12/17/09

The longest day ever still had some room for funny pictures. Let's all be happy, sad, angry and SUPER happy! Haha, I had trouble not laughing with the angry one. Leaving for the hotel near the airport tonight and then catching a super early flight tomorrow morning! I'm looking forward to it, just feeling a little stressed with all the things that need to be done and having to take care of Sophie (cause she's sick) in the meantime. Going to have breakfast with Daniela first luckily this morning, so that at least I'll start my day fun before all the hard work. I'll bring my laptop so I'll definatly (How's that word spelled? It keeps saying it's not right, but not giving me another option either. - Anyway..) .. post some more later. Wish me luck on not going crazy today!

X

Early December update

Yes, I will make another blog post this soon, just because I can!

So.. I made another video blog thing that I am loading onto YouTube right now and I'll post the link right under here when it's done. Completely uncut so you'll notice me trying to tell you about my vacation again, and then realizing I already told you, but whatever.. I will not bother trying to upload the video through Blogger, cause the quality is so low. So if you want to see, please click the link! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s658g8AWcgc

Besides the stuff that I talk about in the Vlog I can also gladly announce that I am spending an amazing number of hours trying to read through the whole Harry Potter series - again. I believe it is 7 times that I read the first book now? But strangely enough I only got through the whole series once. I figure it's all just a good balance between being a kid, reading Harry Potter and playing ORPG's, and being a responsible grown-up, taking care of the kids. I'm really only 19 after all.
I'm also taking so many pictures every day, that I think I will have to delete half of the stuff by the time I get to my 6 months here. One trip to the beach will every time, again and again, cause reason for 50 or more pictures and I must have about a 100 of the same sort-like pictures taken of the view from the living room. I have loads of pictures of the kids too, but I don't want to put too much of that on the internet.

What else? Nothing really..
Oh yes! I'm spending an insane time writing stupid Christmas cards!! No, I don't think they're actually stupid. I like writing them, but it just takes me about one and a half hour to write just 5 cards. Some cards are in English, some in Dutch. Sorry, I just really can't pass up an opportunity to talk/write English, I love it so much. I think someone up there must have made a mistake letting me be born in a country where they don't speak English, obviously wasn't supposed to be.

The Magical World of Twitter

Hi everyone! Thanks for the positive feedbacks on my videoblog. I just wanted to make a quick post today to tell you about Twitter and a way that you can text me (sort of) and it doesn't cost any money.

So my Twitter is http://twitter.com/AnnikaInAmerica. If you sign up for an account and I subscribe to you, you can put in a message on your computer on Twitter, and I will get that message right away send to my cellphone in America. So no matter where I am, I'll get your message, and it doesn't cost me or you anything, because the text service in America is free. Also I can, through text, send you a message back that you can then read again on your Twitter. Please feel free to stalk me whenever, I love getting messages from people at home :).

Also I signed up for this new thing called Dailybooth, and my Dailybooth ishttp://dailybooth.com/AnnikaInAmerica. I'll post pictures on there as well as just on Hyves. Haha, being in America it's hard to not get sucked in to all this online stuff. Facebook, Twitter, Dailybooth..

Anyways, posting this so that I can stay better connected for those who are interested. This way I can also keep more updated on how you guys are doing (and I want to know that too!).

Video Blog

Trying out something new! I hope you like it. No commenting on bad editing, please.. ;)

Higher quality version is being uploaded on youtube, especially for the photo's it's definatly worth clicking on the other version for. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUfIpnviCHo

Bowling, H1N1 and Disneyland!

Okay, lets just start with the best news first. I re-booked my ticket and I will go to Disneyland, LA the 4th of Januari. As I posted before I will go to St. John and LA around Christmastime. From 12/19 to 12/28 I will be in St. John and from 12/28 to 1/5/10(!) will stay Los Angeles with Rosanne. Rosanne and her hostfamily have a familypass to Disneyland, but unfortunatly that does not include visits during holiday times. Holidays according to Disneyland end after January 3rd, so she had this great idea of us all going to Disneyland on the 4th, but unfortunatly I had booked my ticket to go back on the 4th in the morning. After being bummed out about that for a few days and then just forgetting all about it, I just realised that I could re-book my ticket and so I did and now I'm going! We are also planning on going to the Yosemite National Park. For fun you should just google it ;).

Life is still great here. The kids were sick for a couple of days last week, but they are better again, and amazingly I didn't get anything at all. I guess those flu shots really did help. For a moment we were all a bit scared of the H1N1 virus, because lots of people are claimed to have it now, but wether it was the flu, just a cold or H1N1, we all got out okay.

Last saturday I went bowling with some of the other girls on the Island in Silversdale. It was so much fun! It felt really American. There were about 30 lanes next to each other, and because it was karaoke night there was music playing really loud and the room was dark, but with flashing lights. I don't know how this went the last time I'm went bowling, but the first few times I rolled I was really really good, and then suddenly I lost it, starting caring too much about strikes and messed up completely. Haha, it was still fun though.

It's a half-day of school today so I got to go and pick up the kids pretty soon!
I'll write some more later!
X

Halloween Houseparty

Haha. Are we crazy not to celebrate Halloween in the Netherlands? Yes! We're missing out on the most awesome holiday ever. Once again the houseparty in Lynnwood was a great succes. This time with some people I already knew, some new people, everyone dressed up and some good music. Beer + Malibu + Wodka + a good meal before = A fun party without throwing up! I had so much fun, and this time I'm actually not missing pieces of memory and kept all that should be inside; inside. Okay, so it wasn't really all that absolutely bad last time, don't worry. Me and Daniella already decided that we are gonna throw our own Halloween party when we are back home and felt sad that we couldn't expierence Halloween twice in one year. More parties to come though, that are for sure going to be just as awesome as the last two. Pictures on Hyves and.. I'll probably make a site with all the pictures on it too, for people that don't really do Hyves.

Love it here.

E Hastings

Yay! I've been in Canada!
Vancouver was not at all what I expected, things didn't go quite as planned...

Our bus left at 8am saturday morning and at about 11.30am we arrived in Vancouver. We were dropped off at a touristy area where you could get lots of food - but nothing else but food - and were told to stay there for 2 and a half hours. After about 10 minutes of walking around we realized this was not going to very interesting, got lose from the group of German girls that only spoke German, and settled for hot chocolate at a regular coffee place cause they didn't have Starbucks. It was really cold outside, much colder than I've experienced in Seattle so far, and it was just not nice being stuck there for such a long time, while we were feeling that we could spend our time in Vancouver much better. The real disapointment came when we finally DID get into the main shopping street of Vancouver and we figured out that everything was much more expensive there. The US and Canadian dollar currency is almost equal at this time so there really were no good deals. Even at H&M none of us could find something worth buying..

We decided to head over to a part of Vancouver called Gastown, because we heared there were some nice stores there. But once we arrived most of the stores had already closed. We agreed to try and find a restaurant and head over to Chinatown, which seemed only a few blocks away from Gastown. On our way there we started to graduatly notice a change in athmosphere and people. Here and there we noticed a few homeless people, but we didn't really worry about it too much, cause you have lots of homeless people in Seattle too. As we walked a little bit further we suddenly noticed small groups of homeless, or almost homeless, people standing in groups talking to each other. People with shoppingcarts to carry their stuff in, people standing in porches and doorways, a woman with about 7 or 8 umbrella's surrounding her, as if to protect her stuff. We just realised that this was not a quite right place to be in when a weird looking man leaned towards us and started saying something that I could not even understand. And just as it accured to me that we should get away from this place, we got to a crossing. I looked to the left and saw an amazing sight of dozens and dozens of homeless people. The whole street seemed to be crowded with them. It was already dark and, wow, this was just an amazing sight. And very scary. I'm not scared that easily and I was surprised by how suddenly everything clicked from being fine and okay, to being in a scary situation. The thing that made it worse was that I suddenly saw the street sign saying "E Hastings". East Hastings.. I have been talking to a guy from Canada and a few days before I left I asked him about some tips for places to visit while I was in Vancouver. He named a few things, but after that he had specificly told me (about 20 times) NOT to go to East Hastings. He kept repeating to really not go there. He told me about the people that hang out there being homeless, or drug addicts, and that it was really not a place I wanted to go. Even though I was a little bit curious I had intended to really stay out of there, because the stories he told me sounded awfull. Even though I had remembered what he said, it just never accured to me to look up on the map where the street was so that I could avoid it, but as we were now figuring out East Hastings was the street that connected Gastown to Chinatown. Anyway, we were standing there at the crossing, 3 young girls, looking like tourists, and I realised that if ANYONE of those dozens of homeless and drugsaddict people had bad intentions we were the easiest target. And that there were no sane people around to help us if something crazy did happen. So we crossed quickly. I had no idea where exactly we were, but I didn't dare to get my map out because that made us look even more vulnerable. Soo.. We did what seemed most logical at that time; we started running. One block further luckily we found ourselves in Chinatown and the sevilized world again. I was in complete after shock for about an hour after that, saying things like "wow", "oh my god" and "that was really scary" about every 30 seconds. We were all laughing though. This was the most scary thing that happened in my whole time in America so far, but it was funny and exciting in retrospect. We were in a much better mood after that.

We were in a hurry to get back to the mainstreet. By this time we were really hungry, so we tried to find a restaurant. This turned out to be quite a challenge, with every restaurant looking empty or dirty and every other place being fastfood. We finally (and I mean really finally after about an hour of walking and searching) agreed on a Chinese restaurant, which turned out to be a whole new adventure by itself. We were apart from one other woman there eating alone the only ones in the restaurant. The waiter was really nice and made us some suggestions. "Are you sure you want to order that? I wouldn't order that. I'm sure you won't like it." And we were served three main dishes which we got to share with the three of us. All the food was really good up untill desert, which we got for free, that was really nice. I forgot the name, but this stuff was a sort of slimy liquid with little round balls in it. If you put it in your mouth you felt the balls rolling around over your tongue, and seriously.. I could not eat it. The structure was just to weird. And it smelled like Brinta! The other the girls were better guests then I was and they finished theirs cause they didn't want to be rude and return a free desert.

When we got back to the hotel around 8.30pm we were all three exhausted, but ofcourse we had another mission. The legal age for drinking in Canada is 19, so we had to go out! Outside every club had a huge line and we had no idea which one to pick. The club with the biggest line looked ofcourse the most interesting, so I decided to talk to the two guys at the back of the line and ask them what kind of club this was and if there were maybe other clubs that were good too. It's really amazing how I'm sometimes really shy and other times I just go and talk to complete strangers like it's nothing. The guys we met were named Eric and Lief. Daniela and I still have no idea how to pronounce Lief's name.. They actually had never been to this club before, but were just going cause some friends of them were inside. They were planning to leave at 12am though, to meet up with other people (and smoke weed). Seriously, for some reason every guy I've talked to more then 5 minutes so far has told me they smoke weed. It's America!/Canada! I guess in Canada it's kind of legal or tolerated too, so it isn't that weird, but still.. You think you're getting away from the country where everyone smokes pot... Anyway, little fun fact; we were in line for the club at 10:20pm and entered at 12:50am. That's right, we waited 2 and half hours!! Ofcourse after being in line for about 20 minutes we already felt like we were definatly not leaving now because we already waited this long. Luckily we had Eric and Lief to talk to the whole time, and after 12am they decided to even cancel on their other friends and just hang out with us. We started at the line with me, Daniela and Lena. The whole group of German Au Pair girls suddenly sneaked in line with us, cutting infront of a lot of people, but luckily left again. Those girls are so rude sometimes. They know my German isn't good enough to know what they are talking about when they're talking really fast, and they don't even make an effort to speak English. Unfortunatly Lena decided to go back to the hotel with them because she was getting very cold, so it was just me and Dani. After 2 and a half hours of waiting and one minute inside the club we figured it had been totally worth the wait. The club had live music and it just had a really great athmosphere. The guys were really nice and kept asking if we were having a good time and insuring us that they would be right back whenever they went away to get beer or anything. Yeah, Eric and Lief were great. In line they convinced us that they didn't think all the girls with their ultra short skirts and high heels were sexy at all, so as Daniela and I were not dressed like that at all they made us feel really good about ourselves. The only downside to actually being inside the club was that beer there costs 6 dollar per bottle! This turned out to be both negative but also positive, as it made me realise that I was having lots of fun even without spending my money on lots of beer. At 2.00am the guys had to leave to catch a ride home and by 2.30am we were in our beds at the hotel again.

Haha, and that was only the discription of one day! Day 2, sunday:
Sunday we had to leave at 10am again. Daniela and I went out to eat breakfast. I love going out to a diner for breakfast! It's one of my new favourite things to do. With our group we visited Stanley Park. It was rainy and cold, so we didn't really enjoyed ourselves there, but we still had to hang out there for an hour. After Stanley Park we had to cross the Lions Gate bridge, where we got stuck in traffic for I don't know how long, but it must have been at least an hour. There was an accident, and the bus wasn't able to turn around on the bridge. We saw the two cars as the way finally cleared. One of the cars fronts was totally smashed together and the other car had part of it's front just compleetly fallen of. Like if you would divide the front of the car with a diagonal line, and one of the pieces was just... missing.. It must have been a really bad crash by the looks of it. After the wait we went to the Capilano Suspension Bridge, which was really fun. I think it's the world largest suspension bridge and it was really cool to walk over it. With it wobbling and all. Unfortunaly, when we were finally at a place where we would have liked to stay longer, we had to be back at the bus pretty soon and make our way back to Seattle. Home, sweet home. :)

So our final opinion about Vancouver is that the city is over-rated. We didn't think it was pretty at all and it was definatly no fun shopping there. However we still had a great time and made it out alive, so that was pretty good. ;) Today I looked up some more stuff about East Hastings, cause it had made quite an impression. Most sites said things about East Hastings being controlled by the homeless and drug addict people that hang out there, that people openly do and sell drugs and that it's not unusual to see people die on the sidewalk as you walk through. Most people descriped it as a place they felt very uncomfortable in and wouldn't recommend people to go. However one person on a forum said that even though all that, East Hastings isn't known for random acts of violence or muggings, and that you are just as likely to get hurt there as in any other part of the world. I'm still putting my recommendation up there with all the others though, don't go there if you can avoid it.

It's time for me to get to bed and I'm sorry for taking half an hour out of your life to read about my weekend. Maybe I'll edit this later and make it a tiny bit shorter, haha. Or maybe not.

Good night!

Vancouver, Canada

It's the night before my October Au Pair Care meeting. This month's activity: weekend trip to Vancouver! I've been looking forward to this trip ever since I came here and it's a weird feeling I'm actually gonna go tomorrow. Vancouver is only a 4 hour bus drive away, so not too far, but still.. It is going to be another country and after this weekend I can say that I have been in Canada! Me and Daniela just went to pick up Lena at the ferry, so she can travel with us tomorrow. Besides my family I consider myself so lucky to have found 2 awesome friends like Daniela and Lena, both from Germany. Me and Daniela both live on Bainbridge Island and meet up once or twice a week, and email each other back and forth the whole time too. Haha, she loves gossip as much as I do and we just get along great. I'm sure that after this year me and her will still visit each other, at least once or twice. I know that it's always hard to keep in contact with people you don't see and I already find that with my friends from the Netherlands too. I'm awful at writing back emails and even though I could go on and on about my day and the kids, you would probably not even want to hear it and it quite honestly gets boring to read and write cause it's the same everytime; it's always great.

Wednesday night is from now on our meeting night for me and the other 5 girls here on the Island who I hang out with most. Elisabeth (germany), Anne-Marie (germany), Desiree (austria - but speaks german), Linnea (sweden!) and Daniela (germany), lots of german girls. Luckily they make an effort to speak English when me and Linnea are around, and luckily at times that they don't make that effort I notice that my German is actualy better than I thought. Last wednesday we watched the movie "The Reader" together. It's so much fun to just get out of the house and hang out and talk together. Even if it's simple, there is no drinking and we're all back at home before 10pm, it's just as much fun as going out. Last wednesday Daniela and I drove home together and Daniela needed to tank some gas. We both had never done that before, so we were talking about all the things that could go wrong with paying and stuff like that. When we got there though, the things we thought would be the easiest turned out to be the most trouble. Getting the lid off.. We were twisting and turning for about 5 minutes, untill a guy came out to help us, seeing that we had no idea what we were doing. (It was hilarious, but I guess you had to kind of be there.) When we finally got the thing working I said to Daniela: "Isn't amazing that we are here in America, tanking gas." And we both started laughing. It really is amazing.

Other cool stuff; today my new shoes and t-shirt that I ordered from converse.com arrived! And I'm wearing my oversized official Death Cab For Cutie fanclub tshirt as my PJ's. I got the cutest slippers ever, they even beat my big all-star ones, and yesterday I was singing and dancing with the kids to my favourite kind of music. At least they don't tell me to shut up. ;)

Okay, I better go to bed. Got to be ready to leave at 6:40 am tomorrow! And be ready to party, cause the drinking age in Canada is 19!! I have the feeling that I will visit Canada more then once this year..

As my hostdad would say: Cheers!

Halloween Costume

Halloween is here (almost) and I love it! The kids have their halloween outfits ready and since today, so do I! I came across this cute dress and it suddenly hit me that I would HAVE to go as a Chinese girl. Halloween houseparty the 31st, can't wait! :)

(and to continue on with the collage thingy's..)

Annerie goes USA too! :)

My best friend Annerie is coming to visit me from the 14th of july till the 10th of August next year!

Best vacation EVER!

It's 8pm and I just rolled in to my bed, feeling as happy as I could be. My hostfamily just told me that despite what they said before they DO want to take me with them on their Christmas vacation. Location: St. John's, Virgin Islands, USA. WOW! I've seen pictures and heared discriptions of the house they have there and it sounds amazing. I will be joining them for 7 days, where after I will fly on my own to LOS ANGELES! Where I will visit Rosanne, the Dutch girl who I flew to New York with at the beginning of the program. In L.A. I will stay at her house at a place called 'Sunland'. How more awesome can a city name get? Hollywood is just around the corner (sort of :p..) and Las Vegas is a 3 hour drive. Even though we might not actually go to Vegas - cause what fun is Vegas when you're under 21 - there's still plenty of things that are cool to do in L.A.. My hostfamily will pay my ticket from Seattle to St. Johns and to L.A., which costs them 70.000(!) Frequent Flyer Miles, due to late booking. Normally it would cost 35.000, so it's quite ALOT more. The ticket back to Seattle after that is only $130, so that's very do-able. Also this great, totally awesome vacation will only count as one of my vacation weeks, which will leave room for one more week of travel in the rest of my year.

Tomorrow morning Rosanne will confirm if the dates work out right for her family and Matt (my hostdad) will book the ticket. Even if something does turn out to not quite work when I speak to Rosanne tomorrow morning I can not believe that they offered me a prospect of the above mentioned vacation, I'm so gratefull. They told me that it would feel wrong for them to leave me behind, as I am beginning to become part of the family and they are so gratefull that me and the family work out so well. When they told me that I almost felt like crying, because that meant so much to me. There has been a lot of rematches with the girls around me, who did not work out well with their families and that has made me very nervous recently. Especially since we didn't make the easiest start with me going back home for a week after only one month (it definatly caused some friction that really concerned me). But I'm so glad that things turn out to go really well, and really I can not imagine how I could possibly have a better fit with a family then with this one. Quite honestly I just have the most fun job, the easiest kids and the most free time of any of the other girls I talk too, so I just can not believe how lucky I am.

I know that drama is always more interesting to read, but I'm sorry, I can't give you any. ;) I'm feeling like I'm right where I should be and I have no doubt that this will be one of the best experiences of my life. :)

*edit 9/29: The ticket is booked! Going to the Virgin Islands and L.A.!!

The houseparty

Life in Bainbridge Island is great. We've had the most amazing summer Seattle has seen in a while and forcasts for this week say we are even going to enjoy it for a little while longer. The view from the house has not gotten boring yet and I still love seeing the mountain in the morning and watching the ferries come in over the Pudget Sound. I've taken so many pictures of it, but none of them really capture how beautifull it looks when you see it with your own eyes.

After coming back from visiting the Netherlands for one week I thought it would quite hard to adjust here again, but while flying back it almost felt like flying 'home' more then when I flew back to Holland. The trip was awfully long though, and I hope I'm not going to be flying for a long time now. After a few days of being very jetlagged I got back into the normall rithme again and now that the kids are in school the normall schedule finally starts to take shape. Today is monday, and after one hour of work in the morning I will have from 7:30 to 1:30 as time off for myself. I can crawl back in to bed, I can go to the gym or I can go meet other friends I made here on the island. At 2:15 I will pick the kids up from school again and take Sophie to ballet practice, while I will play soccer outside with Ben, and after that we will drive to Ben's soccer practice, and while Ben's playing I can go with Sophie to the playground. At least once a week while the kids are in school I will meet up with one or two other au pairs girls. Next wednesday is eating ice scream at Mona's, which is apperantly supposed to be the most delicious ice scream I will ever have. Also me and Daniela, another Au Pair girl from Germany, just decided that we should list out the things we want to do while we're here and do atleast one of those things each week. The Seattle Guide book I got from my friends in Holland has turned out to be much fun to read and a huge inspiration to go out and do stuff.

Now, lets talk about the title of this blog; the houseparty. Saturday I went to my first American houseparty in Lynnwood, north of Seattle. We got invited through another Au Pair, whose boyfriend threw the party. It was a lot of fun to be at a real party again and to have a beer with friends. We met lots of new people, real Americans this time instead of other Au Pairs, and I felt like I was in the best place I could possibly be. It's still surprising how nice people here are. They are genuinely interested in talking to you and are very nice and helpfull towards each other. The house we were in seemed to be made for throwing party's. Downstairs was a dancing room, where a DJ played and where a television was showing bits and pieces of videoclips, and upstairs was a simple interior where people just talked and played drinking games. Me and Daniela, not quite used to drinking and partying anymore, fell asleep at two on the couch. Someone else at the party very nicely inflated a matress for us and gave us blankets so we could sleep downstairs. A while later I woke up again and the place had turned into one big slumber party. Upstairs some girl was still angrily screaming at some guy that he shouldn't be so gross (I had no idea what happened, but I was funny to listen at), and downstairs people were talking in their beds/couches/ground and being very American. It was so funny to hear some very typical things said in English and I couldn't help but laughing while I was trying to fall asleep.

Next morning I thought I was fine, but as soon as we had to get up (we were getting a ride back to Seatlle) I noticed that my stomach was twisting and turning and that I just might have had a little bit too much to drink - and espescially too many different kinds stuff. The car ride back was horrible, taking turns and stopping and starting driving again.. And when we finally got there I stepped out of the car and immidiatly threw up on the sidewalk . Not my best moment.. I was very surprised, as I never throw up and I definatly never threw up just on the sidewalk before, not even in Holland, but I guess there's no way like making a place feel like home then to walk around with the hugest hangover ever? We had to wait in Seattle for 3 more hours because we had the monthly meeting with other Au Pairs at one. With lots of trouble and lots of resting we found our way to starbucks, where I sat for an hour feeling totally horrible, then ran to the bathroom and threw up again, and after that I finally felt better! We quickly went to get something to eat and to drink and sat at the top floor of the West Lake Center untill the meeting started. Luckily eating something really did me a lot of good, but after the sign in for the meeting me and Daniela decided to skip out again and go home to sleep. All in all it was a very fun experience, even though the morning was so bad, and I can't wait to go to another houseparty there again. Where I will next time NOT drink more then two kinds of different alcohol (instead of 5 -_-, very smart..).

Right now it's still 8:51am here and I think I will catch another hour of sleep before I go and do something usefull again.
I have some personal notes for people, so here they are;
- Annerie; you can come for two weeks in February and my hostfamily is looking forward to having you here. They do say that the weather is much, much better in June/July and that it would be more fun for you to be here at that time. Maybe that's something to think about??
- To anyone in Amersfoort; when SOMEONE speaks to Danya, could someone please ask if he has made an email adress yet so I can stalk him?
Okay, that's it already.

Talk to you soon!

08/26/09

First thing I did when I woke up was play Go-Fish (a cardgame) with the kids in our PJ's. Me and Sophie won spectacularly. And Ben was being a really good sport, even though he lost.

While we walked on to the ferry the sun was shining. I noticed for the first time they had painted random funny notes on the railing beside the walking area. Not like graffiti, but really stuff that was obviously meant to be there. Some of the words I didn't understand, but I loved the complete randomness.

From the ferry we had a beautiful view of Bainbridge Island and we could see our new house that we are going to move into next Monday. The new house has the best view ever. You see some more of Bainbridge, you see the Pudget Sound, the ferries and in the background.. Mount Rainier..

I took a bus for the first time in Seattle. Apperantly when you're traveling within the Seattle center you can just travel for free!

The library building was amazing. It's a big, funny shaped, glass building that looks very modern. Inside it almost looks more like a museum then a library, but you had tons of books there and fun stuff to do for the kids. After playing on the computer I read the kids 4 books, they loved it.

Me and the kids stopped at Starbucks. I finally figured out that a Frappachino Caramel with wipcream is the most delicious thing you can get and that it actualy more resembles the "ice coffee" from the Coffee Connection, then the regular Ice Coffee you'd get at Starbucks.

On our way back to the ferry we walked by Pike Place Market. You have a famous fish stand there where the guys actualy throw huge fish over to each other. They even made it into some kind of entertainment show and it was really funny just to watch. Amazing how they can make selling fish so much fun! Also Seattle is just such a nice city to walk around in. It's a big city, but for some reason it has a very friendly nice vibe to it. Not like Amsterdam, where it's just very crowded, everyone seems to be in a rush and you really have to look not to loose track of each other.

On the ferry back I saw the most amazing sight I've seen of Mount Rainier yet, with exception from the sight from the airplane. It's amazingly big and it looked beautifull with the snow on the tops. If you don't know Mount Rainier, google it, and imagine this is my view everyday. ^^

Hostmom offered me to drive the car back home again and said I'm just about ready to start driving on my own without her beside me. I'm so happy she's still letting me drive, even though I got pulled over by a cop on my second drive for driving through a stopsign. Luckily this police woman was very very nice and didn't give me a ticket, even though I also didn't have my driver's license on me. She even wished me the best for my year here.

At home the kids listened to a casette I brought from Holland with a story from Sesame Street that I used to love when I was a kid. Sophie was humming along. It's cool to see they like the stuff I brought from home for them.

Dinner was good, as always. Today was salad, chicken and patatoes. My hostmom cooks daily and always tries to be healthy, and it's always yummy.

My hostdad said he would have eaten more if he wasn't still so full from eating all that sushi we made last night. My sushi making skills are a really good fit with this family, and with me usualy being kind of afraid of cooking for other people, I'm glad they liked it so much. I tried inside out california rolls of the first time last night and they were perfect!

At 9pm I was in bed again and watched an episode of The Secret Life of the American Teenager on my computer. Tomorrow my workday only starts at 9am, so I'll get a good night of sleep.

Bainbridge Island is amazing. Everyday I find something that I love about this place. If it's not the view, the cool parks, the nice feeling of being on a small island, the amazingly nice people or the new friends I made, then it's always the kids. Ben and Sophie are so great. For some reason especially if mom and dad are not around. Lucky me^^. Well anyways, just wanted to give you an impression of my life here. If you don't already feel jealous, trust me, you should be ;).

Flying back home

Just wanted to give you a little update; I'm going to be back in the Netherlands from the 4th of September and I fly back again on the tenth. Everything is fine, I do still like it here, I just have to make a quick trip back to visit family. It's weird looking foward to making such a long flight twice in one week. I will really fly half way around the world and back again and will spend another 25 hours in an airplane, not even including the extra hours you loose by traveling to and from the airport and checking in hours before the flight.

It will also be kind of weird seeing my friends back home again, because it will be only a month ago that I even left. They've probably barely even missed me and will think I will not have made it through or got homesick. I DID NOT! :P I love it here and I wish I would not have to come home. Unfortunatly this situation has occured and it will really be the right thing to return home for a few days.

I'm wondering how I'll look back on Bainbridge while I'm back in Holland again and if I'll miss home more after seeing my family and friends..

I hope to see some of you while I'm there! My cell will probably not work, because I have cancelled my Dutch account and have an American one now, but talk to me on msn or hyves and we can go and drink beer!! (As I can't do that here ;).)

From Amsterdam to New York to Bainbridge Island part 2

I've been having a great time here on Bainbridge Island so far. The time difference is still a bit hard though, 9 hours takes a lot of time to get used to and with all the new things I'm still learning everyday I'm already tired at 8pm.

I promised to continue my blog and write something about New York, so here it is: New York was amazing!

Monday The hotel we were staying at for the oriëntation program was actually in New Jersey. On the first night of our arrival me and Rosanne wandered around the hotel, had fun taking pictures and found an inside swimming pool on the third floor that had a beautifull view of the New York skyline. We went for a swim and after that it was off to bed and I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

Tuesday Class started at 8am the next morning, but we had an overly excited instructor to keep us awake. They incuraged us the switch seats and sit with people who were from other countries. In all we had 26 different countries people came from, although most girls were either from Germany or Brazil. Class was fun and interactive and with the regular breaks it didn't seem too long untill the day was over. For the evening there was a bus tour of New York planned and I decided to go with Rosanne. First stop; Central Park West. Second; Rockefeller Plaza. Third; Times Square and last but not least; the Statue of Liberty. We got out at all the stops and at Times Square we even had more then an hour to get something to eat and walk around. The bus also went by other famous buildings that our tourguide told us something about. Unfortunatly we got a little behind on schedule and didn't have time to go out at Ground Zero, were the Twin Towers fell down on 9/11, but we still thought we got more then our money's worth.

Wednesday Class again, this time starting with learning a new singing/clapping game to play with the kids. The song still gets stuck in my head whenever I think about it... Out of the 130 girls in class, to my surprise, I must have been one of the most talkative girls there. I really noticed that the experience I had came in handy with the questions that were asked and as the class was given in English I definatly had an adventage of understanding everything a bit better then most girls. We had CPR training and also with this it was nice to have had CPR before, so I knew the routine already. Wednesday evening we had a change to do whatever we wanted, so me and a group of other girls took a cab into New York and went to visit Times Square again. Me and Rosanne both loved the M&M store, which was a store with 3 stories FULL of ANYTHING of M&M's. M&M Statue Of Liberty, M&M underwear, M&M games, M&M spoons... Ofcourse we both had already purchased a I Love New York Tshirt, so we just had a good time walking around and trying not to spend all our money all at once.

Thursday Departure day. In the morning we had some last hours of class and in the afternoon my group was the first to leave to the airport. The airport in Newark was insanely confusing, as we didn't have normal tickets, but E-tickets, but luckily we all got through it in time. The flight was delayed by an hour anyway and flying with me to Seattle were 6 other girls, so we had a nice talk. Two of them were going to Bainbridge Island too. In the plane we unfortunatly all had different seats so the six hour flight was pretty boring (accept for the spectacular views!!). They even played the same movie I had already seen on my flight from Amsterdam to Newark twice! '17 Again' does get boring if you watch it three times in four days. :)

At the airport in Seattle my host family waited for me, and Ben and Sophie had made lovely drawings. I was a bit nervous at first to meet them again, but they are such a nice family and the kids are just great, so I'm happy I choose them.

Tell you more about Bainbridge Island next time!

From Amsterdam to New York to Bainbridge Island part 1

7:54 am, Bainbridge time.
Crazy enough it has already been almost a week ago since I left on monday morning to the airport. My friends, Jasper and Annerie were there to say goodbye at the trainstation, and Annerie even went along with me and my mum to Schiphol. (Thank you!^^)
At the airport I met Rosanne, who was in Au Pair Care program too. The flight took about 8 or 9 hours, so it was very nice to have someone to talk too.
For a change the food we were served accualy tasted good and we had lots of movies to pick from. So, to all of you who plan make international flights in the near future, I recommend United Airlines^^.

I have sooo much more to say, especially about New York, WOW! And Bainbridge is so lovely too, I have not yet regretted coming here. "Unfortunatly" the kids are up and we had plans to eat waffels somewhere between 8 and 9am, so I have to go. Here's a quick picture from the plane from Amsterdam to Washington D.C.. (The flight from Newark to Seattle was even more beautiful.. the sights were just amazing.. )

I'll send in another update soon!

Going away party

Getting a Visa is NOT fun

Time is going insanely fast now. In just a week from now I'll be on a plane, I will have said goodbye to all my friends and it won't be untill August 2010 that I will see them again. The closer it gets the more nervous I get about the whole thing. What if things don't work out? What if I forget something really important? What if I don't like it there at all? On the other side I'm absolutely sure everything is going to be fine. My mom and friends have all been super supportive and this will probably be one of the best years of my life.

Out of all the preperation activities I've done so far, getting a Visa was definatly the most horrible. I was so nervous about forgetting some important piece of documentation and not getting my Visa, I barely slept 4 hours that night. When I arrived the whole building was surrounded by black gates and was totally diffirent from what I expected. First I had to wait at least 20 minutes to enter through the gates and then you had to let security check your bags for electronics and things that could be considered weapons before you could proceed. I had to take a sip from my own water bottle to make sure the water wasn't poissened or something. The very unfriendly guy at security spoke American but as he didn't articulate at all I had a hard time understanding him. Apparently what I heared as "Do you have an appointment?", accualy was "Do you have a cellphone on you?". My "Yes" ofcourse then was the wrong answer and the guy got really mad at me. Even after I explained I misheared him he kept looking at me very angry. After first security came another line and after that another security point and another metal detector. Finally I could go and sit in a little room, that looked very old furnitured and was obviously meant for less people then that were accualy in it. Even in this room the windows were three-double protected with bars and other things. After a while my number came up on the screen and I was called to pay for Visa, give fingerprints and hand over some documents that they asked for. I was asked to go sit again and wait for my name to be called. Again, the person calling the names spoke very unclearly and I was at the edge of my seat the entire time, scared of missing my call. The woman sitting next to me accualy had her number pop up on the screen but didn't react in time because she was just grabbing something from her purse. Just 10 seconds later the next number got called, and even though the next lady very nicely pointed out there was someone before her, the person at the desk wouldn't hear of it and just said the woman missed her shot, too bad.. I don't know if she ever got her turn again because shortly there after I heared my name being called and I could proceed to the last desk, where a finally nice men asked me how I was and then ran some basic "Where are you going?","How long are you staying?" and "What will you be doing there?"questions by me. In total the entire conversation took about 2 or 3 minutes but from arrival at the gate to leaving was a small 2 hours. The whole experience was very weird and nervewrecking, I didn't really understand it was such a big deal and that it required this much security messurements. I haven't checked if I accualy got my Visa yet, because it has been send to my old adress, but I'm going by there today or tomorrow.

So, continueing on that last line, I moved back in with my mum. One hard day of work and we got all of my stuff shipped over to my old room here. It feels a bit weird being back, because I don't really consider it home anymore, but it's nice to spend some extra time with my mom before I leave. Also my three cats are here and it's nice to have them around again.

As for fun stuff I've been doing I finally went to Walibi World for the first time, I've been going out with friends a lot, yesterday I played golf, I watched all the Lord of the Rings films with my mum and I spended a rediculous armount of time behind my computer watching downloaded series. I'm having fun planning my going-away party, which will be next saturday, the 1st of August. I was afraid I couldn't invite a lot of people because my mum's house just isn't that big, but lucky for me a friend offered I could possibly use her house. She has a garden and no neighboors, which is just a much better setting. I'm going by her house today to see how big it is. The party is going to be a costume party with the dress-up theme; Stereotype. Everybody HAS to come in costumes and I've already heared my friends with some great ideas. Only still got my own outfit to worry about now..

I'll talk to you later, I guess my next blog will be from America, but it could be a while before I get internet on my laptop (or maybe I'll get it right away).
Thanks for reading, and.. to the people I invited; hope to see you at the party!

Last meeting with the family

Yesterday me, my mum and my best friend (Annerie) went to visit the Koumans family for the last time before they leave to the U.S.. The kids were a little shy, suddenly having three total strangers in their house was a bit too much. We had a nice talk and when leaving my mum was finally convinced that these were very nice people and I was going to be just fine staying with them. They showed us pictures of the temporary house we're going to stay in untill they find a permanent one in Bainbridge. It seemed very nice for something you're only going to stay in for a short period of time. It's on walking distance from the ferrie and there's a park across the road. When we left it felt really weird knowing that the next time I am going to see them is at the Airport in Seattle just a month from now.

When I got home I also saw that a new feature on the AuPairCare site had become available as I matched with this host-family. I can now see all the Au Pairs that live in the Seattle area ( 54 Au Pairs in the Seattle area alone ! ) and I can also contact them through email. There are Au Pair from all over the world; Japan, Mexico, Germany, Bolivia, Sweden, Malasia, Colombia, Thailand, Ukrain, Sweden, Chili, Korea and France. Except for me there are no Dutch Au Pairs so far in the Seattle area, but that's okay, cause I prefer meeting people from other countries and cultures anyway. I send an email to this girl, Kyoko, who's from Japan and has been an Au Pair in Bainbridge Island since January 2008. She extended her year with another twelve months so she's been living there for quite some time now and I think she can tell me somethings about what it is to live there. Unfortunatly she replied that she's going away for a few days, but she seemed very happy I emailed her and promised to get back to me after the 4th of July.

Only 35 days untill get on a plain and fly 8 hours to get to NYC! And then three days after I'll have to go another 6 hours flying to Seattle. I can't wait till this month is over^^.

Thanks for reading!

Going to America

Yes, I've finally got a date for my arrival in New York! The 3rd of August my plane will land in NYC. I'm already counting down the days. Why'm I going to NY? It's the first stop in my year of living in America. After being an Au Pair last summer in France, I decided being an Au Pair is the perfect upportunity for me to work, travel, learn and experience new things and make new friends. With the Au Pair Care program I've also got the upportunity to follow some classes at college while I'm there.

The family I'm staying with is the Koumans family. Josy and Matt, and their two kids; Ben (6 yrs old) and Sophie (4 yrs). They're an American family who spend the last 3 years living in the Netherlands, but they're moving back the 3rd of July. I've met them two weeks ago and think this is a wonderful family to stay with.

After my arrival in New York I will attend a 3 day training course with other Au Pairs, who will be working in different areas in the United States. After the training I will fly to Seattle, Washington, and join the Koumans family in their temporary home there. Because the family sold their home when they moved to the Netherlands they still have to find one again near Seattle, in Bainbridge Island. The family already has contacts in Bainbridge and has told me they heared of a few other families there who also have Au Pairs. This is a good chance for me to make friends. Also there are a lot of college's there and the city of Seattle is only half an hour on the ferrie.

Even though the plan was to leave in July at first, August seems right around the corner. After this next month I won't see my family and friends for over a year. And after I return I will most likely move away to study in a different city, so there'll be quite a few people I won't see at all anymore. Luckily school is over, I got my diploma, and I now still have a full month to celebrate my vacation and spend some extra time with friends. Going to Walibi World and going on a camping trip with 3 of my closest friends are in the program for this month. Along with graduation, my last weeks of enjoying being old enough to legally drink alcohol, a few birthday parties and ofcourse a good-bye party.

On this blog I will post some preperation activities and while in America I'll update this blog regularly.

Thanks for reading!