If It Ain't Broke...

Well, it is broke. Everything is broken this week.

Our TV is broken...well, the TV service that supplies our channels anyway. We get TMF (music videos) on RTL7, CNN with no sound, and Animal Planet. John called to get it fixed and after that call we are now paying a monthly fee for...nothing. It's been two weeks and we still don't have the new box.

Our shower curtain is broken. Well, not broken, but desperately in need of replacing. Erin bought a replacement shower curtain, took the old one down, opened the package containing the fresh new curtain, and discovered that she bought a curtain that is too small for our shower. Soooo, we need a shower curtain that fits.

The buzzer in our apartment that opens the door downstairs to let people in is broken. Good thing we only live on the second floor 'cause we have to take a trip downstairs to personally let people in now.

The light in our bathroom is broken. It has been a few days now since the bulbs burned out. We are now bathing by the dim light that filters in from the hallway. We need flourescent tube lights for the fixture, which you can't find just anywhere, so this is the reason we are still showering in the dark.

Erin's computer at work is broken. The internet locked up and, because the operating system is not Windows, Erin does not know how to resolve the problem. Even after restarting the computer, the system will not allow her to use the internet. In the process of trying to fix said problem, Erin somehow managed to completely delete everything on her Evolution e-mail system so that it needs to be restarted, but Erin does not know the password for the host server. She could look up her e-mail via the internet....but the internet doesn't work.

Erin's parents are coming to visit on Saturday for the holidays. Hope they don't mind waiting for us to climb downstairs to let them in the door, taking showers in the dark without a shower curtain, and watching CNN while reading lips to try to decipher what is being said. Or they could just skip the news and watch Animal Cops to their heart's content. Welcome to Amsterdam, Mom and Dad!

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year...

Christmas lights, Christmas trees, Christmas carols, Christmas cookies, the Christmas story...we would write more about why this is "the most wonderful time of the year," but this is also "the most busy time of the year." In fact, we have been so busy that we have neglected to tell you about our trips to Brugge, Belgium; Frankfurt, Germany; and the great state of Texas, U.S.A. All of these trips have taken place in the last 3 1/2 weeks.

No one in the U.S. has heard for Brugge, but it's a small town in Belgium that many call the "Venice of Northern Europe." While it is not quite Venice, it is an extremely charming medieval town. Seeing the popular horse-drawn carriages carting tourists around looks quite natural in Brugge. The cobblestone streets, quaint squares, lake, medieval buildings, and quiet beguinage (kind of like a nunnery) make this a fabulous town to visit. We highly recommend the hotel we stayed in: Hotel Ter Duinen. Practically everything served in the restaurant for breakfast was home-grown in the garden of one of the proprietors. We had the smallest kiwi's ever known to man and some really good pastries. We enjoyed a short, but satisfying weekend in Brugge.

The Frankfurt trip was over Thanksgiving. We went with the Coopers because John and Jacob had training to attend in Frankfurt the Friday after Thanksgiving day. So, we all drove to the Frankfurt Marriott on Thanksgiving Day and got there just in time to have some Thanksgiving dinner in the restaurant there. Unfortunately Annette, Jacob's wife, gave us all a scare when she passed out for a couple minutes immediately following our Thanksgiving dinner. Two doctors in the restaurant came to the resuce and the ambulance guys ran some tests, all with no conclusion. There has been no fainting since that time, but the doctors still don't seem to know what caused this. Needless to say, this was a very scary situation, especially since we had just arrived in a foreign country. (Foreign as in more foreign than the country we live in!) We are thankful we were staying at the Marriott - a really big, fancy hotel - because they took good care of us. Most of the rest of the weekend was spent visiting the Christmas markets and doing lots of Christmas shopping.

The trip to the U.S. was last week. Erin took her National Counseling Exam and passed! The rest of the week was absolutely crammed packed with seeing friends, visiting family, and running errands. We are still a bit jet-lagged, but getting over it quickly. The next couple weeks before Christmas will be busy for both of us. John is working very hard right now and will definitely be ready for another break from work by the time Christmas gets here. The holiday season is always pretty busy in the area of counseling, so Erin will also be working hard in the next couple weeks trying to squeeze everybody in for appointments. Erin's parents will come to see us for Christmas, and our next big trip will be going with them to London the week following Christmas. We can't promise we'll have time to write before, but we'll be sure to share the London adventures with everybody after we get back.

Even though this time of year is busy, we wish you all a joyful and blessed Christmas!

Water is Free Again

After paying $20 for water in Frankfurt last weekend, John is pleased to find that water is still free in the United States. He sat down to breakfast this morning at his Orlando hotel and within seconds a tall glass of cold water (with ice) was sitting in front of him. He drank it all, and the waiter came by to fill it up again without even being asked. It is nice to have a full breakfast in the U.S. for less than the price of two small bottles of water in Europe.

Jenny's Visit

If anyone has ever moved abroad they will be familiar with the fact that about 80% of those you know in the U.S. get excited about the possibility of having free room and board in an exotic (in our case, European) location. Numerous people promise they will definitely come visit. As it turns out, life happens and only a select few actually make the trip over the pond. We have enjoyed a few visits from friends and a couple visits from family members in the past 14 months of living in Amsterdam. Our friend, Jenny, from college got to come recently for a week. We had a great time!

We have to commend Jenny, not only on saving for this trip, but being the only visitor (for one reason or another) to experience Amsterdam by bike. As Jenny can attest, it is the best and most fun way to get around the city. Well, fun but for the one incident when she fell off the bike while surrounded by a mass of unpredictable, drunken pedestrians in the Red Light District on a street where major construction was taking place. (This is honestly our fault for even trying to lead her by bike down this particular street – don’t ask.)

The three of us went to Maastricht one day followed by an evening of museum hopping back in Amsterdam until 2 a.m. It happened to be Museum Night the first Saturday Jenny was in town, so we took advantage of the €14 tickets to see as many museums as possible. Of course, the special programs, food and drink, and music made it the coolest possible way to visit the museums. We didn’t get to the Van Gogh museum that night, so Jenny and Erin ended up making a trip to see it another day.

Erin gave Jenny a tour of regular, “everyday life” kind of stuff: Vondel Park by bike, street markets, the grocery store, the Ministry Center where Erin works. However, Erin also got to see a couple things she hadn’t seen before. Jenny and Erin visited the Heineken Experience (which, by the way, used to give out unlimited free drinks and now only gives out three, and also used to give away free souvenir glasses and now gives out a lame noise-maker). The Heineken Experience is highly entertaining and definitely geared toward English-speaking university students; they had a fun time! Erin also got to see a medieval castle not far from Amsterdam: Muiderslot. It is a great castle to visit – surrounded by a moat and everything!

Erin got the car from John one day so she and Jenny could drive to Germany since Jenny has always wanted to go to Germany. They just drove a few hours to Düsseldorf, but Jenny can now say she’s been to Germany. (And she has boots and a bag from Germany to prove it!) Besides the shopping, the other highlight of the trip was a stop at the Neanderthal Museum near Düsseldorf. That’s right. A Neanderthal skeleton was found in a cave near this very spot, so there is now a museum dedicated to the Neanderthal and the evolution of man. It was an interesting museum and Jenny got her Venus of Willendorf keychain (the replicas were too expensive), so the trip was a success! The lowlight of the trip was when Erin rear-ended a trailer hauling a boat on the way back home in Amsterdam. Thankfully the license plate reattached without a problem, the trailer wasn’t too damaged (expect for the plastic coverings on the tail light being broken out), and the boat was untouched. Oh, and Jenny was extremely happy that at least the guy driving the vehicle was “hot.” This did not in any way make Erin feel any better about the whole incident, but, Jenny, you’re welcome.

All in all, the visit was a perfect blend of resting, catching up, seeing the sights, and experiencing life in Amsterdam. Oh, we have to mention that this might have been the first time in our history of visitors where the weather was actually good! It only rained once, slightly, and it wasn’t too cold or windy. The sun was actually shining a lot of the time!

Rick Steves' Favorite Castle in Europe

We took a short, but packed, two-day trip to the Mosel Valley in Germany last weekend. Erin was the instigator of this trip after finding out that Rick Steves’ favorite castle in all of Europe is the Burg Eltz, located along the Mosel River and this German destination happens to be only 4 hours away from Amsterdam. For those of you who do not know, Rick Steves did a whole travel series for PBS, hosts travel tours, has written numerous travel books (none of which we actually own or have read), and is a European travel aficionado. He also has a website, which is where Erin found her information for the trip.

After seriously deciding this is a trip we need to take, we had to hurry and find a time to go before November, when the Burg Eltz closes. October turned out to be the perfect time for a Mosel Valley tour. The weather was mostly cloudy, but it never rained on us. The temperatures were pleasant: not too hot or freezing cold. The leaves were changing color, making the hills around the area look spectacular!

We rolled out of bed Saturday morning around 5:15 so as to make the most of our short two-day vacation. By 6:00 a.m. we were on the road…in the dark. And we drove in the dark for over two hours. We think it’s about time for daylight savings time to end. We don’t think it began to get light outside until about 8:30. Fortunately we had breakfast in the car and an audio version of John Grisham’s new book, The Innocent Man, to keep us awake.

We drove directly to Moselkern, a tiny town on the Mosel River. Rick Steves promised that from this town we could park our car and hike through the forest to Burg Eltz, about a 45 minute hike. We couldn’t exactly find the car park Rick Steves suggested, so we just found a spot on the side of the road and started walking. What a beautiful hike! We wound our way up to the top of the hills, following the Mosel River, until the Burg Eltz appeared out of nowhere. The forest was just a little bit misty, adding definite ambiance to our trek up to the medieval castle. The Burg Eltz has been intact for 700 years and the interior is furnished as if it was still the Middle Ages. The only way to get inside the castle is to take a 45-minute tour, in German of course, but for 50 cents we bought a handy English guide to read as we went along with our tour group. Lunch at the castle was better than expected, and of course the view was perfect! We enjoyed our short hike back to Moselkern and took off to find the next quaint town along the Mosel: Cochem.

We hiked up to the top of Cochem, got some good views of the town and the Mosel River, and got to experience a little bit of life in Cochem. Apparently Saturday is the day for everyone in the town to go out and sweep leaves off the street and sidewalks. There were also quite a few people visiting the cemetery to replace fresh flowers on the gravestones. Not much else was going on here. We found out there is more to the town further up the river. Cochem has a castle, a long park along the river, and lots of tourists in the busier area of town.

Our next stop was Beilstein, a town Rick Steves described as Cinderella-land. Beilstein is tiny. We walked around the entire town in about 15 minutes. There is a huge Catholic church and monastery in Beilstein, with only one resident monk! The castle of Beilstein is a ruin so we didn’t pay €2 apiece to go visit it up close. We did, however, walk around the castle, up to the top of the hill, and find a picturesque view up and down the Mosel River Valley. Beilstein used to rival Cochem as the most powerful town on the Mosel, but now its economy is totally based on wine and tourism. This is a very pretty town with great views of the Mosel Valley.

To get to Trier, where our hotel was, we had to drive an incredibly long way along the winding Mosel River. After an hour and a half, we wondered if we were ever going to reach the main highway, but we eventually did. It was only after we reached Trier that we got slightly lost for about 30 minutes. The Moscow circus was in town and traffic was a mess! It didn’t help that some important letters on our hotel’s sign were burned out and we missed our turn. Finally we found the hotel. By this time we were exhausted and decided to just grab something to eat at Burger King rather than find a restaurant and spend another 2 or 3 hours eating dinner. We crashed early.

Sunday was our day to sightsee in Trier before heading back to Amsterdam. Everything else in our weekend was icing on the cake after hiking to and visiting the Burg Eltz. Trier is another picturesque city, much bigger than any of the other cities we visited Saturday. Trier is the oldest city in Germany, founded in 15 BC by Augustus and boasting that it was inhabited even 1300 years prior to the arrival of the Romans! There are abundant Roman ruins – baths, towers, the Porta Nigra city gate, an amphitheater – to visit. The city cathedral is the oldest in Germany, begun in 326 by Constantine to celebrate his 20th year of reigning over the Roman Empire. The cathedral holds two relics, what is supposedly the “Holy Robe” of Christ and a “holy nail” thought to be from the crucifixion of Jesus. Trier is also the birthplace of Karl Marx, and though we walked by his house we did not have time or inclination to pay to enter the museum.

The drive back to Amsterdam was, thankfully, uneventful and absolutely beautiful! Perhaps we are so enthralled with fall foliage because neither of us has ever lived in a place that gets to experience the season of autumn. It was a fun, relaxing weekend for both of us. Oh, and The Innocent Man is a good book (so far – we only got about 75% through on our drive this weekend), though maybe not as thrilling as Grisham’s fiction books.

Autumn

It is definitely autumn in Amsterdam. (Actually today feels a little like Christmas; the temperature didn't get out of the 50s all day.) Most of last week was cool, but not cold enough for coats, sunny, and filled with colors of the season since the leaves are all changing and starting to fall. Even when the sky started turning mostly cloudy the last few days, it was still very autumn-like since about this time is when Amsterdam begins being perpetually cloudy and rainy. Erin took advantage of the beautiful weather last Monday to go take pictures of canal houses downtown. We are in search of the perfect picture to enlarge and frame...especially after seeing the prices for painted artwork of the same images! Our own photography is much more affordable, if a bit less artistic.

Saturday we rode our bikes into the Centrum to visit a canal house museum, the Willet Holthuysen Museum, showcasing life, art, and furnishings of a wealthy Amsterdam family in the 19th century. We have these museum cards that are good for a year and let us into most museums in the country for free. Ours expire January 2, so we're trying to squeeze in all the museums we can before then. We figure it won't be worth it to buy another pass for the remaining few months we'll be here.

We wish there was a really interesting or funny story to tell in this blog, but there's just not. We both did some work this weekend and slept a lot. Sometimes life is just not interesting or funny. And that's OK. Sometimes we need some plain old days consisting of nothing that makes a good story. It's kind of a relief.

The Wild Side

Ringtailed Lemurs Enjoying the Sun
Originally uploaded by john_and_erin_rogers.

Erin’s favorite part of the zoo is always the primates. Who doesn’t like watching the monkeys interact so relationally with each other? It just so happens that there is an entire zoo in the Netherlands (about an hour away near Apeldoorn) dedicated entirely to monkeys! It’s called Apenheul, which means “monkey something or other” (practically the entire website is in Dutch and neither of us as ever heard of the word “heul”). In many areas of the park the monkeys are not in cages, so they roam around, swinging in the trees right over your head or skittering across the walking paths right in front of you. The staff of the zoo give everybody a “monkey-proof” bag to carry all their stuff around in since apparently the monkeys have gotten pretty smart about unzipping bags and reaching into coat pockets looking for treats. This was all pretty cool until one tiny tamarin monkey decided to step onto the walking path right in front of Erin, scaring her to death. She almost accidentally stepped on the little animal and then had thoughts of the tamarin baring his teeth and attaching himself to her leg. Thankfully no animals (or people!) were hurt in this incident. Hmmm…monkey bites, danger, fear…vaguely reminiscent of “Outbreak” perhaps.

Anyway, minus the brief scare of a monkey with sharp teeth being less than an inch away from Erin’s leg, it was an incredibly fun afternoon. One of the funniest sights was watching the huge group of ring-tailed lemurs all take up a yoga-like pose whenever the sun emerged from behind the clouds. Apparently this position is the best way to soak up as many rays of warmth as possible on a cool October day. The scenery in the park is beautiful, too.

While we’re on the subject of animals it might interest our readers to know that one morning this week, the day after our monthly window-washer had come no less, Erin awoke to find a huge, greasy imprint of a bird in flight right smack dab in the middle of our big front window! (No, not the actual bird, just a greasy imprint.) This proves all the more that pigeons are not only disgusting, dirty animals, but also utterly bereft of brains. After all, our apartment is the middle of a huge building. Where exactly did this pigeon think he was going?

Washing Machines and Cereal

Last week was not boring. In fact, for the first time in a long time Erin seriously considered dropping all her clients, quitting her job, leaving John by himself, and moving back to the U.S. OK, honestly she did not think about it seriously; it was more of a fleeting thought for all of 5 seconds. Wednesday was just one of those days.

Maybe because Erin is either using the phone a lot at home or is gone at work she gets very few calls from people in Dutch. Wednesday morning was one of those rare times. Erin understands just enough Dutch to figure out when someone is asking to speak with her, the lady of the house. After the woman continued talking in Dutch for about a minute, Erin tried to get her to explain what she was calling about in English. The woman did not speak English very well and kept asking Erin if she received something in the mail from the Oud Zuid Gemeente, which is like the city offices in our area of town. Erin finally arrived at the conclusion she had seen no such thing in the mail and, since the Gemeente is an important office, she tried to get the woman on the phone to tell her if this was an urgent matter - like we need to fill out a form to keep living here or something. The woman apparently did not understand and ended up saying “thank you” and hanging up on Erin. So far no one else has bothered us so we figure it wasn’t too important.

A few hours after the mysterious phone call in Dutch and in the midst of fielding phone calls from counselors and coworkers, Erin heard the washing machine had stopped. She went in to put the laundry in the dryer and was met with a washing machine filled up with water flashing an error code at her. “F-05”!!!! What does that mean?!? After looking through the manual that only said an F-code is an error code that needs to be reported to the service center, Erin finally starting searching the internet to find out what “F-05” could possibly mean and how it might be fixed. After searching for about 15 minutes the internet decided to stop working. Now, we had this problem of the internet randomly deciding to take a break for hours or even days at a time for the first 6 months we lived here. After John repeatedly called the internet company to hassle them about the problem, they seemed to finally find a solution and our internet has worked continually with no problems for at least the past 6 months…until Wednesday. Erin did finally find a service center phone number in the washing machine manual and we called the number only to be greeted by an automated system in Dutch. Thankfully, we punched some numbers, entered our postcode and were given a phone number in our area to call. We called the number. A man answered the phone who had no idea what we were talking about, so we called the service center again. It was about 5:05 p.m. by this time. Do not ask us how this is possible, but the automated system was closed for the day! Uugghh.

The next morning, still faced with a washing machine flashing an error code, Erin took John’s advice and shut the whole machine off. When she turned it back on, she put the dial on a different wash setting and started over, hoping for the best. This time the machine went through the whole cycle without a problem! We have now decided to just not use cycle number 6, which is fine since we have about 18 other setting to choose from. So far so good. Oh, and the internet decided to start working and has since worked without any problems!

Since things always happen in threes, there was one more incident last week. The grocery store didn’t have our cereal, so Erin decided to try a different brand that was in stock. When unloading her basket onto the conveyor belt at the check-out Erin noticed the bag of cereal had a hole in it. She set it on the ground to continue unloading her basket and thought she would just hand it to the cashier and tell her that she didn’t want the cereal. Well, as she picked the bag up off the floor to hand to the cashier, the entire bag ripped open and cereal flew out all over the entire front of the store! Erin tried to tell the cashier, but this particular cashier didn’t speak English. Erin’s limited Dutch would not allow her to explain the situation, but thankfully a man behind Erin explained. We guess it all got worked out and was alright. Well, except for the part where Erin became embarrassed by spilling a bag of cereal all over the front of the store and then was not able to communicate to the cashier about it.

Ah, the joys of life in the Netherlands! So far this week is already much less exciting. We think last week was a fluke.

More Sea and Sand

No, that sea and sand is not in Amsterdam, although other than the last couple days it has been extraordinarily sunny and warm here! John had to go do some work in Nice, France Monday and Tuesday a week ago (awww, poor John). Since Erin’s work schedule is relatively flexible she got to go with him! Sun and sand in the French Riviera – what more could you want?

Our flight left incredibly early Sunday morning: before 7a.m. In order to save some time, or so we thought, John checked in online Saturday afternoon and printed out our boarding passes so all we had to do at the airport was check our one bag. When we arrived at the correct desk row to check in, the first two desks were open for those who had already printed their boarding passes and the next 5 desks or so were for customers who still needed to check-in and get their boarding passes. The first two rows had about 10 people each in line while the remaining desks were totally empty. John decided to just go over to one of the free desks. Surely they could check our luggage for us. Nope. Even though this guy was doing absolutely nothing at his desk, he pointed to the two long lines and instructed us, “You already have your boarding pass. You need to go wait in those lines.” John argued that printing out your boarding pass is supposed to make things go faster and pointed out that this guy had no one else in line, no one was coming, and surely he could check our bag. Nope. So we went over to the lines and waited. Sure enough, not 5 minutes later one of the ladies at an empty desk starting calling people from our line over to be checked in! We ended up only having to wait a few minutes after all! John took a picture that you can see on our flickr site to document this phenomenon.

Since we got to Nice around 8:45 a.m. and didn’t leave until 9:40 p.m. Tuesday evening, we had pretty much 3 full days in Nice. (Although John had to spend two of those days in an office – with a really great view of the Mediterranean). Sunday we both got to explore the city of Nice and swim in the ocean. The other days Erin occupied herself with more sightseeing, some shopping, and entire day of lying on the beach, reading, and swimming. It was great! Just down the street from our hotel was a shopping center called Cap 3000. When Erin ventured into the mall on Monday she decided that must be the name because there had to be about 3000 stores in the place! Neither of us has seen a real shopping mall since our trip to California at the beginning of the year, and this one was really larger than most shopping malls Erin has seen in the U.S.! Other than the fact that everyone was speaking French, Erin felt a little bit like she was back in the States.

Interesting fact: Nice has rocky beaches – no sand. The title of this blog is not a complete lie because our hotel had its own private beach, where Erin spent one of her days, and this beach did indeed have sand.

Another tidbit: If a hotel charges €18 for one person to eat breakfast, it probably is not really worth €18, or even €8 for that matter.

Yet more useless information: Transavia, the discount airline we flew to Nice, apparently has as its theme song, “Take a Chance on Me.” Hmmm. Why in the world would an airline choose this as its theme song? (We did, by the way, make it to and from Nice safely with no problems.) We suspect that “Take a Chance on Me” by Abba is the theme song because it is the song playing when entering the plane and we got to hear it at least twice while taxiing into the Amsterdam airport, which, by the way, is about a 38 km. trip after the plane actually lands on the ground. Schiphol has to be the only airport in the world where the plane lands halfway across the country and then drives by way of runways all the way to the terminal. It will always add at least 20 minutes to your travel time. Transavia is not prepared with enough music to last this long on the ground without repeating songs.

Videos

We just uploaded some videos from our recent trip. Some of them might be kind of boring, but you can view them here if you really need something to do.

Our Exotic Cruise Vacation, The End

We must explain the last several hours of our vacation, spent in Venice and Treviso airport. Surprisingly, we had some extra time in Venice after exiting the ship Sunday morning. After John helped negotiate a hotel room for a couple girls form our dining table and we left our luggage in the hotel we stayed at the previous weekend, we made our way, with much less difficulty, back to San Marco Square. We had just enough time to stand in line for the Campanile, take an elevator up and snap some nice pictures of the city from the top of the tower. Our window shopping in souvenir stores got us in a bit of trouble as we had to speed walk back to the hotel to get our bags and make sure we didn’t miss the bus to Treviso airport.

We made it on the bus and arrived at Treviso (think: the airport the size of our apartment). The first time we stood in line, the overly attentive ticket lady told us our hold baggage was over the weight limit. We dragged our stuff off to the side and tried to cram more heavy items in the carry-on bags. Then we stood in line again. This is the one and only time either of us have ever had a ticket lady decide to weigh our carry-ons! Woe is us. John’s carry-on, which had just been stuffed full of souvenirs and books, was way over the limit. The lady’s solution was to check that bag as well and have us pay for the extra 5 kilos of weight. Thankfully before reaching the counter the second time Erin had suggested John put some souvenirs and books in his pockets since he was wearing his handy cargo shorts. Erin also decided to hold a couple of the heavier travel books in her hands out of sight of the ticket lady. That little maneuver probably saved us having to pay for another 5 kilos of extra weight! After standing in yet another line to pay for our extra baggage, we still had over an hour to kill. Since sitting in small plastic chairs on the other side of security did not look appealing, we decided to walk around a bit outside. After walking down the street passing empty fields, abandoned buildings, and some car dealership we decided the city of Treviso is not your vacation destination and returned to the terminal.

We wasted some time buying a Gatorade and standing in the security line. By the time we had to sit in the plastic chairs waiting to board a bus to take us to our plane we only had about another 20 minutes left anyway. Erin observed that at least the airport was so tiny, dirty, hot, and ugly that now she really felt a desire to board a plane and return home. (Just hours ago she had not wanted the vacation to end!)

There’s good news for those of you who might fly to Treviso in the future: it looks like construction workers are building a brand new passenger terminal that’s about 50 times bigger right next door to the present eyesore.

So, now you have a complete picture of our vacation. The pictures are up on flickr.

Barefoot and Homeless in Amsterdam

For a couple of hours this evening, John found out what it would be like to be homeless in Amsterdam. As he was getting ready to go to the gym after work, the window washer rang the bell to collect his 10 euros. After John mumbled something into the intercom, he grabbed his wallet and walked down the stairs. Upon handing the bill to the gentleman and saying "alstublieft," he realized that this guy probably had no idea that is one of the only words John actually knows in Dutch. Before having the chance to be too impressed with himself, he walked back up the stairs and realized that his brain must not have been functioning when he closed the door and locked himself out of the apartment.

Unfortunately, John was home alone while Erin was enjoying a day at sea with the Crossroads staff (she is still going through cruise withdrawal), so nobody was there to rescue him after he banged his head repeatedly against the door. Realizing his limited alternatives, he took to the streets wearing only his gym shorts and t-shirt (no shoes) in rainy, 59 degree weather.

Luckily, the Coopers only live a couple of blocks away. Although he only had to wander aimlessly around the neighborhood until they returned home 30 minutes later, he was disappointed when they reminded him that we confiscated the spare key copies last time we had visitors. On the upside, he scored a nice dinner that Annette happened to be cooking up, as well some excellent guacamole dip and a tasty Dutch cake for dessert.

Some things to remember if you're ever barefoot and alone in Amsterdam:

1. The sidewalk tiles are softer than you might think--much better than concrete. The grass along the canals is even softer, but you better watch out for the dog droppings.
2. The streets are swept almost daily so they're amazingly clean and free of hazardous objects.
3. Don't go barefoot in the winter. That would be bad.

An Exotic Cruise Vacation, Part II

There are too many things available to do on a cruise, especially on “at sea” days. Our lives are full enough of lists, decisions, and priorities. Our list of activities on the ship during our seven-day cruise is rather short compared to the endless schedule of events offered: learned to swing and salsa, saw several entertainment-type shows, played mini-golf, swam, ate, read, slept. It was perfect…after Erin got used to there being 2000 people milling around everywhere she went. We always managed to find some chairs in the sun to read and take naps.

For those of you who do keep up with the world news, there were indeed three bombings targeting tourist areas in Turkey two days before we were supposed to stop there. Ephesus was one of the ports we were really looking forward to visiting; we had our own tour scheduled and everything. After a very long, hot day in Athens on Tuesday, the captain announced we would not be stopping in Turkey, but would go on to our other two ports of call, adding a stop in Dubrovnik, Croatia on Friday. Hmmm. It was a bit ironic to us that we were avoiding the danger of bombings in Turkey by visiting a country that had been at war for about 3,000 years with hostilities just coming to an end within the last decade. In Dubrovnik, by the way, visitors can still see effects of bombings in streets, buildings, and roofs. Nevertheless, we felt completely safe in Dubrovnik and it is a very pretty city (at least the old part of town by the port is, which is the only part of town we really walked around in).

Our first stop was in Athens, and we were there for a good part of the day. The city of Athens itself is big, smelly, loud, and dirty. There are stray dogs absolutely everywhere! Last night we decided to do a little research on the internet to figure out if there is some explanation for the vast population of stray dogs in Greece. Sure enough, someone decided to create a whole webpage dedicated to this phenomenon! Erin especially enjoyed the very last section on the page about “dogopotomus.” We digress.

Walking around in the Ancient Agora, admiring Athens from the Acropolis, seeing the Parthenon and the Porch of the Maidens with our own eyes, and wandering around the gigantic columns of the Temple of Olympian Zeus was an incredible experience. John bought a hat in Athens that says something in Greek that we have yet to decipher, and we negotiated the metro system from the port into the actual city of Athens with only one slight mishap (buying the wrong kind of ticket on the first try).

Our tour of Heraklion, Crete was a whirlwind since we were only there about 4 hours. We had decided in advance to get a taxi from the port to go see the Palace of Knossos and from there we would either take another taxi or the bus to the Archaeological Museum back in the center of the city. As expected, taxis were lined up waiting for all of us cruise tourists to get off the ship. The first guy said he would charge us €60 for a drive out to the palace. (That’s around $77) €60! Come on! It’s only about a 15 minute drive. John decided to try to negotiate with another guy further back in the line. After being told once that we had to go to the first taxi in line, we found a guy who said he’s take us out to the palace for €15. That’s more like it!

We ended up pretty much getting a free tour of the palace (which is really just a lot of “ruins” that aren’t even original since they were mostly rebuilt in the early 20th century) because there were so many other tour groups, all from our cruise ship, clogging up the walkways. Archaeology is amazing to me. How do people find pieces of this and that while they dig around a huge area like the Knossos Palace and then figure out exactly what the palace looked like and fit together millions of tiny pieces of clay to make jars and stuff? Neither of us would personally want this job, but the whole thing is astonishing. We took the bus back to the city for only €1.50 per person, and fortunately the bus driver asked us where we were going and pointed out exactly where the museum was at the last stop. Who knows how long we would have been wondering around aimlessly, trying to read signs in Greek, when the museum was really just a half block away?

The third port of call was Corfu. This was our absolute favorite place! We could have stayed on this island for another month! We rented a car that was available for us right at the port and spent the day driving around the island, taking breaks for pictures and short walks, and spending a couple hours at a gorgeous beach. Actually, it was our insistence that we stay as long as possible at the beach that caused us to almost miss the boat. On the map, it looked like it would only take about 15 or 20 minutes to get back to the port. We forgot that the roads in Corfu are extremely narrow and winding, so there’s no zooming down the highway. In some towns, the roads are so narrow, with cars parked along the side, that there’s a light on either end of the town so only one side of traffic goes through the town at a time. Earlier in the day we waited about 20 minutes at this one light waiting for our turn. Ironically, only a few towns operate the light system when there are plenty of other towns with the same narrow road situation but no light; drivers just hold their breath every time they go around a curve, hoping they will not meet a tour bus. Luckily, we ran into no lights on our way back to the port – just hugging the side of narrow roads on the edge of sheer drop-offs. Really, the problem didn’t start until we got to Corfu Town, where the port is, when we realized we did not have a detailed map of the town and had no idea how to get from where we were to the port. After hitting one dead-end road, turning around and seeing that the ship was leaving in about 15 minutes, Erin started panicking while trying desperately to stay focused enough to direct John along the correct route since he had even less of an idea where we should be headed. We pulled into the parking lot (thankfully we’d already paid for the car) told the man meeting us that we appreciated the service, and high-tailed it back to the ship where we boarded about 30 seconds before the deadline.

Since we knew nothing about Dubrovnik, and again did not want to shell out more money for a cruise ship tour, we bought a “top 10” book while we were in Crete. After cutting it so close getting back aboard the ship the previous day, we decided to take it easy. We were not in a hurry to get off the ship at the crack of dawn and we ended up touring the rector’s palace, the city walls, and doing a little souvenir shopping. The shopping was mostly just to spend the last few kunas we had taken out of the ATM. We really were not even sure what the exchange rate of kunas to euros was, but last night John looked on our bank account and figured out we only spent €40 the entire day! So, we guess Croatia is pretty cheap.

With all the sight-seeing and walking around in the sun, you can see why we did not especially want to do much of anything on our sea days aboard the ship! We did get up early one morning to see the sunrise and go swimming, which was followed by a late morning nap. Probably another favorite time on the ship was at night when there was no one else on the decks. On one clear night we sat and looked at the stars. It reminded Erin of when she was a little girl, living in a tiny town where she could go out on the driveway at night and see tons of stars without any big city lights. It was great! There was a more than half full moon on the final evening of the cruise that was big and yellow near the horizon. The water was pretty calm, and the moon shone a long, golden ribbon of light across the sea. We have some memories we will never forget!

An Exotic Cruise Vacation, Part I

Saturday, August 26 we left the rain and chill of Amsterdam for our long-awaited vacation: a Mediterranean cruise with ports of call in Athens, Kusadasi (Ephesus), Crete, and Corfu! So, going on a cruise meant we were actually already spending much more on a vacation than usual, so we decided to save a lot of money by not taking the excursion packages offered by the cruise line. John (who had very little pressing, urgent work to do in August while Erin faced the craziness of starting a new job) did a lot of research and planned out all the details from staying in a hotel in Venice Saturday night before the ship left to figuring out public transportation options in our ports of call. We had an absolutely wonderful, relaxing time! Erin had never before been on a cruise, but she would definitely be willing to go on one again after this experience!

Of course, the trip wasn’t all smooth sailing (ha, no pun intended). We took a discount airline to Venice, so the airport we arrived in was a 45 minute bus ride away from Venice. Treviso airport is about as big as our apartment. There are no actual gates since passengers must always take a shuttle to (and from) the terminal from the plane. Buses crowd the tiny parking lot right in front of the building, which looks like a very small warehouse; after all, only two airlines operate out of Treviso. We waited in the hot parking lot with a crowd of other people (probably because there is no place to sit inside while waiting for a ride or for your plane to depart) and finally followed a herd onto a bus that we were hoping was the right one. After hearing a lot of English-speakers all consulting maps of Venice, we decided we must be going to the right place.

There’s a reason people advised us to stay at a hotel close to the plaza where buses drop you off: there really are stairs on every single bridge in Venice…lots and lots of stairs. Fortunately we had taken the advice and booked a room only one bridge away from the plaza. This is where the first mishap occurred. After lugging our baggage up and down one too many bridges because of our poor sense of direction, we arrived at the hotel lobby. There were no reservations for us. John pulled out an e-mail that said we did indeed have reservations, but the man at the front desk could find no such thing in their computer system. He reassuringly told us that he did have a room available so we would not have to sleep out on the streets overnight. Whew. That was good to know! The room was fine, the breakfast was great, and we really spent only a minimum amount of time in the room anyway as we had less than 24 hours to enjoy Venice.

Even though we had a map and had read tons of warnings about the fact that everyone gets lost in Venice and it’s OK, we were not prepared. We found the park near our hotel, eventually wandered over to the Rialto Bridge, and found the restaurant John wanted to eat at for dinner. Getting back to the hotel at night was a long journey. Honestly, everywhere you look in Venice, people are walking around squinting at maps, trying to see what direction they are walking by looking up at the sun, staring around at street signs, or finally sitting down on a bridge arguing with partners and spouses about where they are on the blasted map! In case you ever decide to travel to Venice, leave plenty of time to get places, plan to get lost, and just enjoy the scenery wherever you are. It’s not a huge island so you can never get too far away from where you are supposed to be. We finally learned to just follow all the little signs that point to “Rialto,” “S. Marco,” or “Academia” to find our direction.

The only rain we had the whole trip was Sunday morning. We had the entire town of Venice to ourselves it seemed! We strolled over to San Marco Square to see the Basilica, Campanile, and Doge’s Palace. This is where the second mishap took place. On the advice of a fellow cruise passenger, John booked a “secret tour” of the Doge’s Palace for us on Sunday morning. He booked the time and paid for the tickets online, but only printed out one of the two e-mails he received confirming our reservations. When we got to the palace and told the woman at the desk our name, confirmation number and time of the tour, she flipped through pages for several minutes before telling us she did not have a reservation for us. Unlike the hotel, this time things did not go our way. It turns out the reservation was for Monday. Hmmm. John said he was sure he had not booked a tour for Monday since we would, by then, be in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. No, there were no more spots for the tour Sunday morning. Sorry. We ended up buying tickets to go see the palace on our own, which ended up being a good time. Erin started to wonder if we really had tickets to get on the cruise ship that afternoon. Now that would be a disaster.

When we came out of the palace, the sun was shining again and the temperatures were back up in the 70s. Although the signage at the port in Venice is deplorable, a kind passenger finally stopped to tell us where to take our bags before checking in for our cruise ship. By this time we were dripping sweat and sincerely hoping, after getting rid of all our luggage, that we had a place on the ship and that our bags would not be going to Greece and Turkey without us. We did! What a relief! A short 15 minutes later we were on board!

Making Money

That's right. Erin is finally making money for doing what she has all this education to do - counseling. Well, the actual giving of therapy on a long-term basis to improve people's lives is still volunteer work, but at least she's getting paid to do administrative stuff and handle one-time crises. She's technically "counseling director" for the counseling ministry at our church here in Amsterdam. Interesting that we had to move across the ocean to another country for her to obtain all this prestige and wealth. OK, so "prestige and wealth" might be taking it a bit far. Anyway, she is really enjoying her job and the opportunity to use her skills and education.

The first paycheck hit the bank yesterday, bringing with it the realization that taxes will have to be paid on these earnings. The matter is complicated by the fact that, while John's company takes care of all the tax filings for his earnings, there is no one to help us figure out what to do with Erin's income. Supposedly the church can file a form so that she doesn't have to pay taxes in the Netherlands and the U.S. and, let's face it, with the high tax rate in the Netherlands (being socialist and all) plus U.S. taxes, there really would be nothing left of Erin's already tiny paycheck.

Do they even call it a "paycheck" in the Netherlands? There are no such things as checks in this country. In fact, we were discussing just the other day the great efficiency of not ever having to write, deposit, or deal with checks. People here simply get your bank account number and put money directly from their account into your account, or vice versa. When paying for items, you can just use your bank card, credit card, or chipcard if you don't have any cash on you. Furthermore, stores never have to deal with bounced checks. It's genius. Why isn't the U.S. on this bandwagon?

Now that we have dealt with so many different areas of red tape, rules, and government ridiculousness in the Netherlands, we feel the whole tax thing will eventually work out. It's the fact that we will also have to work with the U.S. government in this case that might make things a bit more frustrating. Erin just wants to find a way to keep some of the money she's making without being sent off to jail for tax evasion! Oh the joys of finally making money.

Home

Note: Because Erin cannot speak for John in this blog, it is written in first-person.

Some people say they remember the very day they realized this was home - the day when they were no longer living in a strange place, but instead the drive from the office to the apartment became routine and the place they were headed was really just home.

I don't think I have one moment like that. The change has been gradual. Today in the grocery store I noticed a family of four yanking their crazy Dutch shopping cart around and hissing at each other in barely civil tones, as if they were on the verge of crying or screaming. They must have just moved here. After all, August is the prime month for new expats to move in. I recognized the tone of voice and looks of anxiety and all too well remembered my first months here trying to do all the shopping in strange stores with unrecognizable labels and brands. Only, I had no one else with me to help me find something or vent my frustrations to (at least, not until John got home in the evening and I could recount the woes of my day in Amsterdam). I overheard the mom telling everyone to find cottage cheese (something it took me at least 6 months to locate) as their little girl held onto the shopping cart and announced that she thought everyone was staring at them. I took this opportunity to alleviate some of their distress, pointed out where to find cottage cheese and told the mother what it is called in Dutch on the package.

It seems forever since I was in that position. How long has it been since riding my bike to the grocery store, only getting what will fit in my bike bags, and locating items with Dutch labels has become normal? When did the word "ice" ("ijs" in Dutch) stop meaning frozen cubes of water to put in your drink and start meaning ice cream? When did I stop counting down how many more months we have to live here? I now go weeks without thinking about moving back to the U.S. Yes, we are not snuggly fitted into the middle of this culture; we'll always be on the fringes of society without knowing Dutch, but this has become normal life.

Maybe the blogs are now few and far between because everything does not seem new and different now. Or maybe it's because I'm much busier now with a part-time job and studying for a licensure exam! Maybe both. We'll still keep everyone updated on happenings over here even though "here" is now "home." :-)

An International Elevator Ride

As John and his colleagues rode up the elevator after dining in the Ernst & Young cafeteria on Friday, they realized that among seven of them, there were representatives from five out of the seven continents (North America, South America, Africa, Europe, and Asia). If John’s other officemate had been there, they would have also had Australia. They’re still searching for a colleague in the office with an Antarctican passport.

Mercy! Haarlemse Honkbal Week 2006

Last night we drove 20 minutes west of Amsterdam to join one of John’s colleagues in Haarlem to watch the Netherlands play the USA in baseball. We were excited about an opportunity to see a baseball game in Europe. We normally see quite a few Rangers games every year, but the last one we had been to was almost a year ago. All those years of Rangers games were good preparation for what we witnessed last night. Although the USA got off to a respectable start, the game quickly went from bad to worse. Without going into all the painful details, we can say that the “mercy rule” was finally invoked in the seventh inning resulting in a final score of 15-3, sending the Netherlands to the final game (which they won 9-6 today against Cuba). Here is some information about the tournament.

Our Trip to Poland

Krakow, Poland is a place we would never have even considered visiting when we lived in the U.S. Honestly, Krakow was not a place we thought about visiting when we first moved to Europe either. Actually, it was more of an interest in visiting the Auschwitz/Birkenau Nazi German concentration camps that got us to Krakow. By the way, the name of the concentration camp was just recently voted to be renamed to make sure visitors know that the camps were set up and run by German Nazis, not Poland.

Going into this weekend we already knew it was going to be more of a serious, historical experience than an uplifting, relaxing vacation. We both studied World War II and Nazi Germany in school, and Erin took a “Hitler and the Holocaust” class in college to fulfill requirements to obtain a minor in history (for what purpose she has yet to figure out – she is by NO means a history buff in any sense of the term!). So, we found it amazing to actually be standing in and seeing in person the things we learned from textbooks, lectures, and videos. Before we went on our trip we watched some documentaries by a Holocaust “denier” whose arguments and questions were interesting and thought-provoking but not entirely convincing. It was nice to be able to investigate the things he was talking about when we visited the camps in person. It makes you think about how different countries and governments portray history…or ignore it. For instance, we learned about Nazi Germany and the Holocaust in school as kids, but we never learned that the U.S. also set up concentration camps in many mid-west and southwest states to contain Japanese Americans. We could get on our soapbox about this or explore all kinds of interesting conspiracy theories on a variety of topics, but those are subjects for another blog and they have nothing to do with our “European Adventure.” Our trip to Auschwitz is one we will remember forever.

We ended up taking a bus to Auschwitz from Krakow. It was cheap. We got there and back without getting lost or climbing onto the wrong bus. Our bus from Krakow was like a tour bus with curtains in the windows and about 60 seats. (If you are now imagining a trip in luxury you need to change the image in your head: the bus was probably from the 1970s, smelled a bit rank, and was not air-conditioned.) However, we enjoyed sitting down for the entire 1 ½ hour bus ride. The ride home was a different story. The bus that picked us up at Auschwitz was like a city bus or an airport bus: few seats, empty space in the middle for luggage, and no available seats when we got on. For the entire 1 ½ hours back to Krakow we stood. After walking around all day and the entire day before, we stood on a bus for 1 ½ hours. It was by no means pleasant, though standing offered us more direct airflow since our heads were right by the open bus windows and we got an unobstructed view of the Polish countryside. The entire trip was spent alternatively trying hard to think about things other than our feet and the time, and counting down how much time had progressed and how much longer we had to endure. By the time we got off the bus in Krakow we felt like we had conquered a test of endurance.

Krakow has the largest main square in all of Europe. The center of the city is different in that there is a park, the Planty, that circles the entire city center where the city wall used to stand. Like many other European cities, there is an abundance of cathedrals, a castle, a river, lots of shopping, and street music. Krakow boasts some really nice stained glass windows, none of which we got pictures of because most of the cathedrals do not allow pictures. Unlike the rest of Europe, the cathedrals in Krakow are still actually used as places of worship. The Polish people are all very devoted Catholics. We saw nuns and priests on almost every block the entire weekend. The late Pope John Paul II was from Krakow, by the way.

Our skills in figuring out public transportation were tested on this trip since we stayed in a rather cheap hotel – cheap not because it was old and run-down, but because it was a bit outside the main part of the city. The hotel was nice enough, except that the air-conditioning didn’t really work and it was HOT. Thankfully, there was a Tesco nearby so we bought a map with tram and bus lines on it when we arrived. The Tesco also came in handy after Erin did not sleep at all the first night because of the heat; Saturday we bought a desk fan so the next two nights were much more conducive to good sleep. (Either that or all the sun, walking around, and no sleep the first night led to utter exhaustion.)

The other highlight of the trip, besides getting to visit the concentration camps (which we suppose is a kind of “highlight” in a strange way), was the “Jazzy Lunch” we had at the Sheraton on Sunday. First of all, the hotel was air-conditioned! Secondly, it was a really big buffet-style lunch like we haven’t had since we lived in Dallas. Third, we got live jazz music and attentive waiters on top of it all. (Perhaps the waiters were a bit too attentive. There really weren’t many people partaking of the lunch for most of the time we were there, but the hotel had staffed about 30 people to wait on us. That comes to about 8 waiters per table, but it was better than no service!) We were cool, happy, and absolutely stuffed by the time we left.

Summary (in case you don’t feel like reading this incredibly long blog): Krakow - we’re glad we went, it’s cheap, it’s a challenge in public transportation know-how, the Sheraton is awesome, the Hotel Ruczaj is far away, and it’s hot in the summer.

Before We Forget...

We had better update everyone on our trip to Prague a couple weeks ago before it’s time to start talking about our next trip!

A couple weekends ago we spent 2 ½ days in Prague, the capitol of the Czech Republic. Prague is a short, and very cheap, flight from Amsterdam. In fact, most everything in Prague is cheap! We went with another U.S. expat couple from Amsterdam, the Coopers originally from Chicago, and had a great weekend.

For those interested, the Czech Republic used to be Czechoslovakia until early 1993 when the country peacefully split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. It was also a communist country until 1989, but has been a democratic republic since then. The Czech Republic is part of the European Union, but still uses the Czech koruna rather than the euro at this point.

One of the best things about our weekend in Prague was the weather: sunny and warm! Well, Saturday was pretty cloudy with some showers, but we seemed to miss the showers as we ducked into cathedrals, towers, or a castle. Like many European cities, a river, the Vltava, runs through the city, kind of dividing the center of the city in half. In fact, we enjoyed paddle-boating on the river Sunday. Because of all the sun and cloudless skies we all ended up getting a bit sunburned. After being so long in Amsterdam, land of clouds and rain, none of us were prepared with sunscreen and none of us imagined there might be a place (apart from the beach) with enough sun and heat to really affect our skin! Our sunburns weren’t really very bad and have now faded to tans. We have lots of pictures and spent some time on the famous Charles Bridge, a footbridge that crosses the Vltava taking you from the Old Town to the Mala Strana area of Prague.

Prague is a beautiful city…especially from a distance. And tourists have their choice of great views of the city from a distance since there must be about 87 towers around the city that you can climb, for a small fee of course, to get “the best view of Prague.” We actually did end up climbing 3 or 4 of these towers and got good pictures. Up close, however, Prague is a different story. Many of the buildings and walls in the parks are covered in graffiti. We’re not sure if this is a testimony to life during the communist era or not, but the graffiti in Prague seemed much more plentiful than in most other cities we’ve visited. Although noticeable, this didn’t really affect the overall beauty of the city or our enjoyment of it.

Without going into too much detail, suffice it to say we saw and did all the regular big city in Europe stuff. We investigated the extensive Jewish quarter, complete with the Jewish cemetery and several synagogues; we walked around the squares and streets of the Old Town, Mala Strana, and Kampa Island; we toured several cathedrals; we visited the extensive castle compound with it’s many towers, cathedrals, museums, and other buildings; we hiked around in the huge Mala Strana park; and we ate good food. The paddle-boating experience was a fun extra on our trip since we had pretty much seen the “top ten” tourist attractions by then.

Prague has an extraordinary number of saints attached to their various cathedrals. Apparently before the Holy See took over exclusive rights in the 1600s for administering sainthood, practically any notable, official, or church leader could make anyone a saint for any reason. Thus, we saw a lot of stained glass depicting various saints and a lot of bones belonging to various saints housed in cases in the churches.

The Czech people are extremely friendly. Everyplace we went people were helpful, kind, polite, and personable. Well, almost everywhere. The guy running the paddle boat operation tried very hard to get an extra 50CK out of us. No where was a time limit for the paddle boats posted, and when we got into the boat at 2:30 the guy did not say anything to us. We returned at 3:45 to have him continually repeat in a loud voice, which turned to yelling, that we were gone an hour and 15 minutes and owed him more money. John and Jacob went over to deal with him, calmly explaining that they didn’t realize there was a time limit and asking the guy where on the posted rules it listed the time limit. He never could show them or explain how we should have known that we were only to be out for an hour so he gave up the argument and we kept our 50CK.

The other aggravating experience was trying to buy a subway ticket. The machines in the underground take coins only. We had bought tickets for a trip over to a restaurant, but when we tried to return, we found out the machines only take coins less than 50CK. For both of us to get one-way tickets was only going to cost 40CK, but all we had was a couple 10CK coins and a 50. We noticed there was a uniformed man sitting at the ticket counter. Now, one would think his job, sitting in a uniform at the ticket window, would be to sell tickets, or at least give us change so we can buy a ticket in the machine. Nope. When John asked to buy tickets he pointed over to the machine. When John explained all we had was a 50 and could we get some change, the guy just shook his head, motioned with his hands, and said no. Huh. It seems his only purpose for being at the ticket booth was to use the TV in there to watch the World Cup game.

Speaking of the World Cup, Adidas, a huge World Cup sponsor, set up a giant soccer ball-shaped souvenir stand along with a huge screen in Old Town square to broadcast all the World Cup games. It was interesting to be there that weekend since both the Czech Republic and the U.S. were playing games.

Other random excitement of the trip includes watching three fire engines pull up to a building in the center of the city, smelling smoke, and watching as the fire men went in and out of the building, seeing a homeless man pass out near the big screen that broadcasts the World Cup, and awaking Saturday morning to find the window in the front door of the apartment building we were staying in had been completely broken out. 1. Although there must have been a fire in the building, we never saw flames. 2. The passed-out homeless guy was being watched over by two policemen until back-up arrived. A few minutes later a police van pulled right up to the man, several police officers roused him and got him into the van, which had windows for all to view what was going on in the back, and then a fist fight ensued as the man apparently did not want to be taken to jail to sleep it off. The police won and off they went. 3. Jacob was the only one who heard the front door window shatter Friday night while we were sleeping and for the rest of the weekend we lived a building sans a window in the front door. Otherwise the apartment was nice and in a good location.

Perhaps what made this trip all the more enjoyable was the fact that we amazingly did not get lost and were not late for anything the entire time! We really enjoyed our time in Eastern Europe. And we’ll be off again to that part of the continent in a week and a half when we visit Krakow.

A Visit From the Parents

Erin’s parents left last Saturday to return to Texas after a two-week trip to Europe. The highlights of their trip included all the gourmet food they ate in France, visiting the Loire Valley chateaus, and, of course, seeing us! The low points all revolved around Paris: trying to figure out Charles De Gaulle Airport, which is apparently anything but intuitive, getting on public transport going the correct direction, and maneuvering luggage and person through endless turnstiles in an attempt to reach their train to Blois at Gare d’Austerlitz station.

We spent a total of about 8 days in the Netherlands with Erin’s parents, acquainting them with Dutch culture, history, and landscape. Of course, the beautiful warm, sunny weather of a month ago had disappeared. It was a bit cooler than expected and cloudy almost everyday. The sun finally appeared the last two days they were in Amsterdam. No amount of persuasion could convince either parent to ride a bicycle in Amsterdam, which is probably smart since neither of us would know exactly how to work things out if someone injured him or herself resulting in a visit to the emergency room. Hopefully we can continue our life here ignorant of that particular bit of information.

We did, however, ride bicycles in Park de Hoge Veluwe, a national park about an hour southeast of Amsterdam that we visited in some of our first weeks in the country, so they did get the bicycle experience in a bit calmer, more conducive environment. We’re happy to announce there were no falls and it only rained on us for a few minutes. We also visited the sculpture garden and art museum on the park grounds and drove by the sand dunes that look so out of place in the midst of all the forests and trees. Besides Park de Hoge Veluwe, we took a trip to Delft and toured the factory where the famous delftware is made (resulting in some souvenirs of course), went to the Keukenhof the last day it was open for this year and were still amazed by the rhododendrons and other flowers still blooming, and visited the traditional Dutch village at Zaanse Schans where we saw a demonstration of wooden shoe-making and a working windmill that processes peanut oil (and acquired yet more souvenirs). Other tourist attractions included going to the grocery store, visiting the Van Gogh Museum, walking through Vondel Park, traveling to Alkmaar to attend the cheese market on Friday morning (that was a lot of cheese), and attending a street market in the Centrum on Saturday morning. It was a full and fun visit.

Erin’s parents also partook in almost every traditional Dutch food while they were here: croquettes, meatball sandwiches, tostis, coffee (of course), almond cookies, erwenten (split pea) soup…and more coffee.

Having family in town for so long is a vacation for us as well as for them. John had a whole week off work, Erin took a break from counseling, meetings, and the few other routine activities of her life, and we got to do fun things every single day!

We Highly Recommend Switzerland

Erin’s parents are here…well, they’re not actually here right now; they’ve been in France for the last 5 days and are returning to Amsterdam this evening. Her parents stayed with us for about 4 days before heading off to a tour of the Loire Valley in France and will be in Amsterdam again for the rest of this week until they leave Saturday. John took last week off work but is back to work this week. However, he's just in the Amsterdam office and will be working normal 8-hour days. Thus, we are in the middle of a vacation, kind of.

Since Erin’s parents left Thursday morning for France, we decided to take a 4-day weekend trip to Switzerland. We drove, so that took up two of our days. The drive was a bit longer than the computer directions had estimated: closer to 11 hours than 8 ½. Perhaps this had to do with road construction and the fact that, at one point on our way to Switzerland, it took us almost 2 hours to drive 12 km! The drive was definitely worth it. We didn’t get to see much of Switzerland, but the Geneva and Lake Geneva area is absolutely gorgeous! The weather was perfect, too. After the last couple weeks of cold, rainy weather in Amsterdam we were ecstatic to enjoy weather in the upper 70s and lots of sunshine! We definitely want to visit other areas of the country and stay for longer than a couple days sometime.

We stayed almost on the border of France and Switzerland right near Geneva. While the apartment we rented was cheap and very convenient to Geneva, staying right on the French side of the border meant that we had to cross over and go through the border patrol each day. Yep, Switzerland is not part of the EU so there are still border patrols. After arriving the first evening the border patrol just waved us through. However, the following morning they motioned for us to pull over to a parking spot. The guard did not speak any English and it is a wonder we even figured out what he was asking for. We had our passports ready to hand over, but then he wanted something else having to do with the car. After unloading everything from the glove box and extracting every sort of important-looking piece of paper we finally found what we thought was the insurance, but that’s not what he wanted. We then handed him what looked like something saying John is legally renting the car with an official signature on it at the bottom. That must be what he wanted since he took it, along with our passports, inside the tiny office. He came back a few minutes later, returned our things, and waved us on. Whew. All the car documents are in Dutch so we don’t really know if he actually figured out what he was looking for on that piece of paper we gave him. The second day the guards stopped us and started saying something to us in French. John told them we speak English. Then they asked if we speak German or Italian (we guess those are the only other languages some of the guards on duty spoke). We said “no” and they just let us continue on our way.

Another down side of Switzerland not being part of the EU is that they do not use Euro currency. When we went into Geneva the first evening we were there to eat dinner, we ended up parking in a parking garage. It was actually really cheap since it was a week night, but when we were ready to leave at about 10:30 we discovered the parking garage does not take credit cards. Soooo, we walked around for a while until we found an ATM and took some cash out. After returning the second time to the parking garage we found out that the machine also did not take 50 franc bills unless the total amount owed is 30 francs or more. We owed only about 3 francs. Hmmm. Of course the ATM machines do not distribute amounts less than 50 francs so we decided we might just have to buy something at McDonalds to break our 50 franc bill. We hadn’t had dessert so we thought a McFlurry would be perfect…and it was. We ate the ice cream on our third walk back to the parking garage, now with appropriate change in hand, and finally got our car out of the garage. Thank goodness for McDonalds – it was about the only thing open that late at night!
Our first full day was pretty uneventful, if you can believe that. Well, except for being stopped by the border patrol. We toured Geneva in the absolutely beautiful weather. The old part of town is really pretty. We love the Mediterranean architecture, red roofs, stone streets and fountains everywhere. Jean Calvin, the famous Reformer, was from Geneva so there are lots of things to see involving the Reformation in the city. We went to Bastions Park and saw the Reformation Wall with statues of all the famous Reformers. We also saw a chaotic group consisting of about 15 2-year olds with 4 adults and several strollers built to hold 4 kids at a time and a few people playing chess on the giant chess boards in the park.

We visited the Espace St-Pierre which includes the cathedral where Calvin preached for about 30 years and a tower you can climb to see a great view over the whole city and lake. There are some archeological ruins underneath the cathedral and plaza that were really interesting. Some of the unearthed ruins date back to the 1st century before Christ! The International Museum of the Reformation is also in Espace St-Pierre. It’s housed in a really pretty, large old mansion and is very informative. We didn’t actually go through the entire museum since we were getting hungry and Erin was starting to get really tired, so we left the museum in search of sustenance. We had baguettes for lunch every single day, but they were so good (and easy to find). There’s a park, the Promenade de l’Observatiore, near the old part of town that is on a hill and overlooks some of the city and the Jet d’eau, Geneva’s famous fountain in the lake. We decided to eat there and lay down in the shade for a short rest before going to see the Jet d’eau, which shoots 7 tons of water 140 meters into the air and was built in 1891, up close.

We got to the Jet d’eau just in time. After we walked out on the dock, got a bit wet, and took pictures of the famous landmark we headed to the other side of the city across the water. Soon after reaching the other side we noticed the fountain was no longer on. We read that sometimes they turn it off during gusty winds. We think it might have been getting a bit gusty just as we were on the dock near the fountain because that’s why we got so much wetter than the previous tourists. It was so sunny though that we dried pretty fast. The rest of the day we just walked around the city, enjoying the sights and the parks and noticing all the expensive cars: Porsche, Lamborghini, Bentley, Rolls Royce…we saw them all! People in Geneva have some money.

Our second day involved driving around Lake Geneva. We stopped at the Chateau de Chillon, a castle dating from Roman times and built up a lot in the 11th-13th centuries. The castle sits on a rock right on a cliff of Lake Geneva and there are great views of the Alps from the towers. It’s quite a big place and we spent several hours wandering around. We stopped again further around the lake in a town called Vevey. Saturday was the day for weddings in Switzerland. We saw a few wedding parties as we were walking along the lake shore in Vevey and passed a couple vehicle processions as we were driving. The processions always begin with a car covered in flowers and everyone honks to wish the bride and groom congratulations. Absolutely everyone we saw in Vevey was eating ice cream. There were even people eating ice cream standing in line to order more ice cream! We decided to join in and got a couple cones ourselves. Apparently the west and north shores of Lake Geneva are good places to grow vineyards and some good wine comes from that area. It has something to do with being in the area between the lake and the mountains. We passed a lot of vineyards on our drive back to Geneva. We arrived in town just in time for dinner and Erin finally got to try some of the “famous” filets de perches that we kept reading and hearing about. It was OK. Maybe the place we decided to eat at wasn’t exactly first class, but we got to sit outside while we dined.

Oh, Erin almost ran into a motorcycle while trying to reverse out of a parking spot at a rest stop just as about 50 bikers pulled into all the spots surrounding our car, but we won’t go into that. Nothing too alarming happened, other than a few bikers getting a bit angry at Erin before she finally got the car out of the spot and sped away.

So, in summary, our trip to Switzerland was beautiful! It was all about being outside and soaking up the sunshine before returning to Amsterdam, where it is rainy and cold…still.

Belgian Chocolate

Though everywhere in Europe is starting to get really crowded because tourist season is upon us, we feel oddly more comfortable traveling about not being able to speak the native language. Even though we do live here, it is sometimes easier to pretend to be a genuine tourist, completely ignorant of all things European. And now that there are tourists everywhere you look, it's much easier to fit in. :-)

Last Saturday we visited Antwerp, Belgium. It is still amazing, especially being from Texas, that in a matter of an hour we can be in a different country and then be back home in time for dinner. If we were to drive an hour from home in Dallas, we might very well still be in Dallas! Antwerp was very nice. The weather there on Saturday was beautiful, warm and sunny. We got to eat some Italian food for lunch outside watching the tourists pass by. We also walked around the city discovering the quiet little courtyards and gardens that mysteriously hide among buildings right in the center of town. We witnessed two wedding parties and a funeral and, of course, indulged in some Belgian chocolate (some of which we are saving for our next visitors, Erin's parents - you're the lucky winners!). Apparently Antwerp is famous for chocolate hands. That's right - hands. According to local museums and chocolate shops, it's a symbol of friendship and kind of a motto for the city, so we now own a box of chocolate hands. (Although, some research has turned up that it might actually symbolize the hands of Congolese that King Leopold II of Belgium had cut off when Belgium ruled a colony in Congo. We can understand why, 100 years later, the town has decided to reinvent the symbolism. How often do we wish we could rewrite history?) In any case, chocolate hands are one of the weirdest things we've ever seen.

Erin's parents are coming this Saturday for a couple weeks. It's strange that when family comes to visit us here, it's like a vacation for us as well! We would never have taken time off work just because family was coming to visit us in the U.S. Come to think of it, no one would come visit us for two weeks in Dallas! But now that we're living in Europe, people come for much longer and it affords us a great reason to stop counseling and accounting for a week or two and travel around seeing and doing fun things. We're looking forward to it!

It's Hot!

The past week or so has been sunny and humid with temperatures in the 70s. Erin is always so hot that one would never guess she actually moved here from Texas!

While jogging in Beatrix Park this morning (a regular activity for Erin now since it is much more pleasant outside than it is in the stuffy gym) she discovered that the big white swan, whose picture is on our flickr site, hatched her chicks! Mom, dad, and the seven fuzzy babies were milling around in the water near the nest.

We noticed it has been quite a while since we last wrote. This means two things: John is still working all the time and Erin's life has become pretty routine and normal. Erin loves her volunteer work as a counselor and is enjoying being the team leader for the ministry leading meetings, sending out e-mails, and basically supporting and caring for the other counselors in the ministry. She's also still singing in a praise team at church so that took up a lot of her time last weekend.

For those of you worried about John, he has had a couple of weekends off and actually got his hair cut last Saturday. Let's just say this experience is making him reevaluate a lot of things. It is true, for both of us, that living overseas is teaching us a lot more about ourselves than we had imagined. Normally one thinks they will move to a foreign country to learn all about other cultures and places. While this is true to an extent, much more learning has been going on in relation to our own personalities, reactions, and desires. John will get a break in about a week when Erin's parents come to visit. Two weekends ago we finally got to visit the famous Keukenhof gardens to see the tulips, and last weekend we visited a street market in an area of Amsterdam called Jordaan and biked around a huge park almost across the street from where we live. Since we haven't written recently, hopefully everyone can look at the pictures to get an idea of what's been going on.

The last couple of days Erin has been using her limited Dutch to ask for things in stores. People seem to know what she is saying so apparently she is not completely off base when she speaks, but everyone so far has replied and spoken the entire rest of the conversation in English. Being so short and probably speaking Dutch with an American accent is a tip off. Even though people will usually continue the conversation in English, they seem much more friendly just knowing that Erin has tried to say something in Dutch.

That's about all for now. John has a really funny story about spreadsheets and coffee so stay tuned!

Exotic Animal Sightings

OK, maybe they're not all exotic, but some pretty interesting animals have been spotted right on our own street. The other day Erin began walking down our street to make a quick trip to the store when what did she see coming toward her on the sidewalk? An old man walking a horse. Yep, a big, saddled horse. Mind you, we do not live in the country somewhere; we live in Amsterdam, the most populous city in the Netherlands. Obviously this is not usual, as proved by another neighbor who said something to Erin in Dutch, but Erin is pretty sure it was something like "What in the world is that?" based on her curious facial expression. Erin just shrugged and laughed along with her.

The past week or so we have been awakened by a quite strange noise, a bird call of some kind we presume. It is a high-pitched, very loud "eeeeeeeeeee-eeeeeeeee" that Erin at first thought sounded like a noise a dinosaur on Jurassic Park would make. John now calls it the "horse-goat" noise. It really is indescribable. (Now is where the "exotic animal" part of the story comes in.) This morning while eating breakfast Erin happened to look out the window and see a bird that looks remarkably like a large green parrot with a ring of red feathers around its neck alight on a tree. She thought this unusual bird could be the culprit of the unusual bird call, but the parrot didn't utter a sound before it flew further down the line of apartments to another tree so Erin still has no verified identification of the "horse-goat" noise.

And of course there's always the heron, though not so unusual in Amsterdam with all the water we have around here. The heron spends each afternoon, from about 4 or 5 p.m. onward, sitting on the exact same light on our street. Eventually Erin will get used to seeing a 3-foot tall bird sitting atop a street light, but for now it still amuses her when she's walking back from the store or the recycling bins.

Money and Buses

A fellow expat commented on the ATMs here in the Netherlands in a recent blog and that reminded Erin of the new things she learned about retrieving money from an ATM in the past couple weeks. John is usually the one to get cash out of the ATM. Since there are no bills here smaller than a 5 and John despises carrying coins around, Erin can usually survive by just picking through the change he leaves on the table, sometimes adding up to €10-15! Besides, most of the shopping Erin does can be paid for using her Pin card anyway. However, with John working all the time lately, Erin has had the task of going to the ATM for him.

When choosing how much money to take out of the ATM, one must decide carefully because if you decide later in the day that you really need more cash you will be out of luck. There is a limit to using your card to get cash from an ATM: only one transaction per day. Erin found this out the hard way after accidentally pushing the wrong button and getting much less cash than John had asked for. Luckily, he didn't need all the cash the same day so Erin just made another trip to the ATM the next day.

Also, it is luck of the draw what kind of bills you will receive out of the machine. For instance, when asking for €50, you could get a €50 bill or perhaps two 20s and a 10. It is quite frustrating that many stores expect customers to have exact change and seem very put out when all you have is a €50 to pay for a €26 item or a €20 to pay for an €8 bill. So of course receiving smaller bills is preferable to receiving large ones from the ATM (unless, like our fellow expat, you happen to get 25 €10 bills that won't even fit in your wallet). After pressing your cash choice, you wait anxiously while the machine whirs and clanks, finally spitting out your cash. It is a happy moment when multiple bills appear and you know you will avoid the wrath of some sales clerk because you now have a €10 bill.

In case anyone needs a tip on public transportation in Amsterdam, Erin has one: trams run more often and closer to their scheduled departure times than do buses. Actually, Erin has yet to find a bus schedule that means anything. Since bus times are few and far between to begin with, once the buses get off schedule there is no telling how long you might have to wait for one to appear. Trams, on the other hand, while not always accurate, run more often. Even if the trams are not on schedule, one will usually show up within 8 minutes.

We heard this week that temperatures in Texas reached the 100s...and it's only April! And we thought our weather here was getting warmer! The mid-50s we've been enjoying seem downright frigid in comparison! Such hot temperatures in Texas are certainly no motivation to return. The redeeming qualities of Dallas definitely have nothing to do with the weather. People speak English and there is an abundance of great Mexican food - now those are redeeming qualities!

Happy Anniversary to Us!

In honor of our anniversary, John got to take Easter Sunday and Easter Monday off work and we traveled to Maastricht to celebrate. Maastricht is in the southern part of the Netherlands, in a small area that juts out into Germany and Belgium. The area is called Limburg, and it is the first time we've been to an area of the Netherlands that is not completely flat! Our trip was short, but complete with a stay in a castle, tour of Maastricht, hikes in the hills, and even a glimpse of the cyclists taking part in the famous Amstel Gold Race as they started out from Maastricht's Centrum.

This stay in Maastricht had been planned long before we even knew there was such a thing as the Amstel Gold Race, but two days before we left, John discovered that this famous Netherlands race, in its 41st year, was set to take place on Easter Sunday, the morning we were planning to arrive in Maastricht. About 300 cyclists entered the race this year, but we figured since it's a 2-hour drive to Maastricht and the race was set to start in the morning, that we wouldn't be bothered by the crowds. Just as we got into the city and came to our first stop light to take us to the Centrum, the light turned red and police began arriving to block the intersection. Glancing at the clock on the dashboard, we were excited to see that it was just a couple minutes past 10 and that this traffic blockade was likely for the Amstel Gold rather than a funeral procession or an auto accident. Sure enough! A few minutes later we had front row seats to see the start of the race. We witnessed sponsor cars with ads all over them, medical vans, cars carrying about 10 bikes each, and radio trucks speed past ahead of the racers. Then we honked the car horn and snapped a few pictures as the 300 or so cyclists whizzed by us on the start of their 253 km race. It was perfect timing, only took about 10 minutes to watch, and we got to sit in the comfort of our warm and dry car for the show!

About the time we decided to take a self-guided walking tour of the Centrum and found a parking spot, the rain that had pelted the car all morning let up. It would continue to rain, off and on, the whole time we were in the Maastricht area, but we had our handy rain coats so it didn't bother us too much. It was a bit warmer in that part of the country than it has been in Amsterdam, so less wind and warmer temperatures made the rain very bearable. We spent the morning wandering around Maastricht, seeing the old cathedrals, the famous city wall, Maastricht University, rivers, and shopping streets. Maastricht is much smaller than Amsterdam, less crowded (especially on Easter Sunday), and the area has plenty of hills and valleys so we could look out onto entire cities and villages. One of the art museums, the Bonnefanten Museum, happened to be open on Easter Sunday so we decided to visit it with our handy museumjaarkarts, which made the entrance to the museum free. We were starving when we got there and thought getting something to eat at the cafe there would be a good idea. It would have been a good idea, however when the waitress came over John was still deciphering the menu and Erin decided to just order some tea while he figured out what he wanted to eat. Bad idea. The waitress never returned. We never got anyone's attention and even going up to the bar, where people went to pay their bills, didn't get us any attention from the staff. Finally, after Erin finished her tea, we decided to just leave the money for the drink on the table and go have a picnic in the car (luckily we had brought some snacks with us from home). We figured bananas, crackers, nut bread, and grapes should tide us over and we could have an early dinner. Our experience at the museum cafe was really the only bad one of the trip, thank goodness! We went back into the museum, saw all the art, and then decided to find our hotel.

We were both very excited about staying in a castle. Hotel Kasteel Geulzicht was a bit outside Maastricht, in Berg en Terblijt, and we weren't quite sure what to expect. We booked the room through a discount website (or course!) so we figured we'd end up with one of the smaller rooms. The castle only has nine guestrooms to begin with. As it turned out, we got the largest room in the place! We had a beautiful view, the bed was more comfortable than it looked at first, and we even got a buffet breakfast with our stay that was really good! After checking in and thoroughly admiring our room, we drove back into Maastricht to eat dinner. Being Easter Sunday, most restaurants were closed, but we finally walked around and found a Thai place that was on Erin's list of "top 10" restaurants in Maastricht according to one website. It truly deserved it's place in the "top 10." We really enjoyed the set menu we ordered, with samples of lots of different dishes, and we ate waaaaay too much!

Easter Monday is a holiday in the Netherlands, so we saw people biking, hiking, and travelling around everywhere we went! We spent most of the day hiking, after spending as much time as possible just hanging around in our room in the castle before check-out. There were several trails around the castle that we enjoyed, but eventually we decided to head out and try to find Mount Sint Pieter, a high hill in the southern part of Maastricht that affords great views of the cities and towns all around. We hiked up the hill and around the area for several hours before finding our way back to where we started and the cafe for some lunch. Sometimes it's fun to start hiking around without a map, though after going one direction for over an hour we decided we might need to turn around since this trail was obviously proving to be quite lengthy! After lunch, we noticed the office was selling trail maps and decided to see exactly how far we had gone. Yes, the trail we had decided to follow would have taken over 4 hours to complete, so turning back around had been a good idea, especially since it took a little longer to drive home to Amsterdam with all the holiday traffic. We'll have to return to Maastricht someday to tour the caves at Mount Sint Pieter and spend more time hiking around there. Even with rain and fog, the views and the forests were beautiful!

Maastricht is definitely a place we want to go back to, when John once again has more time off of work. Unfortunately, today John is back at work and Erin is back to her semi-normal routine of life in Amsterdam. Hopefully John will again have regular weekends without work sometime in the near future and we can go on more little trips. This weekend was a much-needed break. Happy Anniversary to us!

"Thatch" is an Odd Word

Some things are the same all over the world. And then, some things are not.

Erin went to the grocery store on Friday, as she does practically every day here. Actually she went twice because as she was making dinner she realized she did not have enough ketchup to make sauce for the meatloaf and had forgotten to get any on her earlier trip to the store. There is a store just around the corner, so while the meatloaf was still in the oven Erin left and then realized she really had no idea how much longer the meatloaf had before the timer went off. Quickly glancing at her watch she figured she probably had about 15 minutes. No problem. She sped up the pace, arrived at the store, grabbed some ketchup and chose a check-out line. Just like in the U.S., and assumably every other country in the world, Erin happened to choose the one line where the customer at the register had problems swiping her card in the machine. The cashier had the woman keep trying....and trying, and trying, and trying. Seriously, the woman tried to use her card to pay about 8 times before eventually giving up and pulling a wad of cash out of her wallet to complete her transaction. Of course, this only happens to Erin when she is in a hurry. Luckily, she got home just in time to walk into the kitchen and see the timer count down the last 3 seconds before she had to take the meatloaf out of the oven. No matter where you are, the experience of picking the longest check-out line with the most customer issues will invariably occur and is always frustrating.

Something you don't happen upon just anywhere is a building with a thatched roof. In fact, we drive the same route to church every Sunday and just this morning noticed an apartment building with a thatched roof. There aren't many, if any, of those around Amsterdam that we've noticed. John commented that he doesn't think he would probably want to live in an apartment building with a thatched roof. As he said, "If I was a rat, that's where I would live. I mean, it's like a built-in rat's nest." Hmm. He's got a point there.

Even though we don't have a thatched roof, we still have mice. We encountered another one, or maybe the same one, again last night. At least it's not a rat. And it's for sure not living in our thatched roof...since we don't have one.