Today is day 365 making tomorrow our Amstiversary. I thought I would ask the family about the last year and get their thoughts. Here you go, unfiltered.
What is your favorite thing about living in Holland?
Charlie: Is the computer closed?
Beverly: Playing here with my friends
Cameron: The new games
Ryan: Living in a more walkable city allows me to wander more on my own
Mom: The many farms
Dad: So many fun activities, events, and different attractions that are so close
What is your least favorite thing about living in Holland?
Charlie: yes, I think it needs to be closed. Is the computer closed?
Beverly: Going to school
Cameron: The bikes. They are horrible.
Ryan: Not having a lot of friends close by
Mom: That everything is a lot harder to do
Dad: Even though everyone "speaks" English, nothing is easy. Making copies at the store takes 10 times as long
What do you miss the most about living in the U.S.?
Charlie: Yea, you are wet. I don't think so.
Beverly: The pools and the beds
Cameron: Pet stores
Ryan: Chick-fil-a and my friends
Mom: Convenience
Dad: Easy access to fast food
What is the best thing here that the U.S. does not have?
Charlie: unintelligable response
Beverly: huh? dog and dollies
Cameron: Albert Heijn (the main grocery store)
Ryan: I have more international friends; best friends are from Italy, Japan, and New Zealand
Mom: Fruits and vegetables are so much fresher and taste better
Dad: I love the bike paths that connect everything and everywhere
What have you learned while living in Holland?
Charlie: Ring around the rosie
Beverly: Gymnastics, English and Dutch
Cameron: Do not smoke
Ryan: You have to be pushy to get on the buses
Mom: The Dutch always tell you no first or that it is not possible, when it really is
Dad: It is very difficult to learn Dutch, but I think part of that is that everyone speaks so much English
Where is your favorite place you have been?
Charlie: I been to Starfall
Beverly: I don't know. Staying here
Cameron: Italy, Canary Islands
Ryan: Menorca, Paris, and Germany
Mom: Menorca
Dad: Menorca was pretty amazing for a family vacation, but I think my favorite place was Rome
How long should we live here?
Charlie: All over the world.
Beverly: 1 Day?
Cameron: 1 Month
Ryan: 2 years at the least
Mom: Till they make us go home
Dad: As long as we can because the U.S. is getting crazy
Where do you want to move next?
Charlie: Next a tent
Beverly: Atlanta
Cameron: Back to Georgia
Ryan: Mexico
Mom: To a farm
Dad: I'm pretty open. I'd love to try another expat role or move back to Georgia
Who are some of your friends?
Charlie:Will that be friends? Starfall.
Beverly: Olivia, Lola, Brooks, Alessia
Cameron: Alex
Ryan: Indy, Carlotta, Hikari, Lucy
Mom: Sonja, Zoe, Bonnie, Jennifer, and more
Dad: Cary
Where is your favorite place to eat?
Charlie: I eat strawberries.
Beverly: The hot dog restaurant
Cameron: Burger King, no, McDonalds
Ryan: Home
Mom: Dignita
Dad: Buenos Aires Grill
What is your favorite Dutch food?
Charlie: I think of food in a bowl
Beverly: Ice Cream, cereal, apples, bananas and crackers
Cameron: Cheese, no, oliballen
Ryan: Oliballen
Mom: Goat cheese and gouda
Dad: Gouda cheese
What is your favorite Dutch tradition?
Charlie: Tradition is a word
Beverly: Playing and having fun together, and having a picnic with my friends
Cameron: I don't know
Ryan: I like King's Day, St. Maarten's Day, and Sinterklas
Mom: St. Maarten's Day
Dad: 2nd Christmas
The World is a Book, and Those Who Do Not Travel Read Only A Page - St Augustine
Thursday, July 28, 2016
Tuesday, July 26, 2016
Amsterdam Day 363: Menorca Day 5: Fiesta
More beaches, more sand, more fun. More of the same. Except in the evening we decided to drive 15 minutes to a town on the coast that was having a celebration of some sort, the Fiesta of Sant Jaume. We never did quite figure it out. But it revolves around horses some how.
As far as we could tell, there were two main parts while we were there. Apparently the party goes well into the night, but we with kids did not make it that long. This part is the cavalcade, where some people in horses march around the city. I'm sure they are important somehow. But it looks like people line the street, some in front of the horses, until the horse stands on its hind legs, and then people push the side of the horse to make sure it does not land on anyone. Athough it seems like those are the people to most likely be landed on. It might be a better idea to just stand back a little, but hey, what do I know.
The other part of the party seems to be a "parade." I say "parade" in quotes because there wasn't really people watching. They were more all apart of the parade marching along in front of, within, and following the giant figures.
The big giant people were pretty cool looking, especially when they turned and danced. It was definitely an experience.
The parade route seemed to go throughout the whole town. Each block seemed to be decorated differently. And bars and restaurants had people hanging out of them partaking of the goods that were being sold. Music was everywhere from the bands in the parade or just blaring from the radio.
Here is a small clip of our experience.
Saturday, July 23, 2016
Amsterdam Day 362: Menorca Day 2: Beaches
We have explored some pretty great amazing beaches in Menorca. The kids favorite so far has been Binidalí. It is a really small beach set in the large cove area. The best part about this beach is that it has some great rocks right around the corner for catching hermit crabs. Another arguably good part, is because this is a smaller beach and more secluded, it has more topless women than other beaches we have seen. Ryan is the only one that seemed to notice. The rest of the kids couldn't be bothered to pay attention. There were hermit crabs to be caught.
The beach we visited today is Cala Galdana. It is a much larger beach but still almost surrounded completely by high cliffs. Not so great for Cameron though because there was no place to get hermit crabs. But a lot less topless women. Still many, but a lot less. We were able to rent a paddle boat with a slide on top. We took that for an hour and had a blast siding down it into the very deep bay. So much fun. And I'd say we have done an excellent job of protecting our children from the sun this trip. No major sunburns. I guess it helps when you reapply and use SPF50.
The toplessness has been something that has surprised us quite a bit. When we were in the Canary Islands, we did see a bit of toplessness, but nowhere to the extend that we have on this trip. Here is a photo to show to those that may have not traveled to Spain and visited a beach. I'm guessing that there are quite a few people that will be a bit surprised
Of the five women in this picture, from three different groups of people, four of them are topless. And this was just the group that I could take a picture of without looking too creepy. But as I mentioned before, only Ryan noticed. And she made sure to tell us how disgusted she was.
And just so you know that it is not limited to lying on the beach, here is a girl just walking by. The strangest one was a group of people with a paddle hitting a ball back and forth. But then not to be outdone, a little further out, we found three men completely nude. Thankfully Ryan only saw their backsides and she was absolutely completely disgusted. I on the other hand was not so lucky. And I got a full frontal view. Beaches in Spain are a little bit different.
And now you know why we have been to Spain three times in the last 12 months.
Amsterdam Day 361: Menorca Day 1: Our Place
We love Spain. We have lived in Europe for almost a year now and we have decided that we love to vacation in Spain. The language is easy, since I speak Spanish. It's cheap,
compared to the Netherlands. The architecture is amazing, compared to the States. The people are nice, compared to the French. And the beaches are almost as good as the Caribbean. So we found ourselves in Spain for the third time in the last 12 months. This time, the tiny island in the Mediterranean, Menorca. That is the lesser island next to Mallorca. But it has more beaches, less parties, and is much more laid back.
Airbnb is now our favorite booking tool for a place on Europe. Lots of hotels only have rooms for 2 people and charge a lot more for extra people. And I have a lot of extra people. The place we got turned out to be down this long country road. Cool rock walls lined the road. It turns out that when they were clearing the land for farms, they had to move a lot of volcanic rocks. And what do you do when you have a lot of volcanic rocks. You can either put them in a big pile or you can make a wall. So they made walls and walls and walls, all over the island. All made from this cool volcanic rock.
We pulled up to the end of this country road to find this amazing house in the middle of this grand estate. We only got the bottom floor, but it is huge. And as you can see, it has a pool, and a pretty great one at that.
And one of the best features is the jacuzzi in one room, next to the sauna.
The owners live upstairs. And they have been great. There are two horses on the estate, and he let us ride them around a bit. I was excited about this cause it saved me a lot of money from having to go pay more for horse riding. And the kids can take over the leftover watermelon or apples and feed the horses. The peacocks are next to the horse stables.
It turns out that our apartment was for the live-in workers of the estate when the people had real money. Now they just have good amounts of money and they cannot afford to have a full-time staff of 10 attend to the fields, gardens, stables, etc. The place still looks amazing, but you can tell that at its peak, it was "Count of Monte Cristo" amazing.
Thursday, July 21, 2016
Amsterdam Day 359: Hoge Veluwe National Park and a Broken Arm
Hoge Veluwe National Park is in the middle of the Netherlands in a province called Gelderland. When I think of Gelderland, I think of the neighboring country in The Princes Bride. And Friesland is the province to the north. It also sound like it could be a country as a made up location in a book.
The story about the national park is that a couple wanted some land. He wanted hunting ground. She wanted art and culture. So they made a huge land for hunting with an amazing art museum in the middle, which contains the second largest collection of Van Gogh's (after the actual Van Gogh Museum).
When you arrive at the National Park, you park and then select your bikes for the journey through the park. All the adult bikes have a child seat behind them for storing a child or a purse. And there are plenty of kids bikes also. And we took off on our journey around the park. We first went to the sand dunes. That turned out to be pretty lame. So we then went to the hunting lodge, which looked cool but was also pretty lame. About five kilometers in we stopped at a field to sit. Cam started chasing butterflies (they turned out to just be a little too fast for him) and we made whistles out of long blades of grass. That was not lame.
We continued on to the main area with a restaurant and pretty cool playground. About 10 minutes playing at the playground, Ryan ran up to me to tell me that Cam had fallen from one of the toys and was screaming his head off. We decided that we would leave at this point and go home. But we still had to bike 3 kilometers to get back to the car with every moment Cam was in excruciating pain (or to him what is excruciating pain but is probably actually not much). Once we arrived home, Jaimee took a look (since she had not come along on this adventure) and determined that it needed an X-ray. And thus begins out first experience with a Dutch ER.
We were in an out in 2 hours 30 minutes with the cast in place. All in all not too bad. But the big problem was that we were about to head to Menorca, Spain for vacation. And a swimming holiday does not really work well with a caste. We will have to figure that one out later.
In case anyone is keeping track, Cam is 6 and has had a broken leg and arm now, both the right ones. And stitches once. He's tracking to be as careless as my brother Daniel when he was young.
Wednesday, July 20, 2016
Amsterdam Day 358: 14 Year Anniversary
Yesterday was our 14th Wedding Anniversary. It has been 14 years since I married the most wonderful woman in the world. I have no idea what I would do without her in my life. I don't think that she quite understands how she makes me whole and makes me a better person. I think the song A Woman Like You by Lee Brice pretty much sums up the way I feel.
Last night out of the blue
Driftin' off to the evenin' news
She said "Honey, what would you do
"If you'd have never met me"
I just laughed, said "I don't know,
"But I could take a couple guesses though"
And then tried to dig real deep,
Said, "Darlin', honestly
"I'd do a lot more offshore fishin'
"Probably eat more drive-thru chicken
"Take a few strokes off my golf game
"If I'd a never known your name
"I'd still be drivin' that old yellow 'Nova
"I probably never would have heard of yoga
"Be a better football fan
"But if I was a single man
"Alone and out there on the loose
"I'd be lookin' for a woman like you"
Well, I could tell that got her attention
So I said, "Oh yeah, I forgot to mention
"I wouldn't trade a single day
"For a hundred years the other way"
She just smiled and rolled her eyes
'Cause she's heard all of my lines
I said, "C'mon on girl, seriously
"If I hadn't been so lucky
"I'd be shootin' pool in my bachelor pad
"Playin' bass in my cover band
"Restockin' up cold Bud Ligh
"For poker every Tuesday night, yeah
"I'd have a dirtbike in the shed
"And not one throw pillow on the bed
"I'd keep cash in a coffee can
"But if I was a single man
"Alone and out there on the loose
"I'd be looking for a woman like you"
She knows what a mess I'd be if I didn't have her here
But to be sure, I whispered in her ear
"You know I get sick deep-sea fishin'
"And you make the best fried chicken
"I got a hopeless golf game
"I love the sound of your name
"I might miss that old green 'Nova
"But I love watchin' you do yoga
"I'd take a gold band on my hand
"Over bein' a single man
"'Cause honestly, I don't know what I'd do
"If I'd never met a woman like you"
I love this woman so much. And I know that if she was not in my life, I'd be searching for a woman like her. I love you Jaimee Kartchner. So I guess I do know what is be doing if she wasn't in my life.
Saturday, July 16, 2016
Amsterdam Day 368: Awesome Farms
The Netherlands is home to some great interactive farms, which is wonderful. I am getting so many fun ideas!
And I have written this post 6 times, but blogger keeps shutting down. And I am not writing another dang thing. The pics are cute. We boated and rode horses and the goats ate our hair and if this feking thing doesn't save I am never writing about it and this blogger crap can go to he double hockey sticks.
Monday, July 11, 2016
Amsterdam Day 349: Witches Weigh House
They have been weighed. They have been measured. And my children have been found to be witches.
Today we visited the Witches Weighhouse in Oudewater.
Oudewater is famous for the Heksenwaag(Witches’ scales). This Weighing house, an official town building, became famous during the 16th century because people accused of witchcraft were offered an honest chance of proving their innocence. In many cities and countries such trials were usually rigged, resulting in the burning or drowning of hundreds of innocent people.
Many people accused of witchcraft from all over Europe (or at least, those who could afford the trip) made a head-over-heels trip to Oudewater to avoid being burned at a stake. After the weighing, they received an official certificate proclaiming them not a witch. Although nobody was ever found to be an actual witch in Oudewater, the weighings were still a public spectacle. Even today you can get a certificate that “your body weight is in proportion to your build.” The reasoning behind this is the old belief that a witch has no soul and therefore weighs significantly less than an ordinary person; this distinction allows the witch to fly on a broomstick.
So in medieval times when accusations of witchcraft (and resultant burnings) were prevalent, the town of Oudewater offered the accused a chance of proving his or her innocence. This was more special than it sounds. It is a sign of the growing power of a third force next to church and nobility, i.e. citizens. In a bid for total domination, the witchhunts were sanctioned by the church to break the power of the local herb doctors (especially the females). The citizens of Oudewater therefore were, simply by being honest, defying the church.
Officially, my children were all deemed to be the appropriate weight for their body proportions. But I still believe they are witches.
Sunday, July 03, 2016
Amsterdam Day 341: Italy vs. Germany
One of Ryan's best friends, Carlotta, is Italian. Ryan loves soccer. When Ryan found out Italy was playing a big game in the Euros, Ryan wanted to watch the game. Also, Carlotta's cousin is staying with us for a month and she is also Italian. And apparently she is a big supporter of the Italian team. We had to go watch the game at an appropriate setting (not the actual game since that was far away in France).
Forza Italia!
Ryan, Alessia, and I took of to a local bar/restaurant to watch the game. We walked in to find a 20" TV set in the corner. After a few minutes we started to discuss if we should find a new place to watch the game. Just as the discussion began, they lowered a giant screen right in front of us.
Ryan was very excited. She asked if we were in a bar to which I responded yes but that we are on the restaurant side. She didn't care. She was excited to tell all her friends that she went to a bar to watch the Italy game. What a great dad!
The game started at 9pm so Ryan had already eaten and wasn't hungry. She ordered ice cream while I ordered soup and ribs for dinner. Then she ate my bread, my French fries, two of my ribs, and then started into some of Alessia's cheesecake. But she wasn't hungry.
It was 90 minutes of heaven for Ryan. Food, soccer, rowdy Italian supporters, and her best dad ever. But alas, the game went into overtime. This was about 11pm and Ryan wasn't going to make it much longer, so we jumped on our bikes to finish watching the game at home. 30 more minutes and still no winner, so on to penalties. Italy made a really good effort, but as the common saying goes "Football is a simple game. Twenty-two men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans always win." And the Germans won. That sucks.
Amsterdam Day 342: Madurodam
Have you ever wanted to be the one to stop a leaking dyke by plugging the whole with your finger to save the village below. Well that is what we did this weekend.
Madurodam is an attraction in The Hauge that has a ton of miniature replicas of the most famous landmarks in the Netherlands. Wait, wait. It is more exciting than it sounds so far. The place has a ton of interactive areas where the kids can learn and control the miniatures things. After saving the village from the leaking dyke, we dredged a river, put out a fire on an oil tanker, drove boats through the locks, became a DJ, played soccer, flew over the Netherlands, and we pumped water away from another village.
Then we headed over to the airport to check out the operations. The Delta 747 was lodged and almost ready to go. I'm a little confused why the cargo plane was placed to pick up passengers at the terminal.
And then Godzilla came to destroy the town. At least he wanted to, but we led him away with some snacks.
It turned out to be a fun attraction and much more interactive than I ever would have imagined. They do children entertainment well here.
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