Bahamas 2011

Thanks to Wheel of Fortune, we got to take our Bahama vacation this November! People have been asking me if it was "for real", as in, are the prizes you win really as awesome as they seem to be? The answer is YES! It was amazing! The island we went to, Eleuthera, is a smaller island and less touristy than some of the big name islands, such as Nassau or Grand Bahamas. This made for the ideal, relaxing vacation.

Our villa was amazing! It was two-story, beautifully furnished, and right on the water. Out the back of the villa, you looked onto the marina/ocean and out the front, you also looked onto the ocean! We woke up every morning to the sound of the waves and palm trees blowing.

We spent the first day or two, relaxing, exploring beaches and getting rid of jet lag. We went to one of the most amazing beaches in the Bahamas, Lighthouse beach. To get to this beach, you have to drive to the very Southernmost tip of the island and then get on an all dirt, very rutted, makeshift road and drive 3 miles until you finally arrive at the beach. There were a few times we didn't think we would make it in our Buick custom! However, the drive was well worth the view.

We literally had this entire beach to ourselves for hours. It was amazing!!


The next two days we spent scuba diving!! Let me tell you, it was a million times better than our scuba experience in the Netherlands. We didn't have to wear wet suits, there were fish, and the water was so warm and crystal clear! We saw sting ray, lion fish, beautiful coral heads, and so many different types of fish. The second day of diving, we got to dive to 80 feet!! We also got to dive with one of the world's most famous divers, Neal Watson! He holds two Guiness World Records; one for the deepest dive of 432 feet and the other for the longest underwater swim on compressed air. He swam 66 miles in about 19 hours.  The deepest dive record is officially closed because a number of people have died trying to break it! He was also in a few of the James Bond movies and taught Fergie (Duchess of York) and Russell Brand, how to dive. We found all this out later from some friends we met but we was really nice and down to earth. A definite beach bum! Speaking of our friends, we met this really nice couple who worked for a dive magazine and they were down there doing an article. They took a ton of underwater pictures of us so hopefully we'll get to see some and I can post them later!!

Overall it was a fabulous vacation and a great, free, getaway for us!!

anddd no, i'm not going European style swimming here, apparently my top just needs pulled up a bit:)

Girls Trip 2011!

First, I apologize for the hiatus from the blog. Life got crazy, I couldn't upload pictures, and time got away from me. But one of my New Year's resolutions is to keep up better with the blog! So some of these posts are going to be about things that have already happened but I'd like to share them nonetheless.


As the title of my post suggests, I had two friends come over in late September to visit. First time to Europe and it was soooo good to see familiar faces in my new territory. We spent the first few days getting them adjusted to the time change,which meant marching them around Leiden, showing them all the cool history that I'm sure they have no recollection of! The following day we went to Amsterdam and did a boat tour, toured the Anne Frank house, and fed the pigeons in Dam Square.  We ended up our day eating Dutch pancakes and packing for the start of our Tour De Europa.

We left early the next morning for the airport, to make our flight to our first destination...Rome! Rome was a whirlwind, at least for me. There is soo much to see and do there and we were just in awe of all the history. We went to the Colosseum, the Roman forum, the Pantheon, the Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain,and a ton of other small gems we found. We ate at the world famous "Alfredo's" home of the "original fettuccine alfredo" . Not what we think of as fettuccine alfredo but delicious anyways! We toured the National Museum of Rome, which basically was a lot of carved heads. The real reason we wanted to go there was because of the famous Discus thrower statue. Turns out it was a fake. That was disappointing.  We spent our last day in Rome at the Vatican City. We toured the Vatican museum, at which point we entered a time warp and seemingly lost half our day. We sat in awe in the Sistine Chapel and thanks to Rick Steve's travel book, found our way through a secret backdoor out of the sistine chapel, into St. Peter's Basilica. Did you know that the Sistine Chapel is the pope's personal chapel? and that is also where all the bishops and cardinals lock themselves away to choose the next pope? That is where the white smoke comes from. Pretty exciting to think about. So we did a quick tour thru the Basilica, which was incredibly ornate and beautifully done. We saw where the pope gives mass and where Peter's bones are buried. Definitely, maybe. We had to hurry  though because we wanted to climb the stairs to the top of the dome and we were running out of time before we had to catch our plane. We climbed some 600 stairs, through a narrow, cramped, slanted, curvy passageway, all the way to the top of the Vatican. It was the highest point in Rome and the view was well worth the climb to the top. But we had to quickly make our way down so we could catch our flight to our next destination.

VENICE!!!
Venice was every bit as amazing as it appears in the movies. We only spent one day there but we got to see most everything. The best advice we were given was to get lost in the back streets of Venice. The island itself is so small that you eventually wind your way back to the main parts. True to form, there were gondolas, street artists, and delicious gelato! It really is a picturesque place with beautifully colored buildings that are directly on the water. We actually stayed a little outside of Venice, which made for cheaper accommodations and I would recommend that to anyone on a budget. It was a short 15 minute bus ride into the city.

Finally we headed to our last stop, Barcelona!

Barcelona
We had no idea about Barcelona and had forgotten the travel book at home so we were really on our own. It was the most relaxed part of the trip because we didn't have an agenda. We stayed in a hostel, which was interesting in and of itself. We spent a day at the beach, splashing in the Mediterranean and feeling slightly overdressed as we were surrounded by a lot of topless women. I tried to convince Meg to "do as the locals do" but she just couldn't get behind that. :) We also celebrated Meg's 31st birthday with a traditional Spanish dinner and sangria! We followed that up with going to a flamenco dancer show. It was absolutely amazing. It was a more intimate setting, above a bar with just about 50 people crowded around a small stage, with one flamenco dancer, a singer, and a classical guitarist. That was my favorite thing in Barcelona! We also visited a lot of the artist Gaudi's works, including the Sagrada Famillia, which is a crazy church that has been in construction for some 120 years and is still not finished!

and then we capped off our Tour de Europa with some relaxing time back in Leiden, where the girls got their first experience at riding bikes as their main mode of transportation! It was a fabulous trip and I am so thankful that I have good friends willing to make the journey to come visit!

Scuba Diving

Last week was a verrrrry long week for Dan and me. We spent the whole week in a different part of the country, getting scuba certified. This was a part of the prize package I won on Wheel of Fortune because we will be scuba diving in the Bahamas.  All I can really say is that I hope scuba diving in the Bahamas is a lot more fun than diving in a lake in the middle of Holland. 


I wrote an email to my best friend after the first day of diving and I think it sums up pretty well my thoughts on the whole thing so I'm just going to copy and paste it here...and then maybe add a few more comments about the end of the experience.

1st dive-miserable

floundering around like a beached whale

floating

sinking

falling forward

falling backward

can't stay still on the lake floor

ended dive a tad early due to my incompetence

crying in my mask

hoping everyone thinks it's water

vowing to not come back the next day

 

asked to do a 2nd dive

wanting to cry again

willing to give it another shot

focused on my breathing

started to flounder upon initial descent

saved from rolling down a giant sea hill by the instructor

finally got my bearings

was able to kneel on the sea floor and not move

still not moving

not floating

this is good

doing underwater exercises

for example

taking our regulator(breathing thing) out of our mouth and throwing it behind us.

have to find the tube

get regulator back in mouth and breathe again

went pretty well

was able to take a swim because my buyouncy was finally more controlled

saw a crawfish

they call them small lobsters

saw one fish

seriously, one fish in one hour

felt better about it

not quitting yet

sore

did get to fall out of the boat backwards

almost peed my pants when i got back to shore because i had to pee so bad

glad there is only 3 more days left

hope the scenery in the bahamas is worth it

pretty sure i could be content just snorkeling on the surface

The experience got better as the week went on but seriously, it is so much effort to just even get ready to get in the water! I think our deepest dive was about 40 feet and we were typically under for about 40-50 minutes. We passed our certification written and training test so we are officially scuba certified!! We also got our picture taken to be in the Naui Scuba magazine for being "prize winners" (that's what they kept calling us all week long). Overall, it was a tiring experience and I'm still hoping that it will be worth it when we are some place tropical. 

Someone, Anyone, please tell me it will be worth it.

1 year anniversary!

This post is nearly a week late but I have been bogged down with Dutch exams this week so please forgive my lateness! One year ago on August 21, I married my best friend. I cannot believe it has been a year since we said "I do". For those who know us, we dated 8 years before finally tying the knot. All that time seems like a drop in the bucket now. I can, without any hesitation, say that this year has been the best year of my life. Sure, I have moved to Europe and have gotten to experience amazing places and things I've never seen before but the best thing is that I have got to do that with the person I love. Beautiful places and amazing sights just aren't quite the same if you can't share it with someone special.

This year has brought many exciting adventures, challenges, new experiences, new friends, and a whole new life. I feel like I have grown in love, grace, still working on patience :), and so many other character traits. I love that marriage is used as an example of Christ's love for us because I think it truly does give us a tiny glimpse into how much He really loves us.

I'm excited to see what this year holds for us. It's hard to believe that anything could trump this first year but I'm looking forward to finding out!!

A year ago. . .August 21, 2010

And now...August 21,2011

Politics

Recently it seems I have been having a lot of political conversations with internationals. I know, I know, they say don't talk about politics or religion but trust me, it's bound to come up when you're an American living abroad. It's very interesting to be living in Europe and see/hear what the rest of the world thinks of American politics. People have very strong opinions here about it but don't really seem to know the whole story. Just like a lot of things in life, they view things through their own world lens. To most Dutch people, it seems outrageous that we don't have universal healthcare and that we have poverty in America. They can't understand the way our government operates because they don't know any different. My impression so far is that most Europeans think that republicans are from the devil, our government just needs to raise the taxes to pay for things (like healthcare), and conservative people are crazy. They don't understand how our economy works. They are used to their government taking care of them  and when I try to explain to them that that is not the foundation that America was built on and is in fact the very opposite of what America stands for, they get a blank look on their face.

I feel very fortunate to claim citizenship to a country where I have these freedoms, where I don't have to depend on the government for all my needs and where I have the ability to climb up the proverbial ladder if I so choose. It gets very frustrating to discuss American politics with others when all they hear is one side of the story and that is ususally the very liberal side. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the government is doing a great job and that nothing needs to change. But what a lot of Europeans think America needs to change, is the very thing that makes us America. They are comfortable with all the power being in the hands of the government, not the people. That is not America.

Tales from Dutch class

So, I wanted to expand a little bit more on my Dutch class. We have a very diverse class, which always makes for interesting stories. There is one other American girl, who is 20 and  here for a semester abroad. We have people from India, Indoneisa, Thailand, Nepal, Singapore, France, Nigeria, Somalia, Jordan, and Iraq. There is also one person from a country I had never heard of.  The first day of class, we went around and siad who we were, where we were from and why we were taking the class. When this classmate said where he was from, I was sure that maybe I just didnt' understand because of his accent. But then later, the teacher passed out a piece of paper with all of our nationalities on it and I still didn't recognize the country!!  Eritrea anybody?? Has anyone heard of that? Apparently it's a small country in the horn of Africa. See, I had already learned something new!! Everyone is really nice, although I have had a problem with a girl who sits a few seats away, who talks incessantly. I mean, she is talking when the teacher is talking, giving all the answers, reading outloud when someone else is reading, etc. I thought I was going to go crazy that first week. She is married to a Dutchman so she already has a good understanding of Dutch, hence her answering everything. It was really touch and go there for awhile but now that we are getting to harder things, she has quieted down considerably.
A few highlights of my class so far have included the following:

1. I made chocolate chip cookies for the entire class the other day. They were a big hit! You can't go wrong with cookies.
2. That same day, I fell out of my chair and onto the floor during class. Yes, it is true. We have rolling chairs and I was sitting on the edge of it and I leaned forward to hand someone something and it rolled back, I fell down and also knocked someone's coffee over. My shoulder is still sore. That was not a good day for me.
3. We were discussing family tree's, in an attempt to learn the Dutch names of different family members. The teacher appeared like he was done discussing the tree but had not talked about the words for step-people. So I asked him about it and was reminded that divorce is not as prevalent in other parts of the world. I don't think half the class understood what a step-sibling was and possibly thought that my mom had two husbands. 4. Sometimes the teacher will defer to me and the American girl to confirm English phrases. For example, he might be trying to compare something in Dutch with English and he'll say, "In English you would say this.." I feel not so good". Uhh...actually no, we don't say that in English. Sometimes we'll correct him, other times we just nod our head sheepishly.

Overall, it's a fun class with a good group of people. It is very frustrating at times and I'd be lying if I said tears never welled up in frustration but I do feel like I'm learning and I feel like I'm making progress! Now I just need some friends to practice with!!

Goed Morgen!!

Wow, it has been a few weeks since I posted last but life has been a whirlwind. I started my intensive Dutch language classes 2 weeks ago. This class is 5 days a week, 5 hours a day with 3 hours of homework at night. They were not lying when they said it was intense! It is very fast paced  and sometimes I feel like my head is just spinning around. I go to sleep thinking about Dutch words and I wake up thinking about them. Apparently I even sometimes talk in Dutch in my sleep. I have two and 1/2 more weeks left of class and I'm hoping I'll be speaking Dutch by then..at least enough to get around. It's difficult when you try to practice, like at the market or a store, because when someone sees that you are struggling to come up with the words, they switch to English.  At this point, it takes me a little bit to process what I want to say and then how to say as well as processing what they say back to me.  I am getting better though!

So that has been consuming our lives here the past few weeks. I employ Dan to help me study my vocab sometimes but for those who have ever heard Dan speak Dutch, I think it might be more detrimental to me than helpful:)

In other sad news, my bike has been in the shop for the last week and apparently may be there for up to 2 more weeks! We took it in to get its tune up and found out that the wheel was broken...whoops. So I will be bike-less for awhile.

OH! and we are scheduled to do our scuba diving lessons the week of August 29 here in the Netherlands. I can't wait! It just means we are one step close to our Bahama's trip in November! We should be booking our tickets back home soon!! IT will be nice to be back on American soil for a bit.

 ok well, ik moet boodschappen op de markt gaan!! Tot ziens!!!