Good week :-)

Hi there!

So I've had a much more eventful week than the last few and it's been lots of fun. It started on Sunday night when a few of us went out to the beach to watch the sunset, which was beautiful. Then on Monday (I think), despite the fall (similar to Nova Scotia fall) weather, I went swimming in the ocean. It was definately freezing, freezing cold, and it may have to be the last time I'm in this year, but it was still fun and exhilirating :-P

Tuesday was my day off and I decided it needed to be more productive than my last day off so I decided to head into Haarlam. It was a pretty cool city. The first thing I did was go to this place called the Corrie Ten's Boomhuis which I read about in my guide book. I thought it was going to be similar to the Anne Frank House because it was where there were Jewish people hidden during WWII, but I was wrong. It was an hour long tour, about 45 minutes of which I was being preached to about God's plan and how everyone is born a sinner and you should pray all the time to be accepted into God's plan and so on and so forth. The hiding spot and the alarm system was cool, and I definately like hearing about those kind of stories, but I think maybe I should have looked into what it was a bit more before going, because it definately took me by surprise (I think everyone else there were expecting that.... I had never heard of Corrie Ten Boom before). Anyways, all in all, I would have rather not gone, but it was an interesting experience. After the tour I took a few hours to wander around the city aimlessly and see what I could find. It was pretty cool. One of the oldest cities in Holland with a cute little town center. And I found a park that had fenced in deer right in the middle of the city! I was amazed by how tame and not afraid of humans they were considering seeing a deer in Wentworth is almost impossible to do. After seeing the deer, the same park also had goats and peacocks. So I definately got my fill of wildlife (although they weren't really 'wild') for the day. What else did I see? Oh I saw a windmill, but now that I've been in Holland for a couple months, that's nothing too special anymore :-P

To top off an already pretty good week, yesterday I got to go skiing!!!!!!! Me, Lio and Jasmijn (the 2 locals that work here) went to an indoor skiing place that's near Den Haag. It cost quite a bit of money, and there were only 3 trails (with a vertical height of 35m I think) but all in all I was definately impressed considering it was indoors and not even November yet. I snowboarded for the first 2 hours and then switched to skis half way through (I probably would have gotten bored skiing on 3 trails all day). It was a great day, and only made me more excited for this winter.

I guess that's all for now. Almost done my application to Dal, and that will be a big weight lifted off my shoulders. I'm still working on what I'm going to do in the winter, but there's no way I won't be in the Alps.

Talk to you soon!
Kaila

Hi there! Long time no see!

So I don't think I have a lot to say, but since it's been about 2 weeks since my last update, I thought I would try to write something. The last 2 weeks have been fun, but pretty uneventful. The Under the Sea party went well. I pretty much did all the preparations for it (decorating this place was lots of fun) and it turned out really well! I ended up going as a lobster :-P Unfortunately, the only digital camera around here was actually in Poland at the time, so I don't have any pictures :-( Since then, I've been doing lots of reception and bar work, which is awesome. I'm still pretty bad with knowing what music I want to play (because I'm bad at knowing music in general) but I'm getting better by leaps and bounds plus there's always someone around to help me out. Wednesday night was my busiest night on bar I'd ever had: there were some 30 astronomy (? maybe) students staying here for a night before they headed to Japan for a conference, who were all in the bar drinking. It got a little stressful at times, but overall it was awesome! Hopefully I'll start being given busier nights more often soon.

What else have I been up to? Last week on my day off I went for a 3 hour bike ride, which was great. I went all along the shore through the sand dunes for about an hour and a half, and they're beautiful. When I got 6.2km from Den Haag (a.k.a The Hague) which is I think over 20 km from where I live, I thought about going all the way there (because what's 6.2km??) until I thought about it and realized that wherever I turned around would only be HALF my trip and thought better of it. So I turned inland and headed back through towns and along highways and stuff. It wasn't nearly as scenic, but kind of cool to learn a little about what there is around me. I even passed the Frog park which is an amusement park of sorts. It looked a little bit for kids, but still fun :-) I think I might check it out sometime in the near future. By the time I got home, I was EXHAUSTED (I think I probably biked 30-35km) but satisfied. I've missed doing active things since I've been here.

I can't really think of any other stories to tell... the beach here still reminds me of the ones in Nova Scotia. It's now pretty much too cold to swim (although I'm still not ruling out a swim just to say I did it :-P) but it's gorgeous and the sunsets are great! Steve (a co-worker) has promised me that he'll get his soccer ball pumped up in the near future at which point we're going to go play on the beach. I also want to go check out a soccer game of some sort. I can go into Den Haag, which is the closest professional team around, or I might just go check out the Noordwijk team which as I understand it might be similar to the prmier league at home, but I won't really know until I go check it out.

So it's pretty relaxed around here. I missed not being at home for Thanksgiving, especially since there were so many people visiting from away (Griffen looks SO cute! I wish I could have been there), but I got to phone and talk to a bunch of people which was great. I'm still waiting for a box full of my clothes to arrive which I'm hoping will show up soon because I'm REALLY getting sick of my 5 shirts and might have to splurge and but something new :-P

That's all for now! I hope people still check this even though I haven't updated in forever!
Talk to you soon!
Kaila