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!