the nachttrein

a few years ago: the dutch train company started a nachtrein/nighttrain route that goes in a circle from den haag to leiden to amsterdam to utrecht to rotterdam to den haag. nice for people taking an early flight out of amsterdam. or for students who like to party late into the night. but if you start in den haag it takes a couple hours to go full circle to rotterdam, though they are relatively close to each other. anyway...

yesterday. leiden.
sinterklaas party with my dispuut. great fun, have new warm socks and candles for the house. headed home at 11:ish.
got to the leiden central train station just four minutes after a train left for den haag. had to wait for the next one, at 11:52. quickly checked with a passing trainstation worker if he knew if i would have a connecting train in den haag to zoetermeer. he said yes, one at 12:25, the last one for the night. ok, good. no worries.
waited for my train, realized two minutes before it arrived that i didn't have a ticket...oops. no time now though. didn't matter...no one checked.
bought a ticket immediately in den haag. decided to get a hot chocolate while i waited for the train. hotchocolate in one hand, newspaper in the other, headed to the usual spoor/platform where the stoptrain to utrecht leaves from; it would stop in little towns, including zoetermeer, on the way.
four ticket controllers stood there blocking the entrance. one offered to hold my hotchocolate while i fished my ticket out of my bag. nice man. joked about taking a quick coffee break, started to walk away with my chocolate. the others joked about him being such a gentleman. smiles all around, i laughed back, despite the predictability of each joke. stamped my ticket without really looking at it. i kept fishing for my ticket discount card. you get a fine if you don't show it with your discounted ticket. the man didn't need to see my discountcard, he was an old gullible man, he said. i smiled and said ok. walked away. they all laughed, "she just said ok! haha! you are old!"
got in the train, briefly checking the sign over the door. yup, train to utrecht. sat down, opened my paper, drank my hot chocolate.
somewhere in the back of my head i noted that the train was taking longer than usual to get to zoetermeer. and no stops in between. odd.
back to the newspaper... interesting article. no idea any more about what...
suddenly heard "leiden. station, leiden."
what???
quickly asked the girl across the aisle where we were.
leiden.
fuck.
this is the nachttrein.
i should have read the sign more closely.

i have a cold. i sound like i have been smoking nonstop for days. and i am tired. more than usual.
poor me.

bought sinterklaas presents today. while walking around the shopping area, we ran into two little zwarte pieten (really two white kids painted black...why dont they just dress up little black kids? save on paint?). a funny sight. cute.

we shopped for a washmachine and a tv today. kinda made me feel married.

currently wearing my new, comfy, soft, warm, extra long sweat pants that i got on a special sale cause some nice dumbass labeled it wrong but you get the price on the tag. i think it makes the pants feel extra comfy.

more wedding planning stuff today. well, this whole week.
only 27 days of this left! then the actual day will arrive and go by so fast we will wonder what all the planning was for... ah well. it will be good.

The things that keep my life interesting

*I might have to stay here illegally to be at my own wedding.

*The immigration office here keeps giving us different advice, sometimes contradictory, never really conclusive or helpful to our situation. Go figure.

*Apparently I have not paid for the course which I distinctly remember having paid which means I cannot take the exam yet that I need to take soon to get into the masters program in Feb...

*Most of our stuff is now finally moved to the house... currently piled on the floor in the dining room.

*Painting. I feel so productive when I paint. Maybe cause its the one activity from which I see immediate results. It is so simple. It makes me happy. (Though that could also come from paintingin a small room with windows closed and no fresh air...)

*The patio door opened mysteriously on its own at the apartment yesterday. The front door was open this morning at the inlaws house...where I am currently sitting, alone. All alone. (Im not scared.)

*I just made my sinterklaas gift wishlist.

officially wedded

i am legally married.
weird. i don't feel any different.
really, though, we are only half-married. maybe 28 dec i will feel like a completely different person.
i doubt it though. it's like birthdays.
cept for the whole new person moving into your house with you. i suppose that will feel strange. and good.

spanish tapas restaurants are great. (i find myself completely lacking any interesting english vocabulary. i'm losing it folks. next time you see me, i will be blubbering some combination of english dutch and spanish that make sense to no one from either lingual background...and it will least of all be interesting.).

spanish tapas restraurants are expensive. but the dishes are so good!
i can still taste the garlic.
mmm...

i have officially passed the party stage. we went out last night for birthdays of friends, ate tapas, then drank lots of beer, then went dancing. somewhere in the middle i realized that if i had one more drop of alcohol i would be spraying yummy garlic shrimp chunks over my half-husband. (yeah, that does sound weird). so i drank water for the rest of the night, despite the odd and disappointed looks from the bar tenders each time i went up for an order. apparently i look like someone they'd expect to be drinking something more exciting than water... or maybe they were hoping to have yet another girl dance like a stripper on the bar.
what is wrong with some girls anyway? do they not realize how stupid they look bouncing around with almost total lack of rythm in a lame attempt to be sexy? all they get is guys oggling their round parts. no real admiration. if you are gonna get up on the bar, at least know how to dance. or, just stay on the floor. that's an nice option too.
anywho. back to my previous point. i can't drink too much any more, and staying up till 4am just is not healthy. i am pretty much useless the next day. how did i do that before? actually, i probably was just as useless, but at that point it didn't matter... generally my roommates were in a similar state, so we just became one useless bunch together and no one noticed the fact that i had turned into a headachy blob.
ah. good times.

blushing bride

next week friday luuk and i will sign our names and our lives away to each other.
because church and state are completely separate here, marriage occurs officially in the city hall or anyother selected location where civil ceremonies are legal except never never never in a church. and of course, a pastor performed ceremony does not count.
because we seem not to be the only poor people in this country, all slots for free conduction of the civil ceremony are full from last month through the end of january, we have to pick some other random time before 2pm 28 dec.
and finally, because of some nice little glitch in the paperwork having to do either with visas or time between application for and the actual marriage, and some mis/lackofcommunication at the city hall, we have to have the civil ceremony before 28 nov.
thats fine, though we had wanted to do that part on the 21st of dec, so the two occasions wouldnt be so far apart. but really its no big deal. we see the church ceremony as THE ceremony, the one that counts. the rest is just names on a paper, the stuff we have to do for the law.
so, the plan was, take our four witnesses, sign out names, go out for pizza and have a couple beers to celebrate.
it is suprisingly difficult to get people to understand this foreign concept, however! the only people who do the civil and church ceremonies seperatly here are the royal family, and thats cause their weddings are several day long occasions...
anyway, since we picked the date last week, plans have changed a bit. parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, some cousins, and of course grandparents will be there as well, and who knows, maybe some friends. and i will be wearing a cute dress, which i still have to find but jeans is not an option, so i have been told... because of course, this is the point where we will be married. the church ceremony is symbolic, where you get your blessing from God. but once those names are signed, we are hooked. in fact, someone told me, after this point, we can even have sex! (after five years waiting...its a tempting option...which in case you were wondering, we arent considering... though... no. nope. egh. crap. i am off track.).
back to the point... which is, i am frustrated. (no double meanings intended). its really hard to keep things simple. really, i should just stop fighting it. and enjoy the festivities and details that have pushed themselves upon me in some ways.
i still refuse to consider corsages.
no one misses them anyway, right?

got a couple extra bucks?

k, i admit i saw this on oprah. but its a great idea...

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cook.

i am currently wearing a pair of socks that somehow got separated in the laundry and went through different loads...one made it to the dryer, but apparently the other didnt and itsnt fully dry. now it is sucking the warmth right out of my foot...exactly what socks are meant to do... but the other one is so warm, i hesitate to put on another pair. this semidamp one will dry in time, and then it too will warm my foot. in the meantime, i will just sit on that foot and let it suck the warmth out of my ass until its dry.

last weekend i took part in what is called the ontgroening of the first year members of NSL (navigators studentunion leiden). this is also known as the hazing period. being a christian union, it was pretty mild. mostly, it included shitty food, getting yelled at alot, and being allowed a total of 2.5hrs of sleep each night. also, we couldnt shower and they took our bags and extra clothes. se we were a very tired, smelly lot by the end. despite the hardships that we had to endure for an entire weekend, we made it through with little harm done and now are all happy ungreened aspiring members, till january when we become officially part of the club. the worst moment of the whole ordeal was standing before the committee at 4am on the last night, answering questions about the union and its history and singing songs that we had been studying for and learning the past two days. there is one particular song that you are allowed to sing if you cannot answer any question asked. its like a free pass. so, i and this other american girl who has decided to move to holland and coincidently studies a psych master at leiden and also joined NSL, practiced this song more than anything else, hoping it would be our saving card. of course, the minute we stood before the committee all the words mysteriously disappeared from my head. in the meantime, i managed to knock over a guitar, almost step on a pile of lit candles on the floor, and forgot the names and positions of each of the committee members (absolute must know). ah yes. i made a great impression.

its intersting how incredibly nervous one can get even about the things that you know really dont actually matter. the standing before the committee is really just a funny formality purely for the entertainment of the committee itself; if you do shittily, you still get in. so why the nerves? the loss of words? the blood pounding in my ears? who knows. i suppose its this weird psychological anticipation built up by role playing all weekend. we, the fetuses as we are so lovingly called, are new and ignorant and small, and must therefore listen to, respect, and obey the committee (despite the fact that i am actually older than most of them...). funny how that works. this big bunch of students allowed ourselves to be yelled at and mildly abused all weekend by five other students who have no authority over us other than that which we allowed to have.

now that i think about it, it was all pretty ridiculous.

but fun.

though now my sleep rythm is all fucked up again. ah well.

this weekend: painting, putting floors in, cleaning!
next week: move in???

!!!!!!!

We have an apartment!
Yay!

I am so excited!

ever have those days...?

living off of other peoples money is not fun.
i hate it.
every euro i spend, i think twice about and unless its use is absolutely necessary, consequently feel guilty about...
i suppose, the upside is that i am becoming very thrifty and responsible with money.

actually, i whats the most difficult to swallow is depending on others. i feel so indebted, though im not actually... why is it so hard to accept dependency, no matter how temporary? or how generously and openly responded to?

apartment hunting is turning out to be not alot of fun either. i have visited so many apartments in the last month that i have lost count. and yet, nothing.
why cant i just put in a list of requirements/desires in some box somewhere that could be met with a call and a key the next day?
i guess it will make it all so much more valuable in the end when we do finally find something, right?

i am getting excited for december. i am gonna see so many people i have missed for so long!

lately, i have found myself more concerned with what people think of me. little things, unimportant stuff, but also basic stuff... why is that? i cant figure it out.

in response to this apparent current depression, i am watching love actually. always makes me feel better.
yay for chick flicks!

waiting for supper...

i'm now living in utrecht...temporarily, till we can find an apartment or house or a cardboard box somewhere that we can call our own...
i attended my first classes at the university of leiden. it was in english, taught by a british dude who shares my sentiments about dutch signs and road systems.
studying on my own is ok, the first few days were quite interesting and i think i could enjoy the subjects to a certain extent... sleeping in isn't a good way to start my mornings though, so i have to set up a schedule just to keep myself going.
living with students will be good again, though i don't know them all too well yet. they are all nice and pretty easy-going so that shouldn't be too hard. and if all else fails, i have liesbeth to talk to (or listen to) till we fall asleep every night.
iowa student loans are stalking me...
i miss seeing luuk every day.
three and a half more months!
shit, i have alot to study, arrange, sew, buy, plan before then... (sigh).
last week i visited the family i nanny-ed last year. good to see them. glad not to be nannying though. occasional visits will be good. or random trips to the zoo. but then i can take them home...and leave! ah... i like this arrangement.
i found out today that taking birth control pills for up to 8 years reduces risks of certain cancers... those little things come with so many benefits!

yay! suppertime!

doei!

Resumen

K, so no one reads this anyway, and I don't feel like writing alot today. I'll summarize the Guatemala and Mexico part of the trip with: it was the best part of the trip, and well, the best damn time I've had in a long time!
We're going back some day and perhaps when we're old, we'll retire there to enjoy the perfect temperatures and beautiful people, and stuff our house with handicrafts.
If we are friends on facebook and are interested, you can see pics of the trip and find out more about Guatemala and Mexico.

For now, it's back to real life, figuring out school and visa stuff and planning for wedding and housing and living out of my suitcase between Liesbeth's and Luuk's parents' place, until something more permanent comes up.

Honduras (belated)

After constant traveling and early mornings and tired backs, we were all ready for a relaxing break. So, our trip through Honduras consisted of four nights in the beach town of Tela in the northern part of Honduras and then a night in Copan before moving on to our next stop.

High and lowlights:
- taxi drivers in Tegucigalpa
- waiting for almost two hours with Liesbeth in the bus station for the guys to return from the ATM that was supposed to be just down the street.
+ the guys coming back alive and unharmed with money, passports, and the taxi driver who hadn't understood where they wanted to be taken despite the map that they had shown him and who wanted an extra tip after giving them a full unwanted tour of the city (the ATM didn't work and the nearest one was down town).
+ Tela: sun, sand, ocean.
+ kitchen in our apartment/hotel room; the beer/hotsauce soaked chicken i cooked one night.
+ beer.
+ airconditioning.
+ bargaining a discount for a kayak tour.
- waiting for two hours before we left for our tour the nextmorning.
+ kayaking through mangroves.
- finding out on the tour that we weren't getting the food we thought we had paid for had actually been the discount so we shoulda brought food along...

- waiting another hour for the tour guide to show up.

- missing the monkeys and cool animals because it was too late and they had all gone home to hide from the sun.

- finding out that kayaking takes team work, trust, and alllloooot of patience...

- finding out that luuk and i have to work on those little details.

+ finding out that every other couple on the tour also had a few details to work on, so our case wasn't hopeless!

+ crashing a wedding later that night (we were invited by one of the couples on the tour, brother and sister-in-law of the groom...met the bride and groom at the wedding itself...had to wait till during the reception to write the card because we didn't even know there names...)

+ the wedding: the bride was barefoot; the sun was setting; the ocean was calm; a girl played Death Cab for Cutie, Johny Cash and others during the wedding...(sigh)...

? the prayer to God, the wind, the earth, everything green, and the sun to (everyone repeat after each line) "bless this marriage! (among other interesting mystic, new-age, and who knows from where allusions).

+ dancing with cousins, aunts and uncles of the bride and groom.

+ dancing to "Besame" with Luuk, to later find out that the only other two couples dancing were the bride and groom and his parents...oops.

- forgetting our camera that night.

+ the cute little (touristy) town of Copán.

- the very expensive entrance fee to the ruins of Copán.

+ the ruins of Copán.

+ the bus right through Honduras.

Nicaragua

Already at the border Nicaragua looked different than Costa Rica. The poverty there was immediately apparent; the lack of emphasis on preservation of nature was also immediately evident, seen in the garbage strewn all over in corners, on sides of roads, in empty lots; even the people looked a little different, slightly darker and wearing different clothing (as in, no name brands). Nicaragua is the poorest country in Central America with the exception of Haiti. The greatest positive difference: culture. While Costa Rica is geared to tourists, is populated by many expats, and has no real cultural history, Nicaragua´s history is full of civil war and revolutions and the continuing fight for a better life. The people are more reserved but when spoken to or smiled at are very friendly.

highlights:

- staying on Isla Ometepe, the largest lake island in the world, created by two volcanos that stand right next to each other.

- being charged by a large cow with very sharp long horns.

- Granada: an old picturesque colonial style town with many churches and much to see.

- the chocolate shop in Granada.

- tamales.

- fruit, every day.

- standing at the crater of volcano Masaya.

- staying Ponch in Managua!

- the 50th bday party of some guy that we never met before till Ponch took us along (and the chocolate cake we ate there!)

- Selva Negra: hearing (but alas, not seeing) howler monkeys; eating pink quail eggs; the absolutely romantic chapel practically growing out of the jungle that we found; wading through mud; the suicidal hitched ride back to town which ended with them taking us actually past town and to some work shop at the top of some hill at which point we really started to fear for our lives...but they brought us back to a point previously passed and dropped us off unharmed.

And I´ll stop there before this once again gets too long...

Costa Rica

The first two days involved recovering from jetlag and getting used to the climate (very warm, sticky, with rain every day at least twice and sometimes for hours), adjusting to noise and dirt and persistant taxi drivers. We found out later that in San Jose we had managed to stick to the dirtier part of the city and missed out on the nicer places to visit...ah well. And Heredia was not the colonial city described in our travelers handbook..a bit disappointing, but still interesting. It got better from there.

Highlights:

- pleasant surprise, spur-of-the-moment trip to the Valley of Orosi, where we stayed in a hostel owned by a Dutch guy who married a Canadian he met during an exchange program in college...apparently we aren´t the only crazy ones.

- meeting a couple who were once both in engineering but decided to live in a commune...when that didn´t work, they moved to Costa Rica and started a vegetarian restaurant which they run with their daughters...interesting couple to say the least.

- taking a couple of the trails given at the hostel, missing the goal on one, getting a bit lost on the other, and were rewarded with hotsprings with the third.

- getting caught in the rain on one of our trails.

- a gigantic friendly frog, a lost butterfly that was as big as two hands next to each other, a cockroach, plenty of dogs (quite a bit healthier here than expected), an iguana that dropped from a tree right in front of us while trekking through some jungle), and lots of geckos.

- riding horses up the mountain in La Fortuna; they walked through mud in holes so deep that our feet reached the ground next to them...

-waterfall at the top.

-fruit juice from a hippy from some-where-in-south-america (he kept avoiding the question and wouldn´t say).

-seeing maybe-monkeys-maybe-ant-eaters in Monte Verde (Luuk is the only one who insists that they were monkeys...the rest of us are still on a mission to see our first monkey before the trip is over).

-eating fresh, ripe mangos, guanabanas, and bananas.

-watching Luuk run with a girl who was so afraid of lightning that she refused to walk outside with lightning that was kilometers away...she thought running would actually prevent her from being hit...

I´ll tell ya´ll later about nicaragua.
Right now: we are in Honduras, at the beach, enjoying the sun (and the Tour de France on our cable tv...boys...pff).
Hope your summers are going good!
Cheers!

adios amigos!

quick recap:
said goodbyes to the family in woerdense verlaat. was a strange experience...didn't feel quite complete somehow. i think i wanted to feel sad for a bit but after hating the job so much sometimes and after all my bitching, i couldn't quite justify it. it all came out later that night when least wanted/expected. ah well.
goodbye to dane was awkward, with jeroen watching and waiting to drive me away to zoetermeer... not exactly how i'd expected it. email makes up for things i guess.
trip to costa rica: long. had a nice little scare when stopping in the miami airport (yup dane, we didn't fly straight through). luuk was in line ahead of me for customs, and he was sent to some other room to be questioned with no explanation to me who was watching nervously from behind. apparently new passports raise some flags. we didn't miss our flight though and made it to san jose with no gliches.
in san jose: evaded the taxi drivers trying to offer us a ride for 20bucks and took the longer, would-be-scenic route with the bus (windows too dirty to see through), then a taxi from somewhere in town to roughly the address where a couple hostels were supposed to be. we were dropped off and walked around looking like lost tourists ready for the first eager guy to come up and rob us. of course, no such thing happened and we made it to a nice hostel where we promptly fell into bed to sleep a restless night through. weird how when one is super tired its harder to sleep...
next day: wandered around san jose and heredia, both of which proving to be interesting in all their grimy, noisy, smelly glory, but not exactly what expected. i'll have to rearrange my expectations.
anywy...so far so good. today: its off to some jungle and volcano hikes. :)

"i didn't want cany anyway!"

jules learned very quickly that peeing in the potty earns him a candy. now he trys to go every five minutes. he is very disappointed when the tiny little trickle is not enough to earn his awaited candy.

the latest development of the house: raoul can wave goodbye now. and he can take three steps now before falling on his face.

tomorrow is my last day here.
today seems to be crawling by somewhat slowly.

there are two boxes with wrapped in colourful paper and with bows stuck to them sitting on the kitchen table. 
i'm curious.

the "tent" is once again kapot. i have to go fix it. the best part of this little game is that jules will promptly tear it apart again, at which point i will be expected to go fix it. and he will break it. and i'll fix it. and so on until i get sick enough of it to ignore his tugging on my pants and he gets bored of waiting for me and finds something else to do...
ah.
there are somethings that i really don't like right now but will for some reason miss some day.
such is life.

....bleh...

luuk is temporarily moved into his parents place till we can "i do" and move in together to some apartment or house yet to be found... it's amazing how much stuff people accumulate in four years... moving alot helps. or maybe this just illustrates some major differences between luuk and myself. cause i sure have alot less crap than he does!

i'm halfway through the first day of my last week here. only a total of 6.5more days of work (with a weekend in between). and then i'll be an ex-nanny!

i'll have to find a new way to define myself... i'm losing my identity!
(no worries...i'm not terribly attached to this one).

...emmm...yeah. not much going on. i'm bored. went to the doctor's office this morning, with the two youngest kids. surprised at how well that went. we left just before they started getting crabby - good timing! yay for naps...

i want a nap.

jules wants to play cops and robbers. i think i'll do the whole "pick up, dump in the crip, walk away, pick up, dump in crib..." routine a couple times and hope he gets distracted... am i getting old? why do those sort of games make me so tired? i should exercise more or something...

coffee

you know it's addiction fueled by habit when you realize that you just filled the pot without even looking and its the perfect amount to fill two cups...

recap

thursday: got vaccines for the summer trip. apparently living there for most of my life didn't make me immune to diseases like hep A, typhoid, tetanus, polio... oh yeah, and malaria. i get to take 120pills, one each day, for 120days... i'm totally gonna miss a day somewhere and get bit by a malaria mosquito and it will be a waste of whatever its gonna cost me (still haven't picked them up yet...). the vaccines made me sick on friday. that was fun. apparently the malaria pills have great side effects too, like oral ulcers, fevers, hallucinations, vomiting... that'll be great fun on the trip. i'm considering getting malaria instead...

friday: i considered leaving an hour later than normal so i'd have time to do my hair/makeup/eat... opted to skip vanity and rushed to get to the train on time. apparently i took the last train before everything shut down half way up to groningen just after i got there. 
good timing. yay for... what's the word? non-vanity?

saturday: the jonge-nederland (under-21 dutch) team (soccer) played serbia for the final of some cup/championship in groningen. they won. and they celebrated. and we joined. and we remember most of it.

sunday: hmm. wasn't very interesing. 
nevermind.

today: i just watched a bit of some new tv show (new here, maybe old already in the US) called "big love", with bill paxton... about a polygamist and his three wives.
disturbing.

no words...

nigeria. drug trials. death. justice?