A sunday afternoon walk

Last Sunday, Matthijs and I took advantage of the wonderful sunny day to go for a walk down Haarlemerstraat and then back again through the area north of that (close to the IJ river). I remembered to take my camera along, and this is what we saw:

one way of anchoring your bike down so as to make sure it doesn't get stolen!

We weren't the only ones checking out the street!

Beautiful architecture along the way

Lachen = laughter;  Marcus 4:14 is Mark 4:14 - but the text (let many prosper?) doesn't have anything to do with the text of Mark 4, which is the parable of the sower....

in the neighbourhoods closer to the IJ - the bridge looks old, but it is actually from around 1980

Noah's ark

Noah surrounded by St Peter and St John

The other side of the church shown earlier - in the background of the meisjes school

A houseboat neighbourhood

There will hopefully be many more sunny days for walks and pictures...

Saturday afternoon at the Kronemeijers

A long time ago, I promised pictures of our new house. This afternoon seemed like a perfect time for that to happen. So here are a few pictures of the house, including the men of the house....

Matthijs had a great excuse for being tired: he and I had both done a ton of chores this morning, and we'd spent the afternoon enjoying Open Monument Day (and Matthijs also went to an organ concert). As for Jerry, however, his only excuse is that he's a cat - and could sleep half the day :)

Oxford!

Matthijs has a Master's degree from Oxford, so I was delighted to have the chance to go with him to visit the place he lived for a year.

Matthijs wrote about it on his blog, so I'll direct you there to read the story of our visit last Sunday. And I'll just provide the pictures (most of them are the view from the tower of University Church):

A window in Queen's chapel depicting the Ascension - Jesus' feet are worth noticing.

The garden at New College (1)

The garden at New College (2)

6 months

In honour of being married 6 months, the following are some wedding pictures:

Being married has been good. Life hasn't always been easy for us both in the last few months (nor was planning a wedding exactly stress-free :)) and sometimes things have been hard. It is a challenge to be ourselves while also making room for the other person to be him/herself. But it is a challenge and adventure that is worth every struggle: not only have we learned to be more comfortable being ourselves around the other, we've been delighted to discover more who God has made us to be.

pictures and videos of the gemeenschap weekend are posted online

pictures and videos related to the gemeenschap weekend are now posted on the Oudezijds 100 website. For those of you not so familiar with dutch, you can click here for the pictures and here for the videos.
[i managed to get into a couple of the pictures, although i'm not sure about the videos - i haven't watched them yet].

a tulip field adventure

in honour of spring in the netherlands, which started about 1.5 months ago (although unfortunately in the last few days temporarily disappeared), a couple of friends and i went (then) out in search of tulips - more specifically, tulip fields.

the original plan was to take the train to Voorhout and rent bikes there in order to bike to Lisse through the tulip field areas. The bike renting thing didn't work out so well, so we changed plans by walking around Voorhout - just to explore it and see what was there. And we bumped into a little grassfield, an old church, with a beautiful graveyard, and even some tulips - but no tulip fields :(







so off again with the train - north to Hillegom. and there (as you can see in the picture of the train), we bumped into fields upon fields of tulips. ironically enough we managed not to bump into the crowds of people and the rather large flower parade, that was happening in the same place as we were. i'm not entirely sure how that happened, but it does say something about the random-ness of adventures.

And below are some final pictures of our adventure:




beautiful, eh?

a lovely winter sunday

to take advantage of the below zero temperatures here in the Netherlands, we spent the afternoon skating (in Museumplein). and it was lovely. the following are some pictures to share it with you:

me on my borrowed Nordic skates - i did really well, especially since it's been about 6 years since i last skated - and nordic skates are a lot longer than i'm used to. and i enjoyed it tons (and am only a bit sore).


a random close up as we paused on the ice.


enjoying the skating by dancing - i thought they were doing great!


and it ended with a fire, candles, cookies and hot chocolate in the Kajuit.

lovely, eh? just how winter should be enjoyed.

Sinterklaas - a bit late

Sinterklaas is celebrated on the evening of 5 December in the Netherlands but he worked around the schedules in the community so that he could come a couple of days late. Traditionally, if a child were good, presents would be given - but if a child was bad, Zwarte Piet (Black Pieter), Sinterklaas's helper, would put him/her in his sack to take to Spain where Sinterklaas lives (Seeing as a lot of Dutch people vacation in Spain because of the warmth, it does seem a bit of an odd punishment). Nowadays, Sinterklaas just brings presents (and sometimes quite large ones).

With the present comes a poem. And the present has to be wrapped in a "surprise," which generally means creatively designing a package for the present that has something to do with the present or the one receiving it. This can take hours and sometimes involves papier-maché and sometimes involves an waterproof container that needs to be fished out of several litres of pudding... Often the poem and surprise are the best part of the present - and both allow give ample opportunity to tease and annoy each other, making present giving fun for adults, too.

To see photos of the day, check out the pictures on Facebook, as well as Tom's blog entry on Sinterklaas (which was up in a much more timely manner).

Christmas with my family in Canada

i always find it hard to go through advent in one place and then celebrate Christmas in another. it's as if i can't carry over from one place to another the longing for Christ's coming. that movement of places makes it hard for me. but i have to smile a bit at myself: if i find this movement difficult, think of how hard it would have been for Mary and Joseph. 9 months pregnant, travelling to the home of their distant family, with a lot of the unknowns in their future - and they still celebrated a miracle.

and i have celebrated being with my family, even as i recognzed a twinge of sadness in not getting to be closer to be able to see everyone more often. and Christmas meant getting to read read some books to my niece, put together a cool kitchen set for the other niece, see a lot of my cousins and aunts and uncles, spend time talking to my siblings, see my sister pregnant, meet the dog of my other sister (although i learned the hard way that he responds really well to "poop" as a command eve if he isn't outside to do it), and spend a lot of time just hanging out with my mom. since my mom and i both look good in blue and the sweater was a great price (and we don't live in the same area), we got the same sweater when we went out shopping on friday. there's something lovely about sharing clothes :)

perhaps the best way to describe my feeling of Christmas is a celebration amidst a bit of sadness. in that way, Christmas is taking awhile to settle in for me this year. a bit of the advent longing still lingers, the wishing that it were different. but i take the memories of this time here with my family, the love i have for them - and they for me - and i will pull them out again in the days and months to come. i will ponder them in my heart, even as i already hold dear to my heart my other family who i missed out in sharing Christmas with in Amsterdam.

Foto's from my life - Amsterdam summer 2008

As I've realized that I have been long overdue in posting pictures of my life in Amsterdam, i finally took some photos. The following are a few of the photos:

a football (soccer) game while the Netherlands was still winning :)

my street - the swans in the middle of a busy canal in the Red Light District still surprise me, even though i've seen that this is normal here.


bikes along the Amstel river - my bike is the same as the green one - except in classic black.


. A couple of friends and I at Rembrandt's 402nd birthday party/breakfast :)

The rest can be accessed via Facebook :)

more than 24 hours later...

about 26.5 hours after leaving my parents' house, i arrived home in Amsterdam. that's not even including the fact that i didn't leave my house until 17 hours after I was fully packed and ready to go (my mom's prompting for me to check my flight status before leaving produced the surprising discovery that my flight had been cancelled - and i had been bumped to a flight to Washington the next day, although i was still scheduled to fly out of Washington that day! a rather long conversation to a united representative resulted in my still being on a horribly early flight on Tuesday morning but with me getting some free airmiles and reconciling myself to the situation).

i think i'd like to avoid such a crazy long journey in the future but there are two very positive things to say about my trip (besides the joy i have in being back in Amsterdam - as much as it was wonderful to visit friends and family and get to teach, it was more than time to come back home):
1) 26 hours of travelling, including sleeping (or not sleeping) in all manner of places and situations helps a lot with jetlag. by the time i got to Amsterdam, i might have been exhausted but my body no longer had any idea what time it should be and was quite happy to adjust to Amsterdam time.
2) i enjoyed being a tourist in Washington, DC. since i had a 9 hour layover, it was the perfect opportunity to see a great city: the metro is good and the museums and zoo are free [to see pictures, check out facebook]. i might actually try to get another crazy layover there again, just so i can go back :)

still alive

to show that i'm still alive, i've uploaded some more pictures of my life. below is the preview:




you can see the rest of them via facebook. (n.b. the new pictures are number 18-26).

and sooner or later, i'll write more on the blog...

Photos from my parents' visit

More stories are coming about my parents' visit - but for now I'll just share some of the photos my mom has taken about their trip here. The photos can be found on facebook.

pictures of tulips

a couple of months ago, i mentioned that i had gone to see the tulip fields - and that pictures would be forthcoming. now that i've stolen some pictures off of Dave's and Crystle's computer, i can post them for you.

The following are my favourite tulip pictures from our day of gallivanting through the tulip fields in the midst of the non-touristy countryside:







thanks to Dave and Crystle for the pictures :)