Roosjes and Language Shame

Tired of the plastic Ikea foliage that decorates our apartment, we recently bought a few plants. Our first purchase was an African violet from the Amsterdam flower market; it sits in our windowsill. On Saturday, we bought roses from our local market. A bouqet of 40 roosjes was only €5! We like having fresh flowers in the house, and will try to make it a weekly tradition. We'll probably get more plants after we've settled into our new apartment, although we still don't know when we'll be moving...

Sunday evening we were invited to a birthday party thrown by our neigbours, Yuki and Hong, from Hong Kong. They have a son, Steven, who was turning six months old, so it was time to party. It is funny to note that Steven at six months weighs more than Elliott at 13 months--we don't know what they feed that kid! We met quite a few people at the party, and ate some tasty Chinese food (mmm...cha sui). Megan pointed out that we were the only people there who only spoke one language. In fact, most of the people there probably spoke at least three languages. We've got some catching up to do.

Congratulations to the Snauko family!

We are over due in wishing congratulations to Marian and Olga Snauko for the arrival of their baby girl, Emma! She was born September 26...welcome, Emma. Elliott can't wait to meet you.

Elliott starts daycare!

This past Tuesday, Elliott began his integration into Dutch society by starting daycare at de TUimelaar on the TUe campus. He's in a class for kids of age 10 weeks to 2 and a half years, although the classes play together so he plays with kids up to 4 years old too. The name of his class is 'de Boelies', but we don't know what this means. Other classes have names like 'de Smurfjes' (the Smurfs)and 'de Freggles' (the Fraggles), so maybe it's the name of some cute cartoon characters...

There are about 10 other babies and toddlers in is class, most of which are boys (can you find the sleeping baby in the picture?). Elliott goes to de TUiemelaar for two half-days a week (Tuesday afternoons and Wednesday mornings). So far, he has had a ball: playing with toys, eating dirt--what's not to love about it? He hasn't seemed to experience separation anxiety. In fact, we had to have the teacher get his attention to let him know we were leaving on his first day. Even then, we only got the "Uh, ok, see you later" look.

We hope he'll learn to play nicely with others and learn Dutch; meanwhile Megan will now have time to learn Dutch too. Goede!

First trip to Amsterdam

We finally visited the Netherlands' biggest city this past Sunday on an outing to the Rijksmuseum. We took the train up in the morning, and exited the Centraal Station to find Amsterdam quite cold! We are still weaklings when it comes to the weather, especially after spending nine years in the Bay Area. After lunch at Burger King (eet smakelijk) we headed to the museum. The Riksmuseum is being renovated, so the only part that is open is an exhibit on the Dutch Golden Age (17th century). We learned some Dutch history and saw Dutch masterpieces by Rembrandt (including "The Night Watch"), Frans Hals and others. Fortunately, Elliott fell asleep in his stroller for about an hour during our visit, which made things easier. One of Megan's favorites was an exhibit of elaborate Dutch doll houses. These weren't toys, but rather extremely expensive, scale representations of rich Dutch women's homes.

When we left the museum, the sun was out, which made for a nice walk back to the train station. We stopped at the flower market, passed over a few canals, and enjoyed walking down a small street full of antique shops. I think we heard more people speaking English than we did Dutch. When we get a chance to come back when we'll stay for a few nights and explore more of the city.

We also concluded that the gods of sport have been attempting to communicate with us...the Eindhoven marathon was the weekend before last, and as we tried to get to the Rijksmuseum we were blocked by the Amsterdam marathon. Is it a message???

Dance, Dance Revolution

Elliott asked us to share his moves with you...he thinks he's pretty cool. Did you see how he styled his hair in a little faux-hawk? He can do that now that he has tons of hair! It's really starting to fill in, and we're pretty relieved about that. And, with the addition of the six teeth, he's becoming a little boy.

It's officially starting to get cold here. The last few days have been cool and sunny, and I've had to break out my scarf. They haven't turned on the radiators in our building yet though. After living in California for nine years (with a brief but cold stint in Alaska), we are light weights so expect to see us bundled up! We invested in a big sleep sack for Elliott so he'll stay warm at night.

Today was the Eindhoven marathon. A lot of the city was blocked off for the route, and we walked by the starting line when the half-marathoners were lining up. I felt pretty un-fit. Don't quite think I'm ready to break out my spandex yet. We've only jogged a few times since we have been here. It's much more difficult to fit in exercise now that we don't have such readily available childcare and do have silly things like jobs. Plus, it's so dark in the mornings...wouldn't that be unsafe??? The few times we did jog though the Chariot was great! A very good purchase.

A's win again...advance to next round!!!

It was a late game for us tonight (started at 10pm), but I was able to stay up and watch the A's win handily. Fortunately, both of their potential opponents in the next round are East coast teams, so we'll have reasonable game times in the next round. Go A's!!!

A's win again...now lead series 2-0!!!

Go A's!!! Go Alice Waters!!!

Fortunately, the A's played a day game today, so we were able to watch their first-round playoff game against the Twins. We can watch any playoff game live on mlb.com, if it is on at a reasonable hour. What a game! The A's won (of course) with the help of two home runs by Frank Thomas. I wonder if we were the only people in Eindhoven watching?

This past Sunday we started a new tradition here in Eindhoven with our friend Brett: Chez Panisse Night. Brett is from the SF bay area and is really into cooking tasty food, so naturally he brought a small library of Alice Waters cookbooks with him to Eindhoven. We decided that we would pick out a few recipes and cook a nice dinner once a month.
The menu:
- Seared lamb with greens, chantrelle mushrooms and shoestring potatoes
- Roasted quail with mushroom risotto and a blueberry thyme sauce
- Lots of French wine
- Port and speculaas
We started cooking at 5:30pm and didn't finish eating until midnight. Everything was delicious! Impressive, considering we were cooking in a tiny kitchen with only an electric hotplate and a convection oven. Of course, we did have a few luxury items to work with, like Brett's mandolin for slicing the potatoes. In the spirit of Chez Panisse, we bought everything from the outdoor market and our local butcher shop. We're already starting to think about our next meal, which we think may have a Halloween theme. Any ideas for costumes? We're also thinking about inviting another guest to our dinner, preferably someone who can make dessert!

Finally, last Wednesday we learned that Vanessa's ex-roommate, Megan, was kicked off of "America's Next Top Model" after only the second episode. This was both good and bad news for us. It was bad news because we were rooting for Megan because a) she has a great name and b) we wanted to be able to say that we "knew personally" America's Next Top Model. It was good news because a) now we don't feel compelled to watch all of those annoying teenage brats and b) now Megan doesn't have to live with all those annoying teenage brats. Congratulations, Megan, on making it that far.