Texel 1

Still have to tell something about the week at Texel. I will take a picture of a map of the Netherlands, so I'm able to show where it was (for the Canadians amongst the readers). For now it's just stories and pictures in the post below.
Saturday 22nd after soccer (we won again; 4-1!), I took the first train to the north around 6 pm. Three trains, a bus, a boat, a bus, a car and 3,5 hours later I was where I was supposed to be. My mum, dad, little (not really) brother Jasper and sister Renée where there already. We visited a little church Sunday morning, after that it was time for a walk along the beach! The rest of the week was almost the same each day. Waking up at 9 am, breakfast for an hour and outside at 11 am. We rented some bikes for two/three days, my mum and dad took their bikes with them, behind the car, so that was easy. We biked all around the island, and stopped once in a while for a walk. Texel isn't too big, around 170 square kilometres, a length of 20 and around 8 kilometres wide. Other days we walked most of the time, and at night we we watched a movie (we visited the only cinema on the island), red a book or played a game. And we only had rain for one day, most of the time it was cloudy and sometimes sun, more or less. It was a very good week, it was great to be with my family for a long time and it was so nice to be outside whole days again.
Right now I'm gonna try to write an article about emigration to Canada, with the sound of guys and machines; they're cleaning the streets from all those crispy, nice smelling, colourfull leaves. How sad and weird!

I'm living!

Wow, life's back into it's full swing, and I'm enjoying it again! Still don't know why it took me so long to get myself going, in my mind, or something like that. It didn't take more then one or two weeks to get the practical things in my life going again, there was something wrong in my mind for a while...
But now; I even enjoy stuff like the stress of studying. It's so busy right now, that today's the third day I created a planning for myself. I sit down at my desk at night, with a piece of paper and I make a planning for the next day. Almost from hour to hour and even things like lunch or playing the guitar is in there... I have to admit that today's the third day I didn't totally follow my planning. I get out of my bed too late, or there's something extra popping into my day, but it still works for me. I get more done than normally. And I enjoy my breaks and the things I'm doing in them, even more. I don't know why, but I'm enjoying everything, anything, almost like it's a job in itself. Mm, I would apply if a job like that would appear!

This is what happens around here, when you're in your bed too long; your roommates enter your room, grab our matrass and turn it upside down. Lovely way to wake up :)

I went sailing, the weekend before last one, with some guys from C.S.R. (the cristian student association I'm a member of). With two boats, five girls and four guys, we enjoyed what God created for a nice, long weekend. Because of bad, very bad, public transportation, we ended up, on Friday night, in a local little pub with only people age 40 and up. We were quite the attraction! Next day was an 'early' rise, the sun was shining in a sky with beautiful clouds and the wind was blowing (a 6 on the scale of Beaufort). It was an exciting day, both boats got stuck within minutes, laying next to eachother. After that adventure, one of the boats turned upside down... (I was lucky to not be in that one) We had soacky bread, soacky people, soacky clothes, soacky everything. After emptying the water out of the boat for an hour, we decided to lunch and get the wet people into dry clothes. We spent the rest of the day sailing towards Veere, and that was pure pleasure! The wind, the sun, the excitement of sailing in such an angle that you're almost falling out of the boat, the laughs, painful hands... Mmmm.
Our tent on one of the boats, four people fit in
We arrived in Veere around dinner time. Veere is an old village, with city rights because of a history of trading Scottish woul. It's tiny and old, and contains the start of a big cathedrale, started in days that Veere was getting bigger and bigger every day. After we put our tents on the decks again, we collected all the wet clothes and got picked up by Aris' dad, who lives nearby Veere. His mother treated us like kings and queens, with warmth, lots of very good food, more food, dry clothes, new bread for tomorrow and warm drinks.

What more could we want?
We visited the church on Sunday morning, in a part of the not-finished huge cathedrale. After that, we sailed of, into the open waters again! The wind wasn't as strong as the day before anymore, but still strong enough to bring us 'home'.

I'm working and studying extra hard this week, because I want to go to the island Texel Saturday night after soccer, for a week vacation. My parents rented a little house overthere and I think everybody is coming, some for a couple of days, some for the whole week. I'll leave Friday, I have to play soccer next Saturday too. It is a beautiful island, I can try to explain it to you, if you don't know what it looks like overthere, but I better try to take some good pictures and show them to you.

See you next time,

Lotte

Weekend

Last week was a week filled with sun, and because I have to walk anyway (the tire of my bike is still flat) I took my camera with me each time I needed anything in town. This is the army museum and on the left you can see a tourist boat poppin around the corner; they're everywhere, always...

Here you see 'the Old Church' in Delft, it stand in an angle, because it was build on two different layers of ground/soil/earth. And our flag; beautiful :)


As you can see, my room mate Gerdien got married last Friday and it was a beautiful sunny day. I had the encredibly important job to help her get into her dress and make sure that she would make it down our five stairs safe and, especially, clean. And, how shocking, at the end of the day, I cought (catched?) her flowers... They were thrown só fast, that I wasn't able to dive away fast enough; they hit me on the head!
On Saturday I didn't have to play; the other soccer team cancelled the game, because they didn't had enough players. It gave me the change to give my ankle some time to fix itself. I went to my parents, by train, and took the car and my sister to the forest and dunes. Because of recent rain, it smelled nice everywhere!


The dunes, with the tank wall from World War II and a drop on some fruity thing


Yes, I admit we did some illegal stuff. We were wearing the safety jackets because of the rain, and later just for the fun. Most thrilling here in the Dutch 'wild' parts of our country is the chance of walking into some kind of forest/nature officer, who can give you a ticket for not walking on the path...


I spend a nice and quiet Sunday at my parents place too. I took this picture after I parked my bike, at the central station of Leiden (where my parents live). It's just one out of many, many rows with bikes.
Now I'm gonna take a shower, just came home from soccer, we lost but we played a good game. And then it's time for some studying again.

Bye, Lotte

Parts of my life, my life in parts, in my life parts

Now... wow... I finally got started on the Dutch part of my blog... Wiehoe. I'll try to keep it interesting here, again (?). Take a picture now and then and tell one of many adventures I experience in an average day : )
Pff, I barely no where to start.

I took the cloudy picture, while I was hanging out of my window. You see the tops of three big churches in Delft. A closer look will come soon. On the next you can see the house I'm living in; Perron 0. It's just the top part (with the three square windows, the right one is our kitchen window), where I live with four roommates. On Friday one of them will get married, so then we're back to four again, as usual. I took this picture standing on the train platform.

Yes, I do live in a student house. It's our washing corner and lovely shower.


And our Delft, but soon world-, famous kitchen!

Delft; since 1100 and city rights since 1246

My sister and I went to the ZOO in Rotterdam last week, we've seen a lot of animals, but were so busy having fun that we had to hurry to see them all!

I think I never enjoyed playing soccer as much as I do now. Made these pictures of my team mates on Saturday (I had to stay out of the field most of the time, because I wrecked my ankle with my Monday soccer team) we won the match 17-0!

And here, specially for you, my new shoes! :)

Talk to you soon!

Lotte

Some facts

Just some facts about the differences...

Dutchland
41.528 km2
N/S= 315 km
E/W= 269 km
high= 322 m
low= -7 m

16.3 milion people

Canada
9.984.670 km2
N/S = 4.627 km
E/W = 5.187 km
high = 5.950 m
low = 0 m

32,2 milion people

Pictures about the Netherlands, her beautiful cities and my life are coming. It might take some time, but they're coming!

last Canadian post, this year :)

Hi everybody,

Here I am finally, with what will be my last post with Canadian pictures and stories... But I hope that's just for the moment, not for the rest of my life! When you wait so long, putting new stuff online, it becomes more and more difficult to keep the number of pictures down. I'll just try to keep the number of words down.
So, I worked at the Unique Stock Farm for a bit more than seven full weeks. Mostly my job was doing milking, with cleaning up after, but I did a lot of other things too. For example when I hurted my wrist, after that I was in charge of the calf feeding. In the, mostly, long lunch breaks I enjoyed my guitar, the surrounding land for walks/runs, my bible or the sun. I had a great time! O, almost forgot to tell you. When I was lucky enough to be done early enough, I was cheering for the Edmonton Oilers!! Too bad they didn't make it.

On Thursday July 6th we (the Morey's, my trailer mate Melissa and I) left for a sale in Red Deer. From there, a nice Swiss couple Jersey farmers, took us home, with their four boys in one truck! (I feel ashamed, because I forgot their names, but I'm sure the farmers among the readers know who I'm talking about!)

The next day I saw the whole, very long, opening parade while I was sitting in the sun all the time... Sweet! Afterworths in a hurry to the Stampede Grounds for the exciting rodeo! You could easily spend two full days at the fair grounds and end up wit an empty wallet! At night, I've seen the Chuckwagon Races, followed by the Biggest Outdoor Show on Earth! With the Young Canadians etc. Incredible to see around 200 kids doing exactly the same thing at exactly the same time. And the fire works; holy moly!! After quite some trouble meeting the right guy at the right place, we drove 'home' to the farm around sun rise. Some sleep, goodbye's and driving later I was at the airport, ready to pick up my parents and sister! It was unbelievable, till they were actually there...
From now on, I'm gonna let the pictures do the talking, I bet you know where to find me if you really want to know what we did, exactly.

One of the weekends I was off, my collegues Frank and Penny took me to Jasper National Park. We did 'some' driving, wildlife viewing and bathing in the hot springs!

Mountain sheep mama & baby and an elk.


Casey and Lee Morey at the 4H-club show. At the right two spoiled barn cats on my bed/couch.

Getting the warm and lazy cows in for their milking a 4.30 pm... What a nice memory.


Those stupid calves only think about one thing, don't they? At the right you see the tie stall part of the barn, you can't see it really good on this picture, but I made it all shine like new again.


The RCMP during the Parade, opening the Calgary Stampede.


On my last night at the Morey's, we had a bonfire with a lot of (burned) marshmallows. Too bad I forgot to take a picture of the rest of the family and staff... The dog is one out of three, this is Rusty; I wish I could give him one more hug.

Backyard of our first campsite, Jasper National Park.

Canoeing at Moraine Lake (freezing!!) and my dad at the Snaring River in Jasper.

Lake Louise. We hiked till a tea house at 2075 m. Beautiful!

Left is Lake Louise, on the right is Moraine Lake and in the middle is my mum, preparing supper. We ate burgers all the time, around every other day! :)

After a hike at Emerald Lake and after a hike to the Inktpots in Banff. At Emerald Lake, we were laying in the sun, but my dad and I went for a walk. When we came back, my mum and sister were in the car and told us they had seen a bear 15 m. away from them.

Dry hills and mountains for a day, towards Whistler (Nairn Falls). I went rafting for one day.

Vancouver Island; the sun, the beach, rain forest and wildlife! One morning we had to get out of our tents, because there was a bear behind it and later my sister saw one walking over the parking lots. And we've seen só many bald eagles... We camped almost under a nest and we saw them catch their fish in the sea!

One day in the last week, we went whale watching with Pipo on a small boat with 500 hp. The trip (and the power of the engines) were awesome! Pipo let both my sister and me drive the boat. Big waves, open sea, dolphins, sea otters and a grey whale! I took this pictures in Vancouver Aquarium, the sea was too rough to take decent pictures there.

Left you see the nicest stuff of Victoria; the surrounding nature! The city itself wasn't too much fun. Right is Vancouver, a nice, pretty city with a cool park.

The last campsite (and our car) and a last look at the Rockies... It hurted to leave Canada behind.

After a long weekend on airports and in plains we arrived in Amsterdam on July 30th.