Annika goes... home

It has been a month today, since I arrived back on Schiphol on August 11th.

The day Annerie arrived in Seattle seems so far away now. Almost like it was in a different world. As I have written about it for months and months, I feel like I do still owe both you and me a decent story about our amazing 11 days of travel. On the 28th of July Annerie and I flew out to Las Vegas. The arrival into Las Vegas was stunning. There is dry, rough land for miles around and again I was amazed that there are so many different landscapes to see in one country. Flying in we could see hundreds of squares and rectangles including thousands of rows of homes. An enormous flat, dry area in which Las Vegas is built, with surrounding mountains in the distance. Right before landing on the airport it's already like you are entering a sunny 5 star tourist destination. Buildings are suddenly tall and rich in the sunlight, the scenery is beautiful. Even if you knew nothing about Las Vegas at all, you could feel you just landed somewhere anything but boring. Walking through the airport towards the bus station the casino vibe and slots machines are already everywhere, and people are using them too. I don't know a lot about Las Vegas. To be honest I didn't even know it was right in the middle of the desert until right before we left. Going outside you were slammed with a sudden wave of heat and thick air that you hoped to get used to, but after half an hour realized you wouldn't. The location of our hostel was not at all what I expected. Although not too far from the city center and The Strip, it appeared to be in the middle of nowhere. It soon became clear that although The Strip is seen as a place for the rich and famous, if you were 20 feet out it was a different world. It was quiet on the streets and the only people you did see were either homeless, disabled, crazy, drunk or all of these things at the same time. Shops were shady and the overall feeling was that you could be mugged right there by anyone you passed. The city center was different. As soon as you entered, the area was full of tourists and street performers. For a few blocks the whole area was completely filled up with casino's and souvenir shops. The first one of course being a bit irrelevant to us 20 year olds. In the evening we hung around at the pool at our hostel and met a group of guys from England, who invited us to come along to a casino on The Strip. After hesitating a bit we decided to join and finally got to experience the TV-and-media-Las Vegas. The Strip is packed with tall impressive casino's and hotels, with an amount of lights of which the working costs could for sure feed a whole city in Africa on a daily basis. Who ever you are, what ever you are wearing, when you are underneath the big Casino lights you feel like a royal star. Inside, there's more tables and slot machines then you can imagine. I was definitely surprised by it's scale. Although we couldn't play we had a good time watching the guys calculating which game to play and at which table to sit, to eventually still waste their money. I think you actually are allowed to just be in a casino and watch when you are not 21, but we still felt pretty illegal. When we left around 2am the whole Strip was still very much alive. Everything was open, concerts were playing and everyone appeared to be happy and full of energy. Catching a cab was as easy as raising your hand, a lot of fun to do. Having now only seen Las Vegas by night, we planned on a day trip the next day, but unfortunately the combination of heat, buses and probably something wrong I ate caused me to get extremely sick before we even really got started. It was a bummer not to see any of the shows and more of The Strip, but it made me extra thankful we did decide to go out the night before and experience the real thing. I still have to say that over all Las Vegas is the least fun city I've been to in the States. The Strip was definitely something to experience, but outside people appeared to be so extremely poor that it all seemed pretty sad. On our last day "in Vegas", we went on a tour to the Grand Canyon, a place that I would advise everyone to go see. I personally thought Hooverdam was already amazing, especially when you hear the story behind it. The Canyon itself is just breath taking, and makes you feel extremely small. The formation, the scale and colors of the rocks make for something so unique and beautiful that it is not possible to capture it on an amateurs camera. I have not one picture that truly captures what I saw. At one point you could partly climb down onto a part of a ridge that stretched out into the Canyon. It qualifies as one of the highlights of my year. There are no ladders, stairs or fences to keep you from sliding or falling, and to stand on an edge off where you can fall to death by a simple miss step or push feels both scary and empowering. Specially being the clumsy person that I am every move and twist was greatly calculated, not meaning to be one of the average of 7 people per year that still fall off these rocks. The long bus drive was most definitely worth it.

The greyhound buses bringing us from city to city starting at Las Vegas proved to be a pain right from the very start. As a ticket did not guarantee a seat on the bus the waiting time was long and the seats were uncomfortable, small and freezing cold if you were sitting by the window. But that is what you pay, or better said, don't pay for. Santa Cruz was again hot, but in a nice a way, and you felt like you were actually breathing in fresh air. Our hostel here was at a surprisingly good location, right at the pier, the Santa Cruz boardwalk, the beach and the ocean. The boardwalk included a 365 days a year fun-fare, with roller-coasters and other attractions. A bit over-prized, but a fun area to walk through nonetheless. We spend one full, relaxing day just laying on the beach reading books and it was great! We worked on our healthy bodies by shoving some delicious pizza inside and walking the whole long 2 minutes back to our hostel. I've got to say that honestly I'm much happier staying in a hostel than in a hotel any day. Hostels are fun, and you meet people from all over the world. You get free breakfast, you get free internet and sometimes even a pool. Where as hotels are over-prized, no fun at all (after having jumped beds for a reasonable amount time), and you have to pay extra for every stupid service that is normally included at a hostel. Because of this we also decided to last minute cancel our hotel reservation in Oakland and decided to just stay in a hostel in downtown San Francisco instead. At first I was the one who preferred going to Oakland, as I had already been to San Francisco, but everyone kept saying Oakland was boring and by the time we were actually going I was quite keen on seeing the city I loved so much last time again. Unfortunately we didn't get to see the Golden Gate bridge, but San Francisco was still a lot of fun. It has absolutely the best Chinatown that I've ever been to, like a small different country within the city of San Francisco. We ate sushi, we ate In-and-Out, purchased some cool souvenirs and at the end of the day I had found a great birthday gift for Annerie. A nice guy, who was a caricature artist, made a really nice picture of the both of us. Apart from him drawing our faces we also had a really nice conversation with him, and when we left we honestly say he had been the highlight of our day just as much as we were the same to him. San Francisco is the city that has everything. It has a great shopping area, good museums, plenty of tourist attractions that are also still fun for locals, it has the Golden Gate bridge, Alcatraz, the ocean and much, much more. The people are incredibly nice as long as you stay out of the "bad" areas. In some way San Francisco resembles Amsterdam, I've heard more then one person say (I agree), but it's hard to say why. All I know is that if I could live there, I would.

Fourth and final stop was Portland. Portland, Portland.. Where everything is without tax, except for our misleadingly prized hostel room. I'm quite serious, the cheaper the hostel the better! This was the most we paid for our room, yet it was furthest away from downtown, the staff wasn't very friendly, and in the city which you would expect to be the least touristy out all four. Luckily, after the downside of having the room turn out quite a bit more expensive than we would have liked, we found a great sushi restaurant nearby that was so amazingly cheap that we ordered so much sushi we couldn't finish it. It was truly heaven for two sushi-crazy-girls like us. Downtown Portland was a very nice surprise. Although I wasn't sure if there was anything to do there really, the city had just a really nice vibe. It was clean, it felt safe, the people were young and there were little to no homeless people for change. We went on a shopping spree getting rid of all that extra left over money to spend on more useless stuff that actually wouldn't fit in to my bag back to Holland anymore. If there's any city that I'd like to re-visit, then it's Portland. It was just a great feeling you got walking around there, and we didn't quite force ourselves to see all there actually is to see there. I had hoped we could go to the Oregon coast, but that turned out to be much, much more expensive than either of was willing to spend. Too bad.. Maybe next time when we have a car to use.

So.. That was our trip. We came back safe, sound and broke, and then the packing had to begin. Three suitcases and I still had to leave at least one full other suitcase of stuff behind. It is good that I did, cause with all the stuff I brought back there is hardly room in my closet as it is. After a fun second farewell party with my friends in Seattle it was finally time to go back home. I got to see my host-family and the kids one last time at the airport. The flight back was absolutely horrible. I'm not sure if it was me not wanting to go back, or it just being a bad day to fly, but it was the worst travel day ever. My first plane had a lot of turbulence and in the second plane it was even worse. At one point the stewardess was making an announcement when the plane suddenly started rumbling like it was going to fall straight out of the air, and the stewardess (over the intercom) couldn't help but giving a frightened little yelp. Of course that freaked almost the whole plane out, and even when we steadied and she apologized, the woman before me was in fear of her life over the next 7 hours. My mom, my grandmother and Felix picked me up from the airport when I finally arrived back in the Netherlands one month ago. I had some trouble adjusting and not constantly feeling like I'd rather be in America, but I think I have found my spin now. The right balance between keeping contact with my host-family and friends, but also being able to appreciate seeing my friends and family here. I love going back to school, and - big surprise - I some times even kind of love the Dutch landscape. After seeing so many different things in America I thought I would hate it, but I can now actually appreciate it for it's beauty and uniqueness. Although I'm still me, after this year I can say that I have changed and grown in a couple aspects. I have learned more about who I am and how I work, I am more confident in myself, and I've learned how to have a good time without drinking alcohol, which was actually one of my goals.

There is no doubt in my mind that going to America was the right decision. I honestly had the year of my life and got so incredibly lucky it's mind blowing. I've made friendships that will last forever and I hope to stay in contact with my host-family, and maybe visit them, over years to come. It took a long time for me to write this because I did have trouble feeling at home back home, but now I can also say that it was definitely the right decision to not extend and continue my studies. As long as I can keep my poster of Mt. Rainier on my wall to look at every day :)..

Thanks for following and reading!

Love,
Annika

Last days in America

I haven't written anything on my blog in the longest time, I'm not quite sure why. I guess life has just been really easy and nothing too eventful has happened that I absolutely had to talk about. No, that's not true, eventful stuff HAS happened. Maybe it's because I've talked to people from home more often now that my year is coming to a close and you are all already updated on the latest.

Just a quick summary then for those who I didn't talk to. I found a room in the Netherlands, not in Breda, but in Tilburg. I watched all the Dutch World Cup games here in America with a group of Dutch people on the island. Had a blast and loved it even more then in previous years, even though I always thought I just loved it for the party (which we didn't really have here). My host-family took me on a trip to Colorado, which was amazing! I took a math course for my school online and passed, eventually. Annerie arrived here and I'm so happy she gets to see my life here and I just enjoy having her around so much!

This weekend has been a once in a life time couple of days. Saturday my Au Pair friend Desiree got married to her boyfriend Jamie and she asked me, Daniela, Melina and Linnea to be her bridesmaid. It was such a unique experience and I had sooo much fun. Desiree looked gorgeous and all the bridesmaids managed to find one dress that we all fitted. It looked really nice on everyone, even though we have completely different body types. It was super strange walking down the isle before Desiree, it made me think that one day I'd have to walk that way myself. Well, let's hope I get to someday. Desiree was of course totally nervous, but kept it together quite well. At the reception I suddenly heard that one of the bridesmaids had to make a toast, which I totally didn't think about before, and I had about 10 seconds to come up with something. It luckily went okay though. It was actually very cool to do, and to know I was an important enough person in the wedding to make that toast was an amazing feeling. Like knowing I'm a good enough friend and person I guess. If that makes any sense ;)...

Then yesterday, Sunday, me and Daniela had our farewell party. Finally it's here.. We are now really ALMOST leaving. After a year. My and Daniela's host-parents are good friends and since we arrived and will leave on the same day AND we're really good friends, it was a great combo to do it with both of us together. I had a lot of fun and it was great to know we were giving some of the new girls the same feeling as that we had when we went to our first going-away party two weeks after we arrived. The group of Bainbridge Island Au Pairs is just amazing. Everyone takes such good care of each other and the new girls get invited and sucked in to the group right away. I'm so glad that all the new girls will have this same support system we had, which will make it so much easier and fun to get through the year. When it was time for exchanging gifts with my host-family and when they made a speech about me in front of everyone, I couldn't help but crying. I will truly miss them so much. I gave them a photo album with all my special moments with the kids that they had to miss, a sushi cookbook, a book for the kids, and two t-shirts for the kids with; "My Au Pair LOVES Me, love Annika, Au Pair '09 - '10" on it. My host-family gave me a great picture, framed, of me and the kids at Washington D.C. that I didn't have yet. Also they will pay for my and Annerie's hotel the night before I leave. My family will be on vacation and not come back until late in the evening the night before I leave. Making it impossible for me to see them if we didn't have a hotel room close to the airport. I think this is really so nice of them, and it'll give me a last chance to say goodbye. My host-dad's father, Dean, gave me the sweetest present ever. Earrings that belonged to his wife, Char, who has unfortunately passed away a couple of years ago. They are very beautiful and it means so much to me that he gave me such a personal gift.

Just today and tomorrow left, and then me and Annerie leave for vacation. I can't wait :)! It's going to be super hot in Las Vegas for sure. Even though everyone in Holland says they're sick of all the heat, I'm ready for some super warm sunshine! We'll come back on the 7th of August we'll right away get picked up to go to another goodbye party, that our friends from Seattle were kind enough to throw for me and Daniela. These guys are really sooo nice! You want a DJ? Done. You need a ride? No problem, we'll pick you up ANYWHERE, cause it's your party. Love them so much. Actually this party was supposed to be a surprise party, but I of course with my big mouth started asking if we could please please have a party on that exact same day to some one else, so now they're just mixing the plans together and we'll all have a great time.

Man.. this must be my worst written blog in a while. Can't make it quite fluent right now, but you get the point at least ;).

See you in a 2 weeks!

The Pacific Northwest

Our road-trip this weekend was nothing short of amazing. Unfortunately I broke up with my boyfriend last week, but Melina offered to still do the trip with me and I am so happy she did! We left on Friday evening with a full agenda of things to do for the weekend. We had taken the backseats out of Melina's car and had put an air matras in instead. Around 10:30pm we arrived in Port Angeles. We were supposed to park at a camping, but that turned out to already be closed, so we decided to just find a nice parking lot and spend the night there. When we asked around for possible parking spots, a nice men from the gas station told us about a spot that was on sort of a tip stretching out into the Strait of Juan. Because it was dark all we saw was that it was a nice and secluded spot, but when we woke up in the morning we had a beautiful view of the mountains of Port Angeles and Canada off in the distance.

After breakfast we visited an outside art show in Port Angeles for a bit. In a small park they had "hidden" pieces of art like they were part of nature. It was amazing how they blended in, and even though we walked around the whole park, I'm sure we by far didn't notice all the stuff there was to see. Then we made our way towards Hurricane Ridge. The drive was like nothing I've ever seen before. We were surrounded by beautiful mountains, driving up to the snow tops. The view was stunning and we stopped multiple times to take pictures. Up the mountain it was snow, snow and more snow. Of course it snows sometimes in Holland but, this was snow so high that there was no way of even coming close to what would be the ground if you stepped in it. We had a blast playing around like little kids, rolling down snow hills and asking people to borrow their kids's sleds to also slide down. We were extremely lucky, not only then, but the whole weekend. Whenever we wanted to enjoy the scenery it was sunny and whenever we really didn't care cause we had a long drive to make it started to rain. On our way up Hurricane Ridge we got to see all the mountain tops, we even got to walk in the snow with our sunglasses on cause the sun was shining so brightly and the moment we were ready to leave clouds were moving in over head and it started raining. On our way back we couldn't see any of beautiful views we had seen before, but it was okay cause we already had the pictures in our camera and printed in our memories.

Next up was Lake Cresent, which is considered the second deepest lake in the state of Washington, although it's so deep that no one has actually been able to measure it's real depth yet. We walked a trail through rain forest and made it to the waterfall called Marymere Falls. After that we took a detour finding the Lake Cresent Lodge which really had the beautiful postcard view. Even though we had a busy schedule we still got to sit down in the sun and enjoy it for a bit. On our way back through the rain forest we had a funny encounter with some pot smokers, who tried to avoid us by taking the off road that we just happened to need to take too. It was very funny to see how uncomfortable they were, knowing they were being followed and that we could smell perfectly well that they were smoking weed. It became even funnier when they let us pass them so that they could take another path and when Melina and this "stranger" suddenly recognized each other. It's a small world ;). The pot smoker was the dad of a boy playing in the same baseball team as the kid Melina takes care off. Busted! We had a good laugh about it the whole way back to the car.

For some reason the drives weren't too long and even though we were definitely not rushing we were still way ahead of our own schedule and decided to go to Forks today instead of the next. On our way to Forks we also quickly stopped by the Sol Duc Hot Springs, which was honestly a little disappointing. We didn't bring our bathing suits and were not allowed in in our underwear, the cheapest swimsuit for sale was very expensive, you had to pay more then I would have expected for entrance and.. The Hot Springs really didn't seem like anything more then heated pools or hot tubs, not natural at all. So we checked it out, but didn't go in and just made our way to Forks. Anyone who is as Twilight crazy as most people here knows what Forks is, probably better then I do. I only read the first chapter of the first book and saw the first movie, but now I can say I visited the Twilight place. And that I thought it was really not that cool at all. Forks was.. small. A few stores by the main road in building that seemed to be falling apart. Every building had twilight posters on it, even the grocery store and the Chinese restaurant, where you got to dine next to a life size cardboard print of Edward Cullen. It was a bit too much, specially cause there was really not that much Twilight stuff to see. The movie was obviously not shot in Forks and even though they they had some places that were supposed to be places as described in the books I think they could have pointed at any house and say that was the Cullen's place. At the visitor center of Forks, which was literally called Twilight Information (like there is nothing else about Forks worth checking out), we saw Bella's car from the movie. It was kind of cool, but on further inspection Melina had to conclude this was not the same car as used in the movie. After seeing the movie 6 times, she was pretty sure. So Forks mainly just made me feel very sorry for the people who lived there and had to endure all the Twilight crazyness.

For the night we went out to a piece of private property between Forks and La Push where another Bainbridge Island mom that Melina knows has a vacation cabin. One might wonder what's fun about a vacation cabin in the middle of nothing, closest fun town more then an hour away, and in the place where it rains more then anywhere else.. That's what I was thinking at least. The cabin had no electricity, no gas, no water, no toilet and, oh my god, no cellphone reception. Back to basic. When we arrived there was already a group of 5 other people in the cabin too. They were our age and quite nice so we had fun. Luckily they knew how to work the generator and one the girls had already been here lots of times before and she showed us the river. Just when it started getting really dark the rain set in, and we quickly made our way back. It was kind of fun having it rain, it felt like this was the way it was supposed to be. Melina and me still ended up just sleeping in the car because we didn't want to move all our stuff or tell the others to quiet down cause we were going to bed "early".

In the morning we woke up with the sunlight again and made our way out to La Push. It was raining in La Push, but the beach for still pretty amazing. The rock cliffs off shore aren't anything like I've ever seen in the Netherlands and look really pretty. We didn't hang around too long, cause just like Forks, La Push was just a small town and even the word town seems too big for what it really was. It's quite sad to see how poor these people who live there are. Houses like that you'd never see in Holland. We had Google mapped a road that would take us along the coast up to the most North-West tip of the United States, Cape Flattery. This is really the first time Google driving instructions have ever failed me and it was a bit of a bummer. After driving about half an hour we came to a point where the driving instructions told us to go onto road 5000, which was indicated by the sign as a private road. The gate was open and after discussing it for a bit we figured Google wouldn't mislead us on to a road where we weren't allowed to go, so we took it. The road was small, 16 miles long and was paved with little stones so we couldn't go faster the 25 mph. Side roads all led to further off into the woods, set of with blue fences, indicating private property. Although it was scenic to ride through the woods, I personally got a little bit freaked out. We both had zero reception on our cellphones, we were in the middle of no where, the road seemed unending. When it did end it was only after 45 minutes to an hour of driving and it was by one of those same blue fences that led off even further into the middle of nowhere. We were so sure the fence would be open like in the beginning so we spend at least 3 minutes in front of the fence just voicing our disbelieve and disappointment. The way back seemed even longer and made me even more nervous. If we would have car trouble here we would have no way of reaching any one and a 16 mile walk would have taken us hours and hours and hours. We only passed two cars the whole two hours we spend on the 5000 and on our way back that just made me extremely nervous that one of those drivers might have closed the first fence and that would leave us stuck on this private property in the middle of nowhere without any cellphone coverage. Luckily I worried the whole way back for nothing cause the gate was still open. We made our way back all the way to the main road and took the Highway up to Cape Flattery instead. When we stopped at the gas station and asked if there was another way from La Push to Cape Flattery along the coast, the employee's told us there was no way at all. Thanks Google..

After a huge detour we finally reached Cape Flattery. We hiked up the trail and had the most amazing view ever. I'll upload pictures and maybe you can Google Image it, cause it was just beautiful. There were rocks in the middle of the water sticking far up, and along the coast there were caves in the wall where waves of the ocean smashed in and out. Again it was perfectly sunny just when we needed it to be and we had a picnic sitting on the cliff looking out over the Pacific Ocean and the Strait of Juan, with Canada far in the distance. Sitting on the most North West tip of America. With only one more stop to go we made our way back to the car and headed for Shi Shi Beach. We actually at one point thought we were there and stopped the car to take pictures of the beautiful beach and ocean, but when we drove further, just because we had a little bit of extra time anyway, we noticed the signs that Shi Shi Beach was still further ahead. We reached the head of a trail leading to Shi Shi Beach. It said the trail was 1.7/2 miles and as European girls we ofcourse had no idea how long of a walk that would be. We just figured it couldn't be too bad cause all the trails we'd done so far were quite do-able. I started thinking we must nearly be there after the first 20 minutes of walking, but an hour later we were still not at the end and had no idea how much further it would be. The path, which started out nice, had turned extremely muddy and finding your way through the mud without your shoes sinking in all the way was quite a challenge. I felt like I was doing parcour, making fast jumps from log to log and climbing over fallen trees that were in the middle of the path. After more then an hour we took a side trail and stood on a high cliff looking out over a really really beautiful view again. Behind us wood, beneath us rocks and cliffs and in front of us nothing but the sun shining brightly onto the Pacific Ocean. It was gorgeous. At this point I figured it couldn't get any better then this and I didn't see the point in walking much further. The whole way we had seen no one and it really made me wonder where this path was taking us. Of course again the no cellphone coverage, so I got nervous again about something happening, like jumping, sliding and one of us breaking our ankle and being stuck there. Luck was however with us again and the moment we got back to the main path to head back to the car we saw people walking ahead back towards to parking lot. We yelled and ran after them, and finally reached them to ask how far from the beach we actually were. Only 10 minutes! We felt really lucky we met them cause after walking such a long way it would have been a shame to walk all the way back and afterwards know we were so close to reaching it. The people were right and less then 10 minutes later we reached a tricky trail going steep down. I've never been really afraid of heights, but I've never been crazy about them either. Small, slow steps and I could not look down without thinking I was going to fall. Finally, we made it. Shi Shi Beach was amazing! It was a long stretched sand beach by the Pacific Ocean that felt nice, secluded and untouched. Like a secret beautiful place. If I had known the trail would have been this long I would probably not have started, but now that we did I am so happy we made it and it was worth the trip. The way back we went a lot faster. Instead of being early we were now way behind on schedule and we were already so dirty that we didn't bother to avoid the mud as much as we did on our way in. Of course this led to my shoe almost getting stuck in the mud completely, as I tried to lift my foot up and my foot just left the sole of my shoe behind. But eventually we made it back in just 55 minutes, with both our shoes and nothing more then a few scrapes. I've never been much of a hiker and most of the time I think walking through the woods is just plain boring, but this actually wasn't. I had fun, and by the end of it I was extremely proud of myself, having made it all the way, walking and jumping at a fast pace.

The way back from Shi Shi Beach to Bainbridge Island was a long one. We left the Shi Shi parking lot at 6pm and were at my house at 10:30pm, only having stopped for a quick sandwhich at Subway in Port Angeles. We took the scenic route back, which was a bit long but fun to see. I did notice something about myself, I do NOT like being in the middle of nowhere without cellphone reception. Even though I now realize that we had to go through those areas to get to the most beautiful places I've ever seen, and it was worth it, I do feel a lot safer knowing I can call someone if something happens or there are at least other people not too far away. And we can not see another blue private property fence leading into the woods anymore without getting very angry and frustrated feelings, both Melina and I noticed.

The trip was beyond anything I could have imagined. We went from mountains and snow, to rain forests and waterfalls, to Ocean and cliffs, to a beautiful sand beach. Strangely the towns we visited, that were really our reasons for coming out there, were not that interesting at all, but I feel like with Hurricane Ridge, Lake Cresent, Marymere Falls, Cape Flattery and Shi Shi Beach I've seen some of the most amazing places in the world. I think Washington State is greatly underrated, as I had never heard of it being one of the best states in America, but I am sure it must be! I hope everyone gets a chance to come out here some day, if you do, remember to visit all these places, they are worth the trip.

Traveling, a bit more please?

It's officially less then a 100 days now, before I will fly back to Holland. Can you believe it? Nine months have passed already, and I've only got 3 more left to go..
It's so weird that I'm already almost daily thinking about leaving now. Things are being planned for weeks and months after I will already have left. And already it feels like I'm seeing some people and doing certain things for the last time. I feel lucky that Daniela arrived and will leave on the same day as me, cause we both know exactly what the other person is going through. With how fast the last couple of months have been going, 3 months seems only just a few weeks away.

In the meantime I can just keep adding on to my been-there/going-there list of places within America. In three weeks I will do a weekend road-trip with my boyfriend, his best friend and one of my best friends here to Port Angeles and Forks (yes Forks, from Twilight ;)). And on June 30th I will go with my host-family to Colorado, to visit the places where my host-dad's father grew up. We'll be doing a mine tour in Ouray, CO(lorado) and then over the course of 2 or 3 days drive back to Salt Lake City, UT(ah). From there we'll back to Seattle on the 4th of July, and still be back in time for the 4th of July fireworks! Unfortunately I don't get to go along with my host-family as they go to a wedding at Lake Tahoe, because I'll already be back in Holland by then, but I have nothing to complain about. Because of them I will have seen more places in the US then I could have wished for!

I have been thinking about writing a America vs. Holland blog. There are so many (little) things that are different and I definitely have my thoughts about some of the pro's and cons of both countries. And maybe a list of things that I will do and foods that I will buy within my first week back in the Netherlands. Smeerworst van de Lidl never looked so good as when after you've done a year without. Don't know what I'll do without my Starbucks coffee though.. I think the closest one will be at Utrecht Central Station? That's a little out of the way from Breda..

And because I'm all excited about traveling again, here's a list of all the places I will have seen by the end of my year in America:
- Seattle, WA
- Bainbridge Island, WA
- Port Townsend, WA
- Silverdale, WA
- Whidbey Island, WA
- Forks, WA
- Port Angeles, WA
- Quinalt Rainforest, WA
- Mt. Rainier, WA
- Vancouver, Britisch Colombia (Canada)
- Portland, OR
- Sacramento, CA
- San Francisco, CA
- Los Angeles, CA
- Santa Barbara, CA
- Las Vegas, NV

- Salt Lake City, UT
- Ouray, CO
- New York City, NY
- Arlington, VA
- Washington, D.C. (District of Colombia)
- St. John, US Virgin Islands

This is why I wake up happy every morning ;).
X

Where are you from?

The last couple of weeks have been amazing! After my mom and grandmother left I went to Washington D.C. for a week with my host-family. We stayed with my host-moms brother and his wife and kids. They were so nice! I had a great time in D.C. and feel so lucky that I got to go there. On Friday I even got the day off to wander around in the city by myself. Anyone who knows me knows that I LOVE walking around by myself. Just me and my iPod and I'm the happiest girl on Earth. The day I was off it was super nice weather and there was the cherry blossom festival. For those of you who haven't seen them yet, check out the photo's on Hyves. I absolutely loved seeing all the important buildings and it was just looking very nice everywhere around the city. We did a tour of The Capitol, a tour of The White House, and by myself I saw a dozen other really cool places. I even saw the president! Well.. Sort of.. I saw the presidential motorcade coming by so the president must have been in one of the cars. Not too far away :D!

Then last weekend I went with Daniela, Melina en Andrea to San Francisco. At first I wasn't all that excited because I was still blown away by the awesomeness of Washington, D.C., but when I got there it was at least just as awesome (if not more) there! I had so much fun with the girls. We're all Au Pairs on Bainbridge and we're from.. the Netherlands (me, duh), Germany (Daniela), France (Melina) and Colombia (Andrea). While we were there at least 10 or 15 people asked us where we were from and it was always funny to answer. We did a tour of San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge definitely being the highlight. For some reason I wasn't as excited to go there as the other girls, cause I didn't think it would be very impressive, but.. It was :). We also went to Alcatraz, which I thought was very cool. We did so many cool stuff it's too much to name it all. I dare you to watch all the 321 pictures on Hyves ;). And yeah, those were my top pick out of the 2,500 pictures in total that the four of us took. On Friday evening we went to an under-aged club. It's kind of too much here, you have a bunch of girls who work for the club "dancing" around in their underwear (or short skirts without..) and it's just disgusting. I was kind of thinking you would not actually encourage people to have sex right on the dance floor, but I guess this is America.. California.. The second night we went to a real club. MyfirsttimeusingafakeID. Shhhht! Haha, it's so convenient to have friends that are over 21 and that you sort of look like. :) It was very nice to go out again, just in a normal club, we had lots of fun.

Anyway, now I'm back again. In the middle of all of this I also had some time to finally find my amazing American boyfriend :D. Yay! Fingers crossed I'm not jinxing it by putting this on my blog, hehe. See ya! X

Spring

The first day of spring was an absolutely gorgeous one. Me and the kids went to the Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island (see my youtube channel for the vid), and it was a lot of fun. It's amazing that you can find something that beautiful just around the corner. Even though it was just a walk, a 2 hour walk even, the kids were great and loved it just as much as I did.

So my mom and grandmother left 2 days ago after a 3 week visit in the US. It was great to have them over and I'm glad to know they enjoyed their time here and loved Seattle just as much as I do. Every time I now talk about something here, they can at least picture it much better. I got terribly spoiled the whole time they were here. I hope they know that wasn't necessary and not what I expected from them, but very nice, thank you! With my mom and grandmother here it gave me some great opportunities to also see places that I hadn't seen before in Seattle. We went whale watching, to the Quinalt Rain Forest and ate (twice!) at this really great sushi place, that I didn't know about before. Also we saw Avatar in 3D, the second time seeing it for me, we went to Improv comedy on Bainbridge and of course they just hung out a couple of times with me and my host-family.

Sorry for the abrupt ending on this blog, I was planning on finishing it but never got to it. That happens sometimes..

Flying by..

I've been trying to write this blog and not make every post the same as the last on, but for now I'm just going to give up on that goal, cause I can't write about anything else but that what's really on my mind. According to the current plan I'll be flying back to the Netherlands in 5 months and it is starting to feel way too close. Some of you have been saying that 5 months will still be a long way to go, but you don't understand how fast the weeks go by here! On Monday it feels like Friday is just around the corner and on Friday, well.. Then it's almost Monday again! Just in 4 months Annerie will already be here and then it will already feel like vacation to me, cause I can hang out and do fun stuff with her (and the kids). Which means that in 2 months there will only be 2 months left until she comes and then I'm almost home again! Does that make any sense?

In the upcoming 5 months I still have some big travel plans. I will still see Washington DC, San Francisco, Portland, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon. I can't believe that in 1 year I will have seen 10 amazing cities all over the US, in 7 different States, plus the Grand Canyon, Vancouver in Canada and St. John in the US Virgin Islands. It's way more then I could have hoped for and probably more then most Dutch people can say they've been to. Of course there's still a lot more to see. I'm sort of starting to wish for one of those world maps so I can cross off where I've been and then hopefully one day it'll be full with dots all over the globe.

Fun fact, yesterday I met a woman who I hadn't seen since the first month after I arrived here and the first - no, okay, second.. - thing she said to me was that I picked a major American accent. I don't know if that's really a good thing though. Another fun fact, my mom brought me stroopwafels from Holland and they were gone within a week. Wait - that wasn't fun. Who feels compelled to send me new stroopwafels??!

In other random news I also entered the next decade of being "in my 20's" two weeks ago. And no, this wasn't very exciting since 20 still isn't 21.. It was nice that my mom and grandmother arrived here just 4 days after my birthday and so I could celebrate my birthday with both my real family, my host-family and my friends here. I'm glad they get to see Seattle, so they can imagine what I'm talking about when I talk about America all the time.
Okay, that's it for today, I'm gonna go do some laundry :) Bye!

*add* Oh! I have one other fun fact to add, which is kind of amazing! While we're in Washington DC we will get a tour through the White House!! Normally you have to reserve a spot on these tours months in advance, but because my host-mom's brother works for the government he could get us in with just 3 weeks notice. I'm really very excited about this. Even though it's open to all public it still seems like something very unique and special.