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!