Saturday, December 29, 2007

Six Flags "Holiday in the Park"

John's cousin, Katharine, is a maniac on the teacups ride! Out of the many rides we all experienced at Six Flags on Thursday, nothing made us more queasy than the teacups with Katharine. This video is proof of the craziness.

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Merry Christmas!

Yesterday Erin's sister, brother-in-law and nephew received the best Christmas present they could ask for: our nephew was taken off of oxygen and is now breathing all by himself! We continue to fervently pray that he will have no other breathing issues. He also was taken off one of his medications that was helping him "remember" to keep breathing, so we think he's now down to only two medications/vitamins that Erin's sister has to give him everyday. Merry Christmas!

These posts don't seem so "adventurous" now that we're not living in a foreign country, but our lives feel full nonetheless. With moving, remodeling the house, Erin's nightmarish job experience, and the premature birth of our nephew the year has been stressful. We guess it's adventurous in it's own unpredictable way.

In other news, it has been close to 80 degrees here in Dallas. Erin thinks it is absolutely ridiculous for it to be this warm less than a week before Christmas. John absolutely loves the warm temperatures and claims it feels like his favorite season outside: spring. Yes, therein lies the problem. It is not spring. It is the time of year for nativities, Christmas trees, caroling, hot chocolate.....and cold weather! Erin is hoping for a cold snap for Christmas. If not, she'll have to make do looking at pictures of Christmases gone by when there was snow and the thermometer dipped down to freezing. (That would really just be the last two years when we lived in Europe.)

The mysterious part of all this is that both of us grew up in the southern United States. Why does John love mild temperatures while Erin continues to believe winter should come with cold, crisp air and snow? She clings to this idea of fall and winter as if she grew up in a place where there were four distinct seasons. Can't anyone agree with her that cold weather lends to more coziness? Fires in the fireplace, hot drinks, fluffy blankets, snuggling with your loved one? In this household she is alone in her sentiments.

Bring on the shorts, T-shirts, barbecues, iced tea and lemonade; it's Christmas in Dallas.

Monday, December 10, 2007

Vacuuming

We have only one room in our home with carpet now. Erin spent a week painting that room a gold color before we get new carpet at the end of this week. And before painting, we had a couple guys come over to retexture the entire room and patch cracks and holes in the walls. After all this, you can imagine that the current carpet is not all that clean. For those of you who know Erin, we thought we'd share this small breakthrough.

After all the retexturing and painting had been finished, John put the current carpet that we had pulled away from the walls back down in its original position. Erin, of course, thought of vacuuming the carpet last week as she was cleaning the house. Could she really live with dirty, disgusting carpet for a whole week before the new carpet came in? Most of you who know her already know the answer: absolutely not. In a surprising turn of events, Erin decided it was a waste of time to vacuum the carpet that would be gone in a week. So she didn't. Maybe all the unexpected circumstances and stress of this year are forging changes in Erin's anxious, compulsive personality. Maybe.

What?!? No Christmas?!?

We have fooled the entire neighborhood...and probably you too if you receive a Christmas card from us (assuming the cards do eventually get sent!). The outside of our house is festively decorated for Christmas. We have lights on the roof, the bushes, and the front porch, which we put up on a rather cool day a week or so ago right before the temperatures rose into the 80s making it feel more like April than December. Hopefully with the outside lights glowing no one will ever notice we have no Christmas tree in the window. In fact, if you were to walk into our home there would not be a single trace of Christmas anywhere. Well, except for the piles of Christmas cards waiting to be addressed and stamped.

The reason for no Christmas this year is quite simple: our house is a mess what with all the remodeling. Strangely, the season seems to be lasting longer this year. That's mostly because Thanksgiving was about a week early, but we like to think we are also having more space to enjoy things like other people's Christmas parties, Christmas music, and just sitting and drinking hot cocoa. Besides the lack of decorating, we are also foregoing the endless Christmas shopping because so many of our gifts this year will be unusual (experiences rather than actual presents). Since we have family in town we're not even traveling for the holiday. When people say things like, "I haven't even gotten our Christmas cards bought yet" or "I still have so much shopping to do," Erin tends to respond with "Oh, you still have plenty of time! It's only December 10th!" OK. Now that she thinks about it, that's only 15 days until Christmas. Ignorance is bliss. And we can afford to be ignorant of the passage of time this season since we have no pressing holiday items on our to-do list.

When it first looked as if Christmas wouldn't really happen in our home, Erin was pretty stressed and disappointed. Now that the idea has taken hold, she is a little relieved. This year has been stressful enough. We can easily go to the homes of relatives or friends to experience the Christmas environment. It is a pleasant change to be able to celebrate the meaning of this holiday (Jesus' birth) in quieter more subtle ways. We tend to like simplicity, so perhaps this year's experience will lead to more toned-down celebrating in future years.

So, enjoy your Christmas cards when they get there, and feel free to drive by the house to take in the light display, just don't expect a winter wonderland if you intend to visit the inside of our home.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

A Year Ago Today

One year ago on this date the title of our blog entry was "Water is Free Again" since John was back in the US for business enjoying free water in restaurants. Erin was still in Amsterdam in our apartment on that day.

Now that we are back in a house, much time is spent fixing things and remodeling. This week we've discovered that, while water in restaurants may be free in this country, carpet is anything but. We just want one little living room worth of carpet. And since it's the only room in the house with carpet now, we'd like for it to be fairly decent carpet. Who knew it would be so expensive? Now, we are used to getting many things for free, but we knew free carpet would not be acceptable and had planned to pay the price this time. We don't want carpet that freshens the air and shields itself from even the toughest stains while cleaning itself and the rest of the house, backed by a 290 year warranty. We just want carpet that feels soft when you walk on it. At a decent price. So far, the search continues.

If we had concrete floors (which we do not owing to the fact that our house is too old to have a slab foundation), this whole thing would be easily settled by just doing something fancy to the concrete that's already there (that's the "in" thing to do, right?) and putting down a nice rug. Surely painting or staining concrete can't cost as much as carpet, can it?

For now, we will live with freshly painted gold walls and the old green carpet. Hmmm. Now that we think of it, these colors in our living room can kind of be a salute to our alma mater. Sic 'em bears!

Seriously, let us know if you happen to be getting rid of your carpet that's still in good shape and not green.

Lead

We have seen or read the news a few times this week, and in case you have been living in a cave, here's a summary of what must be the most important news item every single day: there are lots of children's toys that contain lead, and that's bad. Pretty much every toy containing any paint is on the banned list, we think. It's a miracle we all turned out OK considering there was probably lead in almost every single toy we owned in the '70s and '80s.

All this talk of lead paint inspired Erin to actually find and use the face mask we have in the garage while sanding the door frames and floorboards in our living room. Granted, this is the final room in the house to be painted and she has thus far sanded paint off of door frames and floorboards in the remainder of the house while simply trying not to breath too much. Our house was built in 1960, so it's possible there could be at least one layer of lead paint on the wood. With all the bad news about lead paint, Erin started wondering what might happen to her if she did ingest lead paint dust from, say, sanding five rooms in our house. Cancer? Brain damage? Hallucinations? John helpfully pointed out last night that we did indeed actually sign a waiver when we bought this house stating that we are aware that our house contains lead paint and will not sue the old lady who used to live here should anyone die from lead paint poisoning.

As it turns out, lead generally affects children, causing such things as ADD and learning disabilities, so we're in the clear. And now that we've sanded away and repainted all the other lead paint in the house, you can feel safe to bring your children here as well.

All this worry and time spent researching lead paint could have been avoided if we just didn't watch the news. Lessons learned: ignorance is bliss, and just buy your kids video games for Christmas...it's better for them.

Monday, November 26, 2007

My Mistake

Erin finally got a job several weeks ago after months of searching for a paid internship position in the Dallas area. She is now unemployed yet again. The story of what happened for the two weeks in-between is like a bad dream. In hindsight, an important lesson has been learned: intuition is not to be ignored.

When Erin interviewed for the position she got bad vibes about the owner of this practice, but after searching for months, any paid job that had an available opening looked great. After two weeks of living day by day to figure out whether she did or did not have clients to see, Erin found out that her suspicions about something being not quite right with her boss were confirmed. The practice Erin was working for received a subpoena with the promise of a subsequent investigation by the state board for unethical and illegal behavior. Erin decided the next day to quit while she was ahead: no regular clients yet, no need for anyone to know she had worked at this place for two weeks, no hours accrued toward licensure yet. It is also safe to say that the woman running this practice is a paranoid sociopath, literally.

After such a stressful re-introduction to working in America, Erin is now thinking much more carefully about where she takes an internship position. And for now, she is quite happy trying to get our house back in order because we are still in the process of remodeling and hope to have the house somewhat back to normal for the Christmas season. Plus, we have a preemie nephew who is now living at home with his parents but still needs lots of help. Actually, the help may be more for the benefit of his mommy than for him, but Erin is more than happy to drive down to be with them now that her schedule is flexible again.

Friday, September 28, 2007

It's too hot

It has been autumn for five days, but here in Texas you would never know. Erin heard on the weather last night that the high temperatures right now are 5-7 degrees warmer than normal with no end in sight. By the way, every time we watch the weather segment of the news Erin can't help but think that it might be just a little ridiculous that with all the news going on in the world, a full 5 minutes of 15-20 minute newscast (that's after the commercial breaks) is spent rehashing the weather. After all, on most days in Texas the weather segment is almost exactly the same day after day.

Fall is one of Erin's favorite times of year so it is unfortunate that Texas has no such season...usually. Right now in Amsterdam it is in the 60s and rainy. OK, we don't like the rain so much, but temperatures in the 60s we could go for. And we really love the trees changing color. About this time last year we visited the Apenhuel (monkey zoo) in the Netherlands. We were wearing coats and the monkeys would stop all activity and sit in a yoga position to soak up the sun every time it came out from behind a cloud. The only thing we want to soak up here in Texas is some air conditioning.

It had better cool off before Thanksgiving because it is just wrong to wear shorts and T-shirts on Turkey Day.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Updates on "Free"

We still have our free Ford Focus. The evaluation lasts one more week, and then we will have to go back to putting miles on our own cars and paying for insurance on two cars again. It’s been fun while it lasted.

A couple of times we’ve had to take the Focus in so engineers could fly down from Ford headquarters in Detroit to make some changes and check some things out based on our survey comments. During these inspections, Ford gives us a free rental car. The first experience was with a Ford Expedition. Although John loves driving cars that sit so tall over the road, it was a bit ridiculous driving around that behemoth with the two of us sitting up in the front seats with about 20 feet of empty space behind us. The second rental was much more practical…or at least, we made great use of it: a Ford F-150 super extended cab something or other. It just so happens that we had it over the weekend, and it also just so happens that we are doing a lot of remodeling at our house…still.

So, it made perfect sense last Thursday night and Saturday to spend hours upon hours at Lowe’s and Home Depot buying things like 12-foot long pieces of crown moulding and baseboards and large boxes of faux wood plantation blinds for all the windows in our house. Granted, it was pouring cats and dogs when we had to return some of the door casing to Lowe’s on Sunday, but it was ever so much more convenient with a free truck to haul the things around in.

Oh, and we finally got our compensation from Ford for agreeing to do this evaluation of the Focus. Let’s just say the baseboards, door frames, and crown moulding in our home are compliments of Ford, including the means of transportation to get them from the store to our house.

This last weekend of "Free" also included free tickets to the Dallas symphony on Friday night, which we drove to in our free truck and parked at in the free parking garage provided by John’s company across the street from the symphony hall.

Yesterday we almost got a free $400 bed frame from Bombay Company, but we responded a bit too late. Oh well. I guess not everything is free.

In a more frustrating instance of Free, our phone stopped working again last Thursday. This time Time Warner said they couldn’t make it out to fix anything for 4 days! This is the second time in the last two months of our “no-risk trial period” that our digital phone has stopped working. By now, the phone works once again and John got Time Warner to give us almost all our money back from the past two months. Plus, yesterday in the mail we found that Time Warner sent us a coupon for a free ticket to Six Flags with the purchase of a $15 off ticket because we’re “valued” customers. All this said, we still would never recommend Time Warner to anyone, not even an enemy.

This ends the tale of "Free." If anyone knows John, none of this news will come as a surprise, but John still wishes to share the entertaining story. Even with all this "Free," nothing has yet to supersede the free computer; that one has been reigning champion of "Free" for nine years now.

Thursday, August 09, 2007

The Capital

Erin took her first trip to this nation’s capital just last week. Just as she has heard from people her entire life, Washington DC in August was crowded and extremely hot. In fact, we thought it was hotter in DC than it had been in Dallas (although that story is quickly changing now that Dallas has a forecast of highs in the 100s for the next week). We survived, however, and saw all the major sights, plus a couple minor sights, in three and a half days.

The trip came up on short notice when John finally found out a week beforehand when he was to give a presentation to some clients at the Pentagon. We have friends from Amsterdam living in DC now, so we had wanted to go up to see them anyway, and we got to stay with them over the weekend.

John was a bit nervous about getting into the Pentagon after he was instructed to take the metro to the Pentagon stop, ride the escalator up and wait at the top of the escalator for a man in a yellow tie. Mysterious. It got even more interesting when John arrived at the correct time and waited, and waited, and waited. No guy in a yellow tie showed up. So, John was trying to check his blackberry to make sure the time and place were really right. Suddenly his blackberry stopped working. All this time, a guard with a machine gun is standing a few feet away closely watching John. To solve the blackberry problem, John determined that maybe taking the battery out and putting it back in would help. Of course, taking your blackberry apart in front of the Pentagon looks a bit suspicious. The guard moved closer. When reinserting the battery did not help, John thought he’d look through his briefcase to see if he even had the number for the man in the yellow tie. While rifling through his bag (again, a suspicious activity for a single person waiting in front of the Pentagon), John became aware that the guard with the machine gun had moved closer and was talking to another person. John felt this was probably a conversation held only so the guard could be closer to John and monitor his movement.

Eventually the man in the yellow tie turned up. After all this waiting in the 100 degree temperature outside the Pentagon wearing a suit, John was a little wet. Thankfully, it only took a few minutes to pass through Pentagon security and John had an hour or more before his meeting to cool off. The Pentagon security allowed John in before they even knew what he was doing there, and there were no confrontations with any armed guards.

All this, the plane tickets and a super fancy hotel room at the Ritz for a 20 minute presentation, which, John points out, seemed to bore the clients to tears. But then, John was finished by noon and we had the rest of the day to go sightseeing.

Some notes on visiting Washington DC in the summer:
- The Spy Museum is very interesting, but it goes on and on and on. We spent way too much time in the first three areas and ended up zooming through the last few areas because one can take only so much of one museum.
- It’s almost pointless to go to the Museum of Natural History on a Saturday in the summer. It was wall to wall people! After seeing a few major items, John was going crazy with all the people so we left.
- Even though the line at the National Archives looks short (compared to many other lines in DC) the 45-minute posted wait time is indeed true. We thought this would be a quick trip before joining our friends for dinner, but we ended up waiting almost an hour to get in. This is not very comfortable in the heat of summer.
- Bring your sunglasses. John forgot his, so we shared one pair depending on who was in the most pain (usually John). The Supreme Court is blindingly bright in the daytime sun.
- If you need to take a nap in the afternoon and want to do it in a secure place, find yourself a tree on the Capitol grounds and rest in safety. We noticed after lying down and napping for about 20 minutes that we had had our very own armed guard watching over us the entire time from the nearest sidewalk. After we left, another guard came over to inspect the ground where we had been and must have been satisfied since he walked off rather quickly.
- The Native American Museum has a good cafeteria with a wide range of food available. It’s a little expensive, but the buffalo burgers are huge so we split one.
- Take care before joining a guided tour at the Library of Congress. Our tour guide was extremely long-winded, and the only reason we wanted a tour was to get to go see the main Reading Room (which of course is the last stop on the tour!). Honestly, one boy on the tour played his handheld video game the entire time, even right in front of the tour guide. John and I bolted right after the Reading Room. We were glad we did, because several minutes later we saw that our tour guide was still going strong! The Library of Congress itself is great! This is only a warning about the tour guides.
- The Lincoln Memorial really is better at night.
- Bring good walking shoes. Large memorials and buildings look much closer than they really are.The Bureau of Engraving and Printing is not open on Saturdays. Erin made a slight error by scheduling this stop on Saturday only to find out Friday night that it is only open Monday through Friday. Ooops. We’ll have to do that on our next trip.

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Remodeling and Demolition

Quite unfortunately we have written a summary of our experiences and what we learned living in Amsterdam for a year and a half, and we have lost the document.

It has just occurred to Erin that she wrote the summary right after moving back to the U.S., so we did not yet have this computer. The document must be on the old, extremely slow computer we were using until ours arrived from the Netherlands. Thankfully, John has not yet wiped the hard drive on that computer (or the other old computer mysteriously sitting in a closet in our house!), so the document is not really lost. It’s just unreachable until we hook that computer up again to find it. Once again, we have to say that the summary is forthcoming!

Since returning to our home in the U.S. we have ripped out carpet in the hallway and second bedroom, painted the hallway white and the second bedroom green, changed out three light fixtures, chopped down a big tree in the front yard and just recently finished demolishing the hall bathroom. The only usable item in the bathroom is the toilet since there is no sink and the bathtub is filled with peeled off wallpaper. Needless to say, our house has been in all kinds of disarray for the past month or more.

It’s funny how our physical surroundings seem to match life circumstances right now. Settling back into life in Texas is bringing new circumstances and feelings. Our lives have undergone reconstruction now that we have experiences living in Europe and Erin is trying desperately to determine what her life should be like now. Like our house, many old ways of living here in this country, in this city, have been cast aside. We are still figuring out what to put in the place of those old things. With the birth of our nephew almost four months early, stability, comfort, certainty, and peace have been ripped out from under us. Like the furniture scattered all over our house, our time, commitments and thoughts are scattered, messy and unpredictable right now. The difficulties, hard work and restructuring are ongoing…both in the house and in our own journey.

If anyone knows Erin, she has little tolerance for living in disorder. She likes things to be organized, clean and where they are supposed to be. However, the chaos of our house is not bothering her as much as usual. Perhaps it is because her whole life feels disordered right now. Maybe she’s learning that life goes on even amid messiness.

Is it just coincidence that we have decided to begin demolition and remodeling of our house at this particular point in time? Or maybe we are subconsciously reflecting physically what we feel on the inside.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Anybody out there?

We're not sure if anyone is even reading our blog anymore, especially since it's been a couple months since our last post! We've been a bit preoccupied the last month or so. Erin's sister gave birth to her first son at 24 weeks of pregnancy; that's about 15 weeks early. Our nephew was 1 pound, 9 ounces at birth and is still in the NICU at a hospital in Austin. Erin is able to go down to help her sister for a week at a time since she never got an internship. Obviously our thoughts, focus, and much of our time center around our nephew who is still in critical condition.

Our vacation to Colorado in June/July was interrupted the day after we arrived with the news of our nephew's birth. We stayed only two more days before driving back to Texas to be with Erin's family in Austin. The few days we were there were nice. We got to visit with John's family, went on one hike, Erin learned to knit, and we enjoyed some great food. Erin has promised John that she owes him about 7 days of vacation now.

That's right...Erin still has not found an internship (although the whole search has been put on hold since the end of June). We decided a few weeks ago that it is just not worth it to take an internship that is a volunteer position, work 40 hours/week for free, pay for the cost of gas driving to/from the location, and perhaps even pay $100/week or more for a supervisor. This all works out OK right now anyway, so Erin can pick up and go to Austin whenever she's needed. This family situation will most likely last at least a few more months. She is volunteering at a pregnancy center and determining how many and what kind of other volunteer opportunities she can commit to.

John is enjoying work right now. The hours are normal and there are lots of free dinners and parties with the interns right now. We guess since this time of year is not quite as busy for everyone, the company decides it's a perfect time to pile on the extracurricular activities, dinners, and parties. With all this free time, we've started remodeling the house little bits a time: taking out carpet, cleaning the wood floor underneath, painting, demolishing a bathroom and redoing it, cutting down trees, trimming bushes, etc.

This is not to say there are not lots of funny little stories that have taken place in the last two months: being forced to change phone service, shipping a keyboard via UPS, getting a free 2008 Ford Focus, Time Warner debacles, air conditioner wars, and the chaos that happens when John has to live by himself for a week. It's too much to catch up on. Life is not ever normal. Unexpected circumstances are making life a little stressful and different right now, but we are reminded how blessed we are to have such a caring, loving, present family in tough times.

We know we still owe everyone a post summarizing our time overseas. We promise it's coming...soon!

Sunday, May 20, 2007

A Trip to Disney World with the Family

After being overseas for a year and a half, and since Erin’s younger sister is now pregnant with their first child, Erin’s parents decided this would be an opportune time for a mini family reunion. So, on May 5 we joined Erin’s parents and her sister and brother-in-law for a magical week at Disney World. We both decided after the trip that this vacation in Disney World was the best Disney World trip we’ve ever taken. Maybe because this is the first time we’ve gotten to have the experience together as a couple. Or maybe because we’re older and more used to travel so we did not get absolutely exhausted or tired of walking. Plus, we have no young children and judging by the fights, screaming, crying, and even cursing we decided Disney World is not “the happiest place on earth” for those with small members of the family.

The week we were at Disney World was really the perfect week to be there. Crowds were unbelievably small! We made a point to get to the parks in the morning when they opened, and this enabled us to ride all the major attractions with practically no waits all morning long! The weather was perfect (well, except for a 20-minute storm one afternoon complete with hurricane force winds and a drenching downpour) and the place we stayed was really very pretty. (For those of you who care or know about Disney World, we stayed at Port Orleans Riverside.)

We’ll spare everyone the details, but we thoroughly enjoyed almost all the attractions and shows (minus those only truly appreciated by preschoolers) in four of the Disney World parks. We did not go to either of the water parks, but apparently we have the best water park in the country right here in the state of Texas: Schlitterbahn in New Braunfels.

With Disney World park hopper passes, one day we managed to actually visit three parks. That was a tiring day and not recommended unless you are down to your final day on a week-long trip and realize you are still in need of that very specific postcard and some music from Disney World to take the magic back home with you. We didn’t find the postcard, but we have been listening to our Disney World CD at home all week. Having the music is both good and bad. It brings back fond memories of a fun family vacation, but of course it is making us both wish we were still on that fun family vacation.

The week was a great combination of being with family and getting time to ourselves. Erin’s parents are crazy about Walt Disney World and have visited more times than anyone else we know. It was perfect to just follow them around the first few days – no map needed! John got to see a Cirque du Soleil show for the first time in his life and was duly impressed. We had some great meals all together that provided plenty of opportunity for laughter and fun. We enjoyed a bus ride one night with a comedian bus driver who entertained the entire weary busload with jokes, interesting information, and trivia questions. One of the highlights of our week with just the two of us was a dinner at California Grill. Erin had called trying to get reservations a couple weeks ahead of time and there was no availability unless we wanted to eat at 10 p.m. This is fine for life in Spain, but it does not bode well at Disney World when we are waking up at 6:30 in the morning to start our magical day of fun. John called to try once again for a reservation after we had already arrived at Disney World. He scored a table for two at this place during the time when Magic Kingdom fireworks were going to be displayed and could be seen right from the restaurant balcony with piped-in music! Erin should not be so surprised when John can pull things off like this since it seems to be a regular occurrence, but she still is really impressed by her highly skilled husband!

Disney World really proved to be “the happiest place on earth” last week (except for the families with young children in tow). Family, food, fun…what more could you ask for?

Friday, April 13, 2007

Side Notes

We are still in the process of writing down our thoughts about living in a foreign country for 18 months: what we learned, how we’ve changed, and what difference the experience has made to us. While we continue to compile our thoughts, we’d like to update you on other happenings since our return to Dallas.

On Easter weekend we took a long weekend trip to Pennsylvania and Delaware. Mostly this was a trip to celebrate our fifth anniversary, but we are also in the habit of continuously planning trips and looking forward to going places so it will be a while (if ever!) before we let go of our need to travel. Easter weekend was a cold weekend almost everywhere in the U.S. There was no escaping snow, unless we had gone to, say, Miami. We heard it snowed in Dallas – quite a contrast to the weather they had at this time last year when it was already in the 100s! (This is second-hand information since we, of course, were in the Netherlands at this time last year and it was not in the 100s there.)

Despite the cold weather and snow flurries, we really enjoyed our weekend away from Dallas. Neither of us had ever been to Philadelphia, so we got to visit the National Historical Park in the center of the city (Constitution Hall, the Liberty Bell, etc.) and walked around the Arts district (where there is some excellent Indian food to be had) and Society Hill. We ventured back into Philadelphia Sunday before our flight back home to find some lunch and then discovered how horrible parking is in the city. We also discovered that finding a quick bite to eat on Easter Sunday is a challenge since so many places are closed, but we ended up having some tasty pizza (maybe it was tasty because we were starving, but we were satisfied nonetheless).

We stayed in Wilmington, Delaware in the Brandywine Valley area. Saturday was spent at Longwood Gardens, an estate established by Pierre Dupont that covers over 1000 acres. With so much late cold weather there weren’t too many flowers blooming outdoors, but the grounds were nice to hike around anyway with the lakes and fountains, and trees. There is, however, a huge conservatory overflowing with plants! It was a blessing that it took so long to go through the conservatory because it was a nice warm place to escape from the snow flurries and wind. Pierre Dupont originally built the conservatory so he could have fresh fruit in the winter. There are rooms where melons, grapes, citrus fruit, and strawberries are grown to meticulous standards so that the fruit turns out perfectly. We also enjoyed all the tulips, orchids, roses, rain forest room, cactus, and much, much more. We even got to hear a nice string quartet concert for free! The day ended with a fabulous Italian dinner at a tiny, tiny restaurant in Wilmington’s “Little Italy” called Pastabilities. It’s been showcased on the Food Network, and we really enjoyed it.

We made it to Valley Forge on Sunday morning before we had to head back to Dallas. After doing the driving tour, we hiked around the middle of the park where the roads were closed to cars. Washington and his men were camped there in the winter and we got a little taste of what it must have been like because it was extremely windy and cold when we were there. We were freezing without the snow and bundled up in our coats and gloves and sweaters. We can’t imagine what it must have been like for Washington’s army in their threadbare clothes with no indoor heating!

As an update, Erin is still looking for a job. It is difficult to find an internship position, and this will be the last that this subject is mentioned on the blog until she actually obtains a job because talking about it only increases the anxiety and depression. (All of you who have searched long and hard for a job will know exactly what she is talking about.)

Also, we have noticed that stair steps in the U.S. are very shallow after living in Europe. It feels awkward and slow taking such tiny, itty-bitty steps to go upstairs. Often we end up going up (or down) two at a time to correct the problem.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Toilet Paper

Erin has had to go shopping over the past week to try to stock our kitchen and obtain necessities such as paper towels, soap, and toilet paper. After only being in the country a couple weeks, she ventured to Wal-Mart while John was at work one day. Going very slowly and taking lots of deep breaths, Erin managed to get through the food section of the store rather well. Then she got to the toilet paper aisle.

Not only was a man stocking the shelves and moving things around while Erin searched the aisle, but there was toilet paper of every shape, size, thickness, and brand imaginable filling the shelves on both sides of the aisle. Erin tried hard to remember which kind she used to buy two years ago, but of course then she realized the packaging was probably different now anyway. This was no use. She actually almost had a panic attack right there in the toilet paper aisle. A few tears were definitely shed. Honestly, the toilet paper section in stores in Amsterdam is about 1/8 the size, and there are only two or three brands to choose from. Why on earth would anyone need 800 different kinds of toilet paper to choose from? I mean, come on, you wipe your behind with it! How fancy does it have to be?

When Erin first appeared in the aisle, the man stocking the shelves apologized for the inconvenience and asked if he could help. In hindsight Erin should have just asked him what kind of toilet paper she should buy! After the “almost panic attack” and tears, Erin finally just grabbed a pack and decided it wasn’t worth it to spend any more of her time in that aisle.

By the way, in the last couple years companies in the U.S. have come out with twice as many kinds of detergent and fabric softener, 10 more types of Cheerios, and we think the frozen food and chips sections of the grocery store have both doubled in size.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

20 Days

Erin has now been back in the U.S. for 20 days. Well, 19 since the entire first day of March was spent in airplanes flying over the ocean. Time has gone by fast and in slow motion all at once. Since this is now the longest stretch of time we have been away from the Netherlands, our minds and hearts are pretty convinced of the permanence of this move back to Texas.

We moved back into the house a week ago today. By now most things are put away, organized, and clean. Of course, we’re still missing a lot of clothes and other items that should be on their way over here from Amsterdam. Amazingly there is apparently no way for the moving company to track our shipment of goods across the ocean, so it could be another couple weeks or another month before it all gets here. Why, we wonder, can’t this shipment be tracked when UPS tracks absolutely everything going anywhere all over the planet? The arrival of our effects will just have to be a surprise.

John is still enjoying his job, and now that he is out of the hotel he lived in for a month and back in the house, he describes his adjustment back to life here as “seamless.” Erin’s experience is much different. Fortunately she only had to live in a hotel for 1 ½ weeks. Even though she is living in a city she has lived in before, in a house she has lived in before, something seems weird. Just a little weird. She finally decided that things are weird because almost everything in her life is different now…except the environment, which is also not exactly the same now that she views things through eyes with 18 months of experience living on a different continent. Erin will have to find a new job, a new church, and new friends. She’ll have different colleagues, different volunteer opportunities, and a different schedule than she ever did when she lived here before. She’s even driving a different car. This is all not much different than we expected; the one thing we are certain of in life is that there will always be changes.

Monday, February 26, 2007

Moving Already

It just doesn't seem that long ago since we were writing blogs about figuring out how to use the washer and dryer and dealing with waterfalls in the bathroom. Now I'm already writing about packing up to move away! Tomorrow the movers come to pack and load up our belongings. And even 18 months later, we are still dealing with frustrating household mishaps.

This week, Erin has already had adventures in defrosting the freezer, breaking the kitchen ceiling light fixture, and trying to use up the money on our chip cards with little success. And it's only Monday.

So, really the only thing left in the freezer by Saturday night were some salmon fillets (after Erin threw away almost everything else). Our freezer is only three drawers, not very big. Erin figured it couldn't take that long to defrost the thing, so she wrapped the salmon in paper and towels to insulate it as well as possible and stuck it in the fridge while she defrosted the freezer. After a couple hours, it looked as if the freezer shelves might not all defrost as fast as she had first imagined. About half the freezer had thawed in the first 30 minutes, but the last 1 1/2 shelves seemed pretty solidly frozen. The salmon would not last all night in the fridge. Since it was already 11 p.m., Erin decided to take action. A hairdryer melted the rest of the freezer shelves in about 15 minutes flat, and the salmon was saved. In fact, Erin enjoyed some of the salmon for dinner last night since, after all, there isn't much time left to enjoy it anyway!

Erin didn't really break the kitchen ceiling light fixture...it just stopped working. The kitchen light switch turns on the ceiling fixture and some lights under the cabinets. Everything was turned on and Erin left the kitchen for a while. Then Erin returned later to the kitchen to find only the lights under the cabinets on. Hmmm. It's highly unlikely that all four bulbs went out at the same time (especially since they are all bulbs that should last for 2 years). Still, Erin ventured out today to find light bulbs (easier said than done). The stores nearest our apartment were out of the specific kind she was looking for. Erin felt pretty certain that none of the bulbs were really burned out anyway, so she only went to one other place. Thankfully, they had the bulbs. A few minutes ago, Erin tested the new light bulb theory. Sure enough...no luck. The lights still don't work. This adds a positive point to moving out this week: Erin will not have to find someone to come fix the lights, be home waiting for them to come for an entire day, and e-mail back and forth to the landlord figuring out who he wants to use to fix this problem and who pays for it.

The chip cards are another story. Our bank cards have chips in them that we load with money, so we can use it like cash. Erin has had a hard time getting the cards to work in the machines she tried to use, and not many stores actually take payment by chip (at least not the stores Erin frequents). And now that she is busy organizing things and getting ready to leave, she doesn't really have all that much time to go shopping. Guess we will have the delight of dealing with the bank here in the Netherlands for some time after we are back living in the U.S.

We're sure the next few days will hold more fun and surprises. Unfortunately, after the movers come, Erin will no longer have her computer. So, sadly, this is the final post coming to you from the Netherlands. After all the moving craziness, we will have time to post more on our reflections of the last 18 months. Suffice it to say for now that our European Adventures have definitely changed us. We look forward to the next great adventure!

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Gezellig

As Erin was riding her bike home from church last Sunday she passed mostly residential areas: apartment complexes and attached single housing units. There is something about the way the old housing with the small front gardens and large windows looks that makes Erin feel…gezellig. That’s the best word for it. It is a Dutch word that is a combination of feeling warm, comfortable, cozy, intimate, and sociable. In a country where cold, damp weather and gray skies dominate the environment, feeling gezellig, creating gezelligheid, is really important.

Erin hopes she can always remember the way it feels to live in and see others living in cozy, small spaces filled with lamplight, candles, plants and coffee cups. Especially on Sunday when Erin was on her bike, she could look in many of the houses and see small groups of people sitting together around the dining table eating brunch, drinking coffee, and reading the paper. Gezellig.

Last night Erin had her last meeting with her counseling team of volunteers from the church. There was lamplight, coffee, typical Dutch cake from Hema (chocolate!), and lively discussion in the apartment of one of the team members. When the Dutch are involved and topics like politics, faith, and religion are brought up, it’s always lively! It was gezellig. And it was a great way for Erin to wrap up some more of her job here in Amsterdam, feeling very much appreciated, though a bit sad to be leaving.

Sunday, February 18, 2007

Are You Packing Yet?

Erin has been asked this question at least twice a day for the last week. There are still eight whole days, plus this evening, until the movers come to get our things from the apartment in Amsterdam. And technically Erin doesn't have to pack anything except the bags she is taking with her on the airplane.

And just in case anyone is unaware of Erin's timeline for packing, we can clarify: she usually just packs late the night before an early flight or a couple hours before leaving the day of a trip. In fact, it works out well for both of us since John's packing style is pretty much the same.

Speaking of bags on the airplane...does anyone have even the least clue how many bags or what the weight limit is on a flight, first on BA from the Netherlands to the UK and then on AA from the U.K. to the U.S.? Seriously, could airlines make it any more complicated to figure out what you can take with you when you travel? Before John's flight a week or so ago we even talked to a travel agent who spent 30 minutes calling airlines and then still was not sure what to tell John about his luggage!

On a different note, Erin went with some friends to see The Good Shepherd last night. Apparently this came out some time ago in the U.S., but it is a recent release in Amsterdam. One of the previews was for Freedom Writers (probably also already out in the U.S., but still waiting for release here in the Netherlands). Basically the entire trailer revolves around talk of gangs, shootings, and racial violence. Now Erin completely understands why at least four people in the last week have mentioned "all the guns" when she tells them she is moving back to the U.S., to Dallas. Honestly, with the way cities in the U.S. are portrayed in movies, it's no wonder most Europeans say they would be afraid to live in America.

It was also educational to watch a movie about the American CIA in a room filled with Dutch people. There was a quote in the movie when the main character is asked by an Italian American what Americans "have" since other people of various cultures and ethnicities in the U.S. (Italians, African Americans, etc.) have their own music, religion, etc. The main character answers, "We have the United States of America. The rest of you people are just visiting." There was a bit of laughter, soft gasps, and some sounds of disgust...not too much reaction, but noticeable. Can't help but wonder what the reaction is among audiences in America. Erin then realized that Europeans, even the Dutch, and probably some people in every country in the world, suffer from this same prideful, prejudicial nationalism. In Holland it's a dislike of all the immigrants from Turkey, Africa, even America, who refuse to learn Dutch. Perhaps the reaction of disgust over those "prejudiced, prideful Americans" was quick and rather tame because everyone knows it is not an entirely American phenomenon to think more highly of yourself than everyone who is different from you. In fact, it is precisely this pervasive human attitude that causes so much trouble around the world.

The movie raised the issue, but no answers were given. Guess we'll have to come up with those on our own. To be fair to the movie, the tidbit of the movie discussed here was not at all the main story line or subject of the movie. And for those of you who haven't seen the movie - be warned, it is quite long. Pretty good, but long.

Oh, and if you're thinking of going to a movie in the Netherlands, you'd better just wait your turn in line to get into the theater because the ticket-taker guy will admonish you for cutting in front of people. We don't understand much Dutch, but we did understand that much when some people in front of us were being chastised for not following the rules. Always, always follow the rules in this country!

Sunday, February 11, 2007

John Has Left the Country


Goodbye, John!
Originally uploaded by john_and_erin_rogers.
After taking John to the airport bright and early (or actually dark and early) Saturday morning, Erin returned home to live her last two and half weeks in Amsterdam. The fact that John has now moved back to the U.S. and is never coming back to live in our apartment in Amsterdam was quite sad. Even though Erin is here for another two and a half weeks, things have already changed. Much of regular life here in the Netherlands is over already.

John made it back to Dallas safe and sound Saturday afternoon around 2:30. He enjoyed a pleasant conversation (in English!) with his taxi driver and went over to his parents' house to pick up some clothes he had left there. The commotion started already as John pushed the wrong buttons on the house alarm, didn't shut it off in time, and had to endure the loud sirens and a call from the security company. Everything was settled quickly and easily, so it wasn't too big of a deal.

John figured going out to dinner with his Grandmother was a good idea, not only for company and a nice visit, but also to help him stay awake Saturday evening! Between dinner last night and breakfast this morning, John has already eaten Mexican food twice since his return to Texas!

When John woke up at 2 a.m. last night he decided to watch some TV. It's much safer to do this in the U.S. in the middle of the night; late night TV in Europe is rife with "adult" material. To John's dismay he was confronted with commercials every 10 minutes! In the Netherlands we got so used to watching movies uninterrupted by commercials for at least 30 or 40 minutes at a time. We may never get used to the American commercial phenonmenon. Movies for us will now always be on DVD or in the movie theater!

While John is back to a pleasant work environment on jobs where he knows what to expect, Erin is in a kind of two-week mourning period waiting to move from Amsterdam without any idea of what lies ahead in her life. Well, of course she'll live in Dallas again, but there's no certainty about a job or anything else that will fill up her time and life. It's funny how stressful life is living in a foreign country... and how sad you are when it's time to leave. And even after all the stress and difficulties, we look back over the last 18 months and think what great opportunities we experienced, what fun we had, and what great adventures we took part in! We guess it's these memories that leave the door open for us to want to do something like this again.

Thursday, February 08, 2007

February 8, 2007


February 8 Snow
Originally uploaded by john_and_erin_rogers.
So, this is the weather we've been having all day. Erin got to ride her bike to work in the snow - that's something she won't have a chance to do in Dallas! It snowed pretty much all afternoon, from about 11:30 a.m. until 3:30. Snow is something we'll miss seeing back in Texas!

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Snow!

It’s been snowing in Amsterdam a bit. Unfortunately, it hasn’t really been that cold recently so the snow just melts as soon as it hits the ground. Somehow between driving all over creation for various jobs yesterday John missed seeing all the snow. Today he is back in the office with no heater while the temperatures outside hover around 30. Maybe in this case it’s a good thing that it has not snowed yet today because watching snow fall outside while trying to function in a 45-degree room with no heater would not be fun.

John’s time in Amsterdam is quickly coming to a close. After these last few weeks he will be happy to move back to a place where offices all have appropriate temperature control devices. He did get a nice send-off yesterday from the team he works with in Apeldoorn…a good reminder for him that his work in the Netherlands was not in vain. We now have a very nice coffee table book of Palais Het Loo with nice notes written in it from John’s coworkers, a tin of koekjes, also known as cookies (which Erin will get to either eat or ship back since John is leaving in only two days), a bag of drop, also know as licorice (which Erin is enjoying since John sincerely dislikes drop), and a beautiful arrangement of orange roses and astramaria (appropriate since orange is the national color).

Even though John must leave in a couple days, Erin will be here until March so she is trying not to dwell too much on the sadness of leaving. Of course, it will help that by the time March rolls around she will be ready to reunite with her husband, even if it means leaving Amsterdam.
It has taken almost 18 months, but Erin spoke entirely in Dutch this afternoon to the lady at the post office, informing her that she had a letter to mail and needed an extra 5-cent stamp (now that postal rates have increased). Erin is confident that with more practice and perhaps another year here, she could really speak Dutch. (Maybe that’s just wishful thinking and high hopes in light of the fact that she will not be here another year or even another month!)

Saturday, January 27, 2007

Koffie


One more month before the movers come to pack up our stuff and ship it back to the U.S. Before we start getting too sad and reminiscing about the past 18 months, we need to write a blog dedicated to the phenomenon of koffie (coffee) in the Netherlands.


John sometimes wonders to himself what on earth he will do at work in the U.S. when he is not being asked every 15 minutes if he would like something to drink. The reason the question comes so often during a day at work is twofold: 1) apparently the Dutch need to have about 5 liters of coffee in their system each day, and 2) the coffee cups one uses at the office are about the size of a Dixie cup. Now, if anyone in the room would like a cup of coffee (or tea or water or hot chocolate), he or she must go around the entire room and offer to get something to drink for everyone. John has seen coworkers interrupt phone conversations to ask the all-important question: what would you like to drink? And this is why John avoids needing a cup of water during his work day; he could never remember what all of his colleagues ordered to drink! The choices are endless: espresso, coffee with sugar, coffee with milk, coffee with milk and sugar, cappuccino, decaf coffee...there are seriously about 40 buttons on the coffee machines at work.


Because the coffee-getting ritual is observed so fervently around the country, certain conveniences have been invented to make the process easier. (One of the conveniences, unfortunately, is not larger cups.) The cardboard cup holder pictured here is necessary to cart all the cups back from the coffee machine. The question in red, by the way, says, "Will you get coffee?" This brings up the second convenience invented for the coffee-getting process.


Obviously it gets frustrating if the same person in the office ends up getting coffee for everyone about 10 times a day when other people, like John, refuse to ever get thirsty so as to avoid trying to remember what everyone wants from the machine. Douwe Egberts, the big coffee company here in the Netherlands that supplies most of the huge coffee machines in business places, has come up with Koffiemanager software for you computer! This ingenious program can be added to multiple computers in a room and will randomly choose different people at regular intervals to go get coffee for everyone. Furthermore, the program takes the stress out of having to remember what everyone orders. A pop-up will ask everyone with the software what they want to drink and deliver all the choices to the person who is assigned to go get the coffee!


Because John changes work groups so often, he has not been in the position of being able to utilize the Douwe Egberts Koffiemanager software. He may have used the cup holders a few times, but all in all John has remarkably avoided going to get drinks for the most part. Erin works in a church, so there is no €500 coffee machine available, and everyone buys their own coffee pads to use in the Senseo machine. The congregation might have a problem if they found out they were financing a Douwe Egberts super deluxe coffee machine at the church office (although the staff would probably be grateful if anyone would like to specifically donate one).

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Evacuate Immediately, and Grab the Valuables on Your Way Out


Here's another update about our little Dutch hurricane, which has apparently is now named "Cyril" (don't ask us how to pronounce that)... Although John wasn't in the EY office today, he got regular email updates about the various states of peril its occupants were in as the day progressed. It all started late in the morning when the first email came through to inform everybody that the police department had "taken control" of the EY parking garage and nobody was permitted to enter the area under any circumstances. Later, after windows began blowing out of cars, five members of the fire department came to the scene and remained on standby for the afternoon.

We should stop here to explain that a new 20-story EY office building is currently being constructed next door to the current one, and before today they were almost finished putting in the windows. Depending on who you ask in the office, some, most, or all of the windows have now blown out or are broken. Considering the hazardous effects of little bits of glass flying at 60+ miles an hour, they decided to lock down the office. This didn't last long, because shortly thereafter, pieces of the old building also started falling down. The last email that came through says that the fire department ordered the building to be evacuated, presumably because the structural integrity of the building was in question. We hope the buildilng is still standing in the morning.

Severe Weather Update

Let us update you on the weather we're having today: hurricane. Yep. Hurricane-force winds and downpours are ravaging northern Europe. There's even an article on CNN if you're interested in the gritty details. The government is urging people not to ride bikes, as most of the bikes are being blown over and even flipping people around backwards. John has the car (and did not have to drive on any major freeways), so he had an easy time getting to work this morning. Erin's trips to and from work were not so easy. Luckily, she did opt NOT to try to ride her bike to work today. However, there are so many public transportation accidents and break-downs that it took an hour to take the trams to work rather than the usual 25-30 minutes. The trams had pretty much stopped running by the time she left work this evening, so she ended up taking a bus and then walking about 15 minutes to the apartment. The walk wasn't so bad as she tried to sheild herself from the hurricane-force winds as much as possible against buildings. The most dangerous part was avoiding getting hit by empty aluminum soda cans and other debris flying through the air at 50 mph.

Although John got to work before the worst part of this storm hit, he might have trouble getting home tonight. Officials are telling people not to drive unless they absolutely have to because the wind is flipping autos over on the freeways and there is a lot of dangerous debris (like parts of buildings, 100-foot trees, pieces of wall along the freeway) flying about. John has told everyone at work that he's not letting any of them leave for their own safety. Of course, John's been working until midnight anyway, so maybe by then it will be a bit calmer.

If you're interested in pictures, here are some that were taken before it got dark today. Erin would take a picture of the large pine tree that blew over behind our apartment and is now about five feet from our kitchen window (blowing dangerously close sometimes), but it was dark by the time she got home to discover the situation.

In the words of John, it's "Commotion!"

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

The Tram

Sometimes it takes longer to get places on the tram than it does at other times. For instance, this evening on Erin's way to work the tram driver stopped at the next to the last stop for an extremely long time. Erin looked up from her book to see what was happening. There's no need to wait for a traffic light at this particular stop. What was happening?

Erin looked up to the front of the tram to see the tram driver with the driver door open, sitting sideways in her seat with one boot off while rearranging her sock. She must have had something in her boot or her sock was just uncomfortably messed up and the problem had to be dealt with immediately. The last stop was only about 1 minute down the road so Erin couldn't figure out why it was necessary to prolong the journey just for this, but nevertheless the tram was stopped while the driver was fixing her sock.

Trams can be delayed for other reasons as well, as several of Erin's coworkers attested last week. One coworker described how she was once talking on her mobile phone (not prohibited on the tram) when the tram driver stopped dead on the tracks, turned around in his seat and announced for the entire tram to hear that she was talking entirely too loud and needed to quiet down. Needless to say, she was a bit embarrassed and the tram driver would not proceed until she had promised him that she would be quieter.

Another coworker witnessed his tram driver stop at a tram stop, actually get off the tram, go into a store across the street, return to the tram with ice cream in hand, and then continue on his way.

Maybe these are just some of the reasons that the amount of time it takes Erin to get to work can vary greatly.

Oh, for those interested in the weather in Amsterdam: it has been windy! In fact, Erin saw an older lady get blown over the other day while standing too near the edge of the sidewalk by the curb. It's not fun riding a bike in the wind...unless you happen to be going with the wind (which inevitably does happen either on your way to or from wherever you're going), in which case you just hop on and don't even have to pedal!

Monday, January 15, 2007

London Trip, A Summary

London was a mixture of museums, shopping, food, and culture (we saw the musical “The Producers”). Actually, we’re not sure “The Producers” quite counts as “culture.” We stayed in Notting Hill, seeing several locations we recognized from the movie “Notting Hill.” Among the tourist attractions checked off on our list were: St. Paul’s Cathedral, Tower of London, Windsor Palace, Westminster Abby, Parliament, Big Ben, the British Museum, the National Gallery, Harrods, and Buckingham Palace. John loves London because he can talk to cashiers in English, read signs, and use the toilet for FREE. And yes, we had afternoon tea in London…at The Orangery at Kensington Palace no less. It was a wonderful trip!

Sunday, January 14, 2007

London Trip, Part III

Thankfully the Gatwick Express train was once again running on Sunday morning for our trip to the airport. We had figured that if we again had to take a coach, we would need to leave about 4 a.m. in order to get to the airport in time to catch our flight! The four of us sat at a table in the train and played Uno to pass the time and entertain ourselves on the way to the airport.

The reason we had to get back to Amsterdam on New Year’s Eve was to again witness the incredible fireworks in the city. We were about to give up hope for a great fireworks display as the rain kept coming down, but the rain stopped completely about 5 minutes till midnight. We high-tailed it out to the main street nearby and watched as people set off all kinds of crazy fireworks everywhere! It was worth coming back for! (This, by the way, has got to be one of John’s favorite holidays in Amsterdam: noise, chaos, messes, fire, and danger. Who could ask for more?)

John returned to work after New Year’s so Erin entertained her parents the rest of the week. Well, kind of. Erin and her mom got colds about Wednesday so they didn’t really feel up to doing too much. They did get to shop in Amsterdam Centrum, see the Anne Frank Huis, walk around in Vondel Park, and buy cheese. All in all it was a satisfying holiday for everyone.

Saturday, January 13, 2007

London Trip, Part II

Friday dawned cloudy, a little rainy, and cold. We headed over to St. Paul’s for the second time, though this time it wasn’t free and we did actually get to tour the entire cathedral. All four of us made it up to the first upper gallery, the Whispering Gallery, which looks down into the cathedral. Supposedly you can whisper into the dome and someone on the opposite side of the dome can hear what you say, but there were so many people and so much noise that it didn’t quite work. Erin’s parents had had enough of the stairs at that point, so they returned to the cathedral floor while we trekked up to the Stone Gallery and then to the Golden Gallery, both outside the building with views over London. I think the Golden Gallery is almost as high up as the London Eye goes! The whole experience took close to an hour with more stairs than any of the other towers we’ve had the pleasure of climbing in Europe. When we met back up with Erin’s parents we all headed over to the Tower of London.

The audio guide at the Tower of London is great! There are lots of entertaining stories about failed escape attempts and snooty prisoners held at the Tower. The downside of our visit as the extreme wind and cold. And the crowd. There were so many people that we decided right away that seeing the Crown Jewels would be near impossible. Erin and her mom had already seen the jewels before, but John was looking forward to it. Alas, the line was so long and we got there late in the day so the Tower probably would have closed before we even got in to see the Crown Jewels. The upside of our visit was that we got to see people dressed in medieval attire, playing the parts of kings, queens, court jesters, and musicians. We even got to hear the musicians play on authentic instruments the music of the medieval period. It was a satisfactory visit. Next time we’ll know to get there early in the day to see the Crown Jewels.

Friday evening we went to see the great Harrods. When we first arrived the place was a mad house (right after people got off of work), so we opted to go have some dinner and come back. On the recommendation of Erin’s sister, we tried to eat at a nearby out-of-the-way pub, but they weren’t serving dinner. We ended up just down the street at The Wilton Arms for fish ‘n’ chips and Guinness pie. Harrods was extraordinarily less crowded after food and drinks. We got to see the Egyptian Room and the Food Halls, the highlights for us since we did not really want to actually shop. Well, we did end up buying a little something…some chocolates which lasted us about a week.

On Saturday we finally made it to Parliament, Big Ben and Westminster Abby. It has become terribly complicated to get a tour of Parliament, so we settled for seeing the outside of the building. Also, it seems only U.K. citizens are allowed to go up inside Big Ben…if you apply 6 months in advance, pay a fee, arrive 30 minutes early, and leave your first-born child as a deposit before entering. We did go inside Westminster Abby. Reading the gravestones is fascinating, and of course standing in Poet’s Corner is amazing. Friday was actually quite sunny in the morning, so after Westminster Abby we roamed through St. James Park and arrived at Buckingham Palace just as the Changing of the Guard was taking place. We hadn’t planned to see the changing of the guard, which is lucky since by the time we got there we were so far away from the gates that we couldn’t see what was happening anyway. Anyway, we had already seen the incredibly long but interesting Changing of the Guard at Windsor Castle. We walked through Green Park to the underground and saw The Ritz (as filmed in “Notting Hill”) then headed off to the Portobello Road Market (also seen in the movie “Notting Hill”). Unfortunately it started raining while we were at the market and we neglected to try to find any information before we left about where to find The Travel Book Shop or the house with the blue door (from the movie “Notting Hill”), so we didn’t get through the whole market before heading back to the apartment.

One of the fun, quintessentially "London" things we did was go to afternoon tea Saturday afternoon. We stayed quite close to Kensington Palace, and The Orangery restaurant at the palace has excellent afternoon tea. It was nice to be inside out of the rain and cold for a bit while enjoying tea and scones and cake. It must have been all the walking around in the cold and rain that made us all so tired Saturday evening. We had to pack up anyway, so just got frozen pizzas at the Tesco down the street and watched “Sense and Sensibility” while eating pizza and packing Saturday night.

Thursday, January 11, 2007

London Trip, Part I


100_0922
Originally uploaded by john_and_erin_rogers.
We stayed in an apartment in Notting Hill, just a 3-minute walk from an underground station. We were all so weary when we finally arrived around 4:00 that we just went to dinner at the pub next door, The Swan, and vegged in front of the TV until we went to bed. Or tried to go to bed. We slept on the pull-out sofa bed in the living room and didn’t get much sleep. Imagine lying on a bunch of springs covered in cloth. Then imagine the whole bed as a canyon with a deep valley in the middle. Then imagine we could not figure out how to turn the heat down so it feels like summer in Texas. Not pleasant. Thankfully, the next day we discovered several extra blankets and an extra super-thick comforter. After folding these blankets and the comforter up and piling them on the bed to cover the springs and even out the canyon, we slept quite well the rest of the week.

Wednesday we were ready to go. Since the grocery stores had been closed the day before, John went to the store while we were all getting ready to go and bought stuff for us to eat for breakfast. He was absolutely delighted that he could converse with the cashier in English, something he hasn’t been able to do for a loooong time! Just a short train ride away was Windsor Castle. Erin and her mom had both been to London before, but Erin had not been to Windsor Castle, so it was new to three of the four of us. The free audio guides were great, and John said it was the best castle he’d been to, mostly because it is actually in use and seems quite new compared to the medieval castles we’ve been visiting lately. We attempted to have some lunch at a pub, but when we went up to the bar the bartender told us the cook was not making anymore food right now because he was too busy. Hmmm. OK. We ended up getting pasties in town near the train station, and they were quite tasty.

Since it was still the Christmas season, St. Paul’s Cathedral had a “Christmas Carols and Readings” service that we went to Wednesday evening. Even though the choir was much smaller than expected (only about 10 of them), it was awesome to be at a service in that cathedral. After the service, in search of sustenance, we wandered into Piccadilly Circus. After perusing the Trocodero we finally found a place to eat, Adam’s Rib, and had some good old pork ribs. John mentioned that he’s like to see Tower Bridge at night, so we headed out there after dinner. We ended up getting some pretty good night pictures of the bridge and walked along the Thames before calling it a day.

We had claimed Thursday as theatre day, so after breakfast at the apartment, we went to stand in line at the tkts booth in Leicester Square to get some half-price musical tickets. There wasn’t a lot of choice for shows that day and we ended up with tickets to “The Producers” playing at the Drury Lane Theatre. The show was OK, but not fantastic. We’ve heard the cast in New York is much better. After purchasing our tickets, we made a quick trip to Starbucks for some coffee, hot chocolate, and the bathroom. We did not have to pay to a use one single toilet the entire week! Another reason John loves England!

We then headed over to see Trafalgar Square and visited some highlights at the National Gallery. That museum is far too big to even see in an entire day. Since we had limited time, we just marched around looking at the most famous pieces and glancing at the galleries we were walking through. Next on our list was the British Museum. We stopped to have some lunch on our way at a café called Munchkins. The tables inside were all taken, and since it wasn’t too terribly cold we opted to just sit at the two tiny tables outside. The food wasn’t awesome or anything and people kept looking at us funny sitting outside in December, but it really wasn’t too cold and we got to people-watch. Erin decided that we and our families are not the only people on the planet who agonize over finding a place to eat while on vacation. Several groups of people stopped in front of Munchkins, perused the menu, had some discussion for a few minutes, argued about when/where/what to eat, and either headed off in search of yet another café or shuffled inside for some lunch. The British Museum was a whirlwind. Again, there is soooo much to see. We saw the highlights of the Greek and Roman rooms, the Africa exhibit, the money exhibit, some etchings of The Nativity, and a brief walk through the Americas rooms. Pretty good for a little less than 2 hours!

We had dinner that night at a restaurant near the Drury Lane Theatre: Sarastro. It was a Turkish restaurant, and although the food wasn’t spectacular, we got crackers to open and the décor in the place was astounding! It was a bit gaudy and over the top, but quite an experience. The musical was not quite astounding. We enjoyed ourselves, though, and the bit in the second act portraying the musical “Springtime for Hitler” (the musical “The Producers” put on in the musical) was absolutely hilarious!

A Second Visit to Amsterdam

Erin’s parents came to see us over Christmas. This is their second trip to Amsterdam, so things were a little less rushed since they’d already been here before. It was nice to have some family in town on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. In true Rogers fashion, we neglected to actually check the service times on Sunday for the Christmas Eve services at church. Nevermind that Erin is on staff at the church and has been involved in numerous meetings outlining the goings-on for Christmas Eve. We decided to go to the 8:30 p.m. service after enjoying our dinner. At about 7:55 Erin found a schedule of the service times and noted that the service actually started at 8:00. We left immediately, thinking we would only be about 10 or 15 minutes late. After arriving closer to 20 minutes late, we found that the doors to the auditorium were closed and the men standing by the door were explaining that the room was at capacity and it would be a fire hazard to let anymore people in. We guess the 8:00 service just wasn’t meant to be. We decided to drive back to the apartment, open gifts, have something warm to drink and come back for the 10:00 service. Everything turned out OK in the end. John was just a bit sad after hearing that there was indeed a false fire alarm during the 8:00 service and everyone had to exit the building; he hates to miss chaos! There was no chaos at the 10:00 service.

The day after Christmas, 2 Kerstdag in the Netherlands and Boxing Day in the U.K., the four of us left to fly to London for the remainder of the week. Erin’s mom had purchased tickets ahead of time for the train that takes us straight from the airport into London, so we were planning to get to our apartment around 2:00 p.m. Alas, the train company decided the week after Christmas would be the best time to do repair work on the tracks. The express train was not running and we had to take coaches instead. What was supposed to be a 30-minute train ride would now take at least 2 hours on the roads. The most memorable part of the trip was the first 30 minutes or so as the heater in the coach was turned on full blast and all of us thought we were going to die of the heat! Finally one woman went to ask the driver if the air conditioning could be turned on and we rode in comfort the rest of the way to Victoria Station.

Upon arriving at Victoria Station, we went to the information desk to see about buying travel cards for the underground. The man waiting on us at the desk was the absolute nastiest, meanest, rudest person we have ever encountered. After getting angry that he was just about to leave when we walked in, he then got angry about our method of payment and the number of cards we were buying, and told us we should just leave London! Fortunately, the transaction got finished and we never met another person that rude the entire rest of the week.

The story of London will have to be chronicled in parts. Let’s face it, we are going to write about our adventures in great detail for our own benefit rather than yours (unless you are planning a trip to London and want tips on what to do). We are aware that many of our readers will just skip the next entries because they could care less what we ate and how many stairs we climbed to get to the top of St. Paul’s. That’s fine. We’ll provide a quick summary for all of you.

Monday, January 08, 2007

Gelukkig Nieuw Jaar!

That’s “Happy New Year!” in Dutch, and thanks to the people sitting in front of us in church yesterday, we now know how to properly pronounce it.

As a follow-up to the previous blog, we need to say that the door-buzzer issue was quickly solved the Friday before Christmas with a 30-minute visit from the door system people. The guy didn’t even charge us for his time (Merry Christmas!), but he did leave us with the bad news that the system is really old, the wires are not good anymore, and the entire door system will go “any day now.” So far it’s been two weeks and everything is still working!

Also, a new shower curtain of the right size was obtained before the parents got here. Well, it was almost the right size. This time it was wide enough for the shower stall but much too long. That problem was easily solved with some scissors.

Erin’s computer at work is now back in order, although the “computer guy” is beginning to think Erin is bad luck for the computers there since she has already completely fried one CPU, jammed the printer, and keeps getting her internet locked up. Apparently no one else on the staff has these numerous problems with their computers!

The TV is a sad story that we would prefer to not talk about, but we must keep our waiting audience updated! After messing around with the remote control menu buttons and punching random options (all in Dutch), Erin got the digital box to reprogram itself. Now we get almost as many channels as we originally received, most of which are now completely in Dutch. CNN still has no sound and one of our favorite channels that airs tons of U.S. sitcoms and good movies is mysteriously missing in the channel lineup. Actually several channels have no sound, but on those channels it’s just as well since we can’t understand a word they’re saying in Dutch anyway. We still have not received a new box in the mail, as promised. Also, we think we’re going to be charged for this “new” television service on a monthly basis despite the lack of “service” that we’re receiving.

Erin’s parents just left Saturday to go back to the U.S. after a two-week visit. Our adventures during their visit will be in another blog. Stay tuned!