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.