Friesland, Food, Footwear, Falls, Friends and Family

Try and beat that title! I could have also added Franeker but since it is in Friesland I thought it would be a bit excessive. This is going to be a double post. I believe this is the first time that Marc and I have both authored a post together. I will do the first four F's and he will then add in the last two with some details about the first one. Are you ready?????

Friesland
Marc's ancestors are from the land of Friesland in northern Holland. We travelled to this province on Saturday and then went to some smaller towns yesterday. We stayed in the town of Franeker and headed out from there. Franeker was a welcome break from the busyness of Amsterdam. It is a wonderful small city with canals and farms and sheep. Just how you would picture Holland to look. Everyone was so friendly and said hello as we were walking around town. There were also a lot of dogs in Friesland, although none of them looked like Niko. I did notice a sheep looking quite Nikoesque though when it laid it's head down to eat grass. A stretch maybe but it really did look like Niko.

On the train to Franeker:
Our hotel room (just above a little French restaurant)
Marc sticking his head out our hotel window:

A church in Franeker:



Food

We have (AHHHH I can't get the bold off) been enjoying the food here very much and have gotten away with only buying dinner. Breakfast is usually provided at the hotels here and we have managed to make that into a lunch as well. Breakfast here usually consists of bread, raisin buns, meat, cheese, (think cold cuts) fruit, cereal, yogurt and coffee. At our hotel in Amsterdam Marc managed to stuff a hard boiled egg, some bread, buns, meat and cheese into the cargo pockets of his pants and we would eat that for lunch. Most days it was really tasty but the other day on the train we had a kiwi in the lunch bag and it mushed all over our food. I still ate kiwi mush bun. Those of you who know me know that this is quite a feat. Here is a picture of Marc with our leftover breakfast packed as a lunch at our hotel in Franeker. We weren't as subtle with the lunch stealing there but hey what do you expect when you give two people half a loaf of bread. ;)


We ate at the restaurant below our hotel in Franeker on Saturday evening. It was a French/Dutch restaurant (Fruntch??) and we thought that the serving sizes would be fairly small. We ordered a soup to start (mmmm delicious) and went a little crazy with the bread. Then our meal came. This is what was left over. (There is also half my pasta under my napkin.) Again, those of you who know Marc and his famous (or infamous) appetite will be surprised that he could not finish much of his meal. He did tell the waiter he was upset that he couldn't make a meat sandwich the next day because we didn't have a fridge to store our left over food. The waiter looked at us quite puzzled and exclaimed - "But we are a restaurant, we have a very large fridge, you are staying here, we will keep your food!" So Marc got his meat sandwich after all. (and one less sandwich to steal!)

Okay no more bold. Footwear
When we were leaving Chilliwack I packed a box of clothes that I would be able to wear in Amsterdam and Lethbridge. Unfortunately in the chaos of packing that box got packed and did not make its way to Lethbridge. In Lethbridge I was able to use some pants my mother in law Bette hemmed for me and I bought a cheap pair of jeans to add to the one pair of pants I had worn to Lethbridge. I also acquired a sweater and a jacket. I did not however pick up any socks and realized when we got to Amsterdam that I only had 3 pairs. I wore the same pair for a couple of days then wore Marc's and realized that we had lovely fashionable socks from British Airways as well. I bought this pair of shoes in Lethbridge and it is a bit big so it fits perfectly with 3 pairs of socks. (Good for Holland, maybe not so good for Kenya.) Anyways one morning Marc saw me sneakily looking through his socks for a pair and asked why I didn't just buy socks here. What a concept! I also thought my feet were looking a bit cankleish with the thick British Airways socks and thought my feet could look a little more fashionable.


In Franeker we went to a local store and I found a pair of very cute brown socks with flowers. I bought them and we found a little garden with a shell path for me to put them on. Here is the shell path:
Marc started taking pictures in this beautiful garden while I was changing my socks. I opened the socks and found I had bought children's tights. Marc caught my laughing reaction on camera: (Yes it is hard to tell I'm laughing but I am laughing so hard I am doubled over, that is a laugh!)
We did go find some other pairs and I changed out of my British Airways socks in front of our hotel (very subtlely I must add.)
And now for the fall:

Yesterday as I mentioned we did a lot of walking. We also walked through Franeker with our backpacks and did a lot of walking with our packs at the train station. My pack isn't that heavy right now but with all the walking I was tired. As we were walking through one of the stations to change trains I stepped on an uneven piece of pavement. As mentioned before my shoes are loose (even with 3 pairs of socks) and when I stepped my ankle buckled. Usually I would be able to keep walking (thankfully) but this time with the weight of my pack I crumbled along with my ankle. This of course would usually not be a big deal (did I mention I was tired and we did a lot of walking and I had a large pack on my back) but because of the weight of my pack I could not get up. So I am laying on the ground in the train station saying Help Marc I can't get up. I start trying to get up but it doesn't work so I just end up writhing under my pack on the station floor. At this point I found this very amusing and started laughing. Marc eventually got me up (after a lot of readjusting of limbs and packs) and some very nice gentlemen picked up my magazine which I managed to throw across the lane. I wonder what they thought of the crazy falling writhing English girl who just happened to be reading Scientific American Mind's special on Sex and the Secret Nerve. Oh dear. This story gives me the giggles every time I think of it so hopefully you all had a good giggle too.

If you are still awake I commend you. As this is already an immensely long post you will have to wait for Marc to do the friends and family post tomorrow. Sadly this will not be the first ever collaborative post, we will have to save that for the future. Now you just have more to look forward to!

Amsterdam: A Picture Essay

These shoes cost 2000 euros. Wow!

terda

2 pancakes - spinach bacon tomatoe and lots of cheese, and bacon and apple. mmmm
this giant tortoise weighed 200 lbs.

half way there

we made it to Amsterdam with no major hang-ups aside from our biggest piece of luggage being lost. We don’t need it for now and BA assured us it should arrive soon (hopefully b/c it has most of our books and house supplies for kenya). We hope to just pick it up on the way out. we stored the other stuff we didnt need here in a big locker (big enough for me!).


On the plane we were boxed in by a grumpily hauty national post reading older man from Calgary (presumeably) whose only word to us (despite several direct questions) was “Hmmpph”. He accomplished the bulk of his communication needs to us with frowns and sighs and general body language indicating that any attempt on our part to get up and use the facilities was a direct affront to his aisle seat sovereignty.

Anyways, we wandered around town in the dark last night. It was raining initially but got quite nice around 10:30pm. At midnight Amsterdam is still bustling. Little old ladies were passing us on their bikes, markets were doing thriving business and there were people walking all over the streets. Also large piles of bikes all over the place.


Our hotel has an amazing breakfast room that is a couple hundred years old, and our cheerfully cozy little room backs out onto a nice little private garden.


yesterday we wandered around town stopping and gawking and map checking and picture taking like tourists. At least we fit in well when we pretend like we know where we are going; we will have to enjoy that while we can, it wont last much longer. we found an old orphanage with a local art display in the courtyard using the orphan's lockers as display cases.

today we slept in, toured the amsterdam zoo (where the animals are a lot less shy than we're used to) and found the proper adapters for our laptop and a sweet voltage regulator to protect our electronics.

Lofty Goals

I wanted to write a blog post tonight but as I laid down to do it (this may be a large part of the problem) all I felt like doing was sleeping. So I took a picture and this will be my post for tonight.

We'll be blogging from Amsterdam in a couple of days. See you all then! (Will we really see you? No, so you will see us then. Wow, I'm tired. Kylie

sweep the leg

today we noticed a telling dichotomy: while kylie has anxiety about moving to kenya, i have anxiety about going to walmart. we stopped there today to get things like pens, tape and razor blades (just so you know - there is now a mach 3 turbo which exudes vitamin E and echinacea with every stroke). i can't handle walmarts or malls; i get twitchy and irritable and start looking for the exits or at least a couple stray rays of sunshine. when we were in uganda a few years ago kylie met me at the airport after i had already been there for a month. we drove to our hotel in the dark and in the morning i made the mistake of introducing kylie to africa by way of owino market, one of the noisiest, biggest and most chaotic marketplaces in africa. bad move marc, just because it sounds great to you doesnt mean that it won't completely overwhelm your wife with sounds, colours and unpredictably ubiquitous demands on her attention. muzungu! muzungu! fresh goat? you try, just killed, no flys! lady, you wear this dress! you need new clothes! you want to change money? good rates, i get cheap. all legal. you need taxi? my brother has one. brand new! no accidents! muzungu! how are you? where you from? you like uganda? my cousin was in canada. do you know him?

dumb move on my part eh? i was thinking something along the lines of "kylie likes shopping and stuff and i like africa, this is where our interests intersect." maybe not on the first day.

anyways, if you have been around my parent's house recently you have probably heard me repeatedly singing "Sweep the leg, johnny... sweep the leg, jooohnny..." over and over again. it is solely because my friend chris introduced me to this music video by no more kings. it features all of the original actors who played the cobra kai. if you have seen the final tournament scene in karate kid more than 10 times, or perhaps even if you have only seen it once you will love this video.
GET HIM A BODY BAG JOHNNY! YEAAAAH!

goodbyes

well, this week we (read kylie) packed up all our belongings into boxes and on friday we had our strongest friends over for a pizza and beer (and moving) party. all our wordly possessions fit onto one side of our friend chad's old milking parlour.


we covered it all in tarps and locked the bikes to the floor. goodbye possessions! we'll see you soon.


the next day we went for one final walk by the fraser river this year. goodbye island 22!

on sunday we drove out to golden to introduce niko to his new home. i forgot to take pictures of julie, but we took lots of julie's dog josh.

these pictures don't do him justice, but josh is the most handsome golden retriever we have ever met, and he is even more of an attention suck than niko. it was extremely difficult to say goodbye to niko while he was smiling and wagging his tail and wondering where we would go for a walk next; typical happy clueless niko. we know he is in good hands though and will have a great time with josh and julie and all their friends hiking and biking and pulling julie around town on my longboard. goodbye niko! we will miss having a big huggable fuzzball around.

goodbye warm smelly and green chilliwack! we will sure miss you, but soon we'll be back.

Introducing . . . Snow White

When I was in highschool a lot of people told me that I looked like Snow White because I had fair skin and dark brown hair. I went to the hairdresser today to get highlights but after talking to her I decided to get my hair dyed back to my natural colour. I have highlights for quite a while now and the colour right now is a couple shades darker than my original colour and I am amazed at how dark my hair is. I truly feel like Snow White now. There's one other difference, can you pick it up?

Good times cubed!

We have been having a great last week here in Chilliwack. Even though we have been busy running around and doing things we have also made time for enjoyment.

Last night Marc planned a lovely surprise date for me. We went on a Scavenger Hunt around Chilliwack and ended up at a great Italian restaurant where there were two lovely bouqets of flowers waiting for me. We had a great time on the Scavenger Hunt (even though it took me awhile to get some of the clues) and it was fun to get away from our barrage of packing.

The first clue led me to a treed corridor down our street that leads to the park. The clue was hidden so well that I could not find it and when Marc took the flashlight and pointed it, it still took me a while. It led me to Save on Foods (now Pricemart) underneath the wheel of a shopping cart.


After that we headed to the library at the hospital and found the next clue hidden in the extremely heavy "History of Medicine" textbook.

The last clue said to head to my favourite restaurant (Bravo). Unfortunately it was closed on Mondays so we headed to a new Italian restaurant which was excellent. Marc had phoned ahead to the other restaurant and found out they were closed so brought the flowers to the new restaurant instead.


Today our good friend Steve came out to help us pack and pack we did! Marc and Steve packed up the garage and then we tackled the kitchen. We also enjoyed a nice walk with Niko. Here are some pictures from our walk.

Look at the crazy sky in the above picture!

Lastly, to cube the good times we had a potluck tonight with our small group. We will sure miss this group of people and their support and friendship while we are gone. We know we will still be able to keep in contact with them but we will sure miss our once a week meetings!