't know if anyone has been paying attention to the weather sticker on the top of the blog but the wind around here has been horrendous for the past week. It's blowing at 25mph now. And that's not 100% accurate because I'm closer to the coast than Rotterdam. But anyways, the wind blows and hits this house and it sounds like the roof is going to come off sometimes!! It took me about 2 days to get use to it, it wakes me up out of a dead sleep sometimes! Wild!

Well the weather (besides the wind) has finally turned pretty again. It's been rainy and overcast for about 3 days and today the sun is finally out with hardly a cloud in the sky!! The plants are finally starting to bud, can't wait until they are in full bloom, about a week they say. Should be nice!

I have really got to quit fighting this blog and start organizing our weekend and start planning our vacation! I still have to figure out for sure where we are going and reserve seats on the train and find some hotels. I think we have talked ourselves out of Prague. We here its gorgeous and pretty cheap but that was a last minute add and there are other places we really want to spend some time in. Plus right now it's fix'n to flood due to all the rain they are getting and the snow melt. Tomorrow we are going to Brielle to watch there annual April 1st reenactment of them kicking the German or Spanish out of their port. If you are interested in checking it out you can pull up this page: http://www.brielle.nl/index.php?mediumid=3
The English version isn't as informative but I didn't figure any of ya'll spoke Dutch! :)
Can't wait to post more pictures! Have a good day!

Jennifer

Computer difficulties

sorry I haven't posted anything much lately. I am having some computer difficulties which are hendering my ability to post efficiently. I will work on the problem and get back to you soon. Thanks for haning in there!!

Jen

i give up

This is the third time I have tried to do this and every time I attempt to add pictures I loose my text... It was very cute and witty, now it is reduced to just a post - I don't have it in me to be witty again right now... aaaaaggghhh!

Last Thursday we were invited to a Squash Match between our neighboring Enlishman and a Dutchman they work with. It is a pretty physical and competitive sport. We enjoyed watching it. There was a bar in the sports complex and we enjoyed some fine brews! Here are a few shots of the game:


hmmm... okay I have attempted to add pictures about 5 times!! I don't know what the problem is, I can't seem to post just a few shots. :( this is becoming very frustrating! This whole post is going to hell - that must be what took me so long to write it. Well it was a very enjoyable night and I look forward to seeing another match in the future. If you are interested the pictures are located on my photo site. I'll work on a different post. Have a good day!

We went to Amsterdam!! (3/25/06)

We went to Amsterdam today!

I drove!

Well I drove us to the Amsterdam stadium where we parked and took the train into town. That was weird! It traveled above ground and then also below. The station at the stadium is underconstruction so it was pretty confusing (+ everything is in freak'n Dutch) but we managed after asking one of the lovely citizens of Amsterdam. Thank god they all seem to speak at least a little english. Actually central station was also underconstruction, at least on the outside, I think the inside is just a dingy, dirty subway/train stop. I wasn't impressed with the city train. But I didn't expect to be either, I guess that's fair.


The architecture was amazing from the second you step out of the train station! Unbelievable!! Its amazing people live and work in a place like that! We only spent I think 6 hours or so in the city just wondering around. We just wanted to have an idea of what to expect before we go with Jason and Ashley. It's weird because it is the prettiest/dirtiest city ever.




We walked down the main street and stopped and got a bite to eat and snapped pictures. The road opened up to this 'square' that had a beautiful monument of some kind. Couldn't read a lick of it, but it was very striking. There were people and bikes and cars and trollies everywhere. Its amazing we didn't get run over. You would be walking down this LITTLE cobble stone path along a canal and all of the sudden a car would appear in front or behind you and you would swear he had lost his way!! Nope, we just happened to be walking in the road! Anyone who has ever thought the people that drive in Las Vegas were nuts... man, they don't hold a candle to the Amsterdam folk. You have trollies down the middle of the road, you can't tell where they are going or when they're coming. Then you have cars zooming everywhere, you can't tell which side of the road is which and then people on bikes driving around taking them all on! We saw a few near misses!!




Here I am being a tourist! Just trying to get back to my roots! Mark wouldn't sit in the shoe! I don't know why?



This is my love at on of the canal bridges. It really is a beautiful place. I can't wait to go back and spend a little more time there. We are going to see the Anne Franke House and hopefully a museum or two and the zoo of course! There is so much to see and do there it will be hard to pick what to do.



For more photos of todays trip check out this link:

Rotterdam Zoo 3/26/06

Today we went to the zoo!! But first I made breakfast! This is my plate but this is typically what we eat in the mornings! The eggs are from 'free range chickens' (supposedly) and they are yummy!! The toast is something we got from the clubhouse up here - I don't know what kind it is, some kind of multigrain - it too is very good!



Here is Mark relaxing in our living room waiting for me to quit screwing around. (I'm still running around in my pj's)



Us, at the zoo!!

If you want to see more pictures of our adventures you can view them here.

It's a pretty good Zoo! Expensive though, 15.50Euro each! But it was really clean and well laid out - I don't think we actually made it through the whole thing. We were pretty tired from Amsterdam on Saturday (that is my next post). They had Giraffes, Otters, penguins and quite a few Gorillas... it was a GOOD zoo!

Hi all

Hello everyone. I just wanted to let everyone know how my work is going. The plant is very nice and unbelievably clean. The Dutch definitely get high marks for their friendliness. I don't think I've met one person yet that hasn't been happy and helpful. The plant is starting the maintenance portion of the T/A on Monday so that's when the real work begins. It's not nearly as big as the ones I'm used to but there's also less people and MUCH less hours so we'll see how it goes. I'm really glad that everyone is participating in this blog, I was a little skeptical at first. Anyway, we've got to go. We're heading to Amsterdam this morning since it's right down the road and all....

Later,
MG

03/23/06

The days here have been unbelievably beautiful!!! The mornings and night are pretty cold, hoovering around freezing, but the days have been unspeakable! It must have been close to 50deg.F and hardly a cloud in the sky! Everyday has been has been better than the day before... The wind will blow and it is chilly but not uncomfortable. It was so pretty this is all I did all day -







You might laugh at me and think I'm a geek but whatever... who's sitting on their ass in Europe?!?! :)

this is the new link to my photos:web.mac.com/jakulin/iWeb/Photos/Welcome!.html The old link went bad.

3/22/06

Just some nice pictures

Mark off to work

These are from Wednesday (22nd). We had a pretty cold evening and when Mark went to leave for work he had frost on his car! I was camera happy this morning...

Our ducks (I haven't named them yet)


Me feeding our ducks. They are at our door every morning and numerous times throughout the afternoon.


Mark and his frosty car




It was a really beautiful morning!