With an Accent from Holland

I Am Not Atlas

2009-06-03T22:37:00.000+02:00

I am not Atlas, I cannot bear the weight of the world on my own. I cannot even bear my own world anymore. Sometimes it is too much, too many worries for me to carry on my own. Today I had an epiphany. I want someone who looks after me, who takes care of me. And I mean literally takes care of me. Who puts his arms around me, wipes away my tears and takes away all my worries and sadness. “Here is a bag of money,” he’d say “you don’t have to worry about paying your bills anymore. Here is a decent job for thirty-two hours a week. Go ahead, take it, you’ll enjoy it. I’ll arrange everything for you. I’ll make all the difficult phone calls that may be necessary. I’ll hire someone to do the household. Just stay here in my arms and relax. Close your eyes and let me deal with the world. I’ll take care of you.”

I know this is a fantasy and one that will probably never come true. And I will go to work tomorrow and try to deal with the mess that is called my life. But wouldn’t it be easier if this fantasy came true somehow.

Roses on a Brier - Christina Rossetti

2009-05-20T14:11:00.004+02:00

Roses on a brier,
Pearls from out the bitter sea,
such is earth's desire
However pure it be.

Neither bud nor brier,
Neither pearl nor brine for me:
Be stilled my long desire;
There shall be no more sea.

Be stilled my passionate heart;
Old earth shall end, new earth shall be:
Be still and earn thy part
Where shall be no more sea.

They say that Hope is happiness

2009-04-22T01:07:00.002+02:00

What better way than to convey my feelings quoting a poem by Lord Byron:

They say that Hope is happiness;
But genuine Love must prize the past,
And Memory wakes the thoughts that bless:
They rose the first--they set the last;

And all that Memory loves the most
Was once our only Hope to be,
And all that Hope adored and lost
Hath melted into Memory.

Alas it is delusion all:
The future cheats us from afar,
Nor can we be what we recall,
Nor dare we think on what we are.

What will happen in my own future? Do I have any hopes left? Do I dare to hope for anything? I am sure I cannot be who I was, but who am I today? Who will I be tomorrow? Or a year from now? I guess only Time can tell, together with Hope, Memory and Love.

Proud of me :)

2009-02-09T21:46:00.002+01:00

No long stories today, just a picture and a video. This is the picture I'd like to show:

It's a picture of my new house. What is so special about it? Today I put the wallpaper on all the walls of the living room and I am so proud of myself. I had never done it before, I didn't even know if I could do it, but I just went for it and I did it. People around me didn't really think I'd be able to pull it off, but I did it anyway. And now I'm really proud of myself. It feels like I conquered something, like I'll be able to deal with everything that comes my way concerning my new house and living alone. And this video shows exactly how I feel right now. All I have to do is listen to my voice within and I can do everything :)

2009-01-28T23:59:00.000+01:00

Okay, so today was a very exciting day for me. Well, not really exciting, but it was very important. Because: I got the keys of my new house! I'm going to move to a small two-room apartment and I'm going to live on my own again. I was pretty nervous about this appointment today, because I was afraid they would not think I earned enough money to be able to pay the rent. But they didn't say anything about that. They only nagged about some other administrative issues, but I signed the contract and I now have the keys. Now I'll have to clean the apartment and get some wallpaper and paint on the walls in order to be able to move in. I also need to order flooring and I need to buy a washing machine, a cooker and a refrigerator. But I'm gonna do everything one step at a time, which is work tomorrow and then I'm gonna order the flooring as soon as I can. The next few weeks are going to be pretty stressful for me with lots of work.

Changes

2009-01-18T23:17:00.000+01:00

Okay, so it has been two months approximately since my last update and lots of things have happened since then. Martijn and I are still separated of course and I have found a house in the mean time. That is to say, I am the first candidate for a house, but the current tenant still needs to hand in his keys. I cannot look at the house until he does, so I have to wait for that to happen. But I suppose it will happen one of these days.
What has happened is that I have changed. I thought I was going to be a blubbering weeping perpetually crying wreck for the time after the break-up, and that has not happened. I have cried about it, especially in the first few weeks, but now I’m very calm. I’m very much at ease with the idea that I’m going to move out and live on my own again. I’m looking forward to decorating my house in the way that I want it to be decorated; I’m looking forward to evenings without the television on and just being able to do what I want. The idea of living on my own doesn’t scare me as much as I thought it would before the break-up. I have lived on my own, so I know I can do it, but now I’m also actually looking forward to it. I’m not looking forward to cooking every day and doing all the laundry myself, but I know I’ll be able to manage.
I have lived a very sheltered, regular, consistent life the past four years and I’m now on the verge of giving that up for a life in a way that I choose to live it. I will be able to spend my time doing things that I want to do. I’ll be able to make choices that might even make me happy, who knows…

Breaking News!

2008-11-13T21:52:00.000+01:00

No pun intended, or maybe I did. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that last Monday Martijn and I decided to end our relationship. We have both changed a lot over the last couple of years and we have grown apart, too far apart to grow back together again. This means I will move out once I find a place of my own and Martijn will stay in this house. It might take a while for me to find my own apartment and until that time we will both live here in this house. We're not fighting or anything, so for the time being this is the best solution. So that is my breaking news.

So sorry, New Job, New Semester, New Hobby!

2008-09-24T23:23:00.002+02:00

Okay, so I know I haven’t updated my blog in ages. I’m even afraid to look back to see how long it has been. I even received some complaints about it. Well, maybe just one, but it sounded nice, didn’t it? So, the good news is that I have news :) That’s the upside of not updating in such a long time: I do have something to say now.
First of all, I think I ended my last blogpost with a comment about a major life change. I was referring to a job interview that I had the following day. I didn’t get that job. It was a job as a cash register employee in a big supermarket, but I couldn’t work enough hours there. But in the meantime I have sent out several other application letters as well, and yes, I found a new job! Since the last week of August I have been working there already. I’m working as a salesperson at a large company at the luggage department, so I basically sell suitcases. I have to make sure the department looks all right, and take the suitcases into the store from the storage areas etc. etc. I have a contract for 13 to 30 hours a week, which is exactly what I wanted. I work now three days a week, which is great. I’m glad I’m finally making some money. The pay isn’t that great, but I’m used to that.
The new semester at the university has started and I’m working pretty hard actually. Last year didn’t go that great and I didn’t gather many study points (ECTS). But now in the new semester I’m trying really hard to do get some points this year. I have four courses at the moment: Language Acquisition 5, Philology 5 and two courses I chose myself about Gender and Sexuality. I’m actually enjoying this semester, at least a lot more than the courses I did last year. Of course I don’t really like Language Acquisition, but I don’t have a choice, I have to do that course. It’s about sociolinguistics, second language acquisition and stylistics. We have to do experiments and presentations and we have to write an essay. Philology is about Late Modern English and then about the language that it used in different text types, for example in recipe books or in letters. I am going to do my presentation and probably also my essay for this course on journals. I am very interested in the subject, also because I used to write in a diary for many years on a daily basis and I used this blog as a kind of journal. I’m not sure what I’m going to look into specifically, but I’ll figure that out later. The courses on Gender and Sexuality are really cool. We are looking at how people look at gender and sexuality throughout the ages and I really like that. I read Mary Wollstonecraft’s ‘Vindication of the Rights of Woman’ and it was so interesting to read how people in that time (1792) looked at women and at their rights. Again I was moved by a text of hers. I have written about her also in an earlier blogpost.
And today I did something really fun! I went to a theatre-workshop! It’s by a group of people from my faculty, so from the department of English from the University of Leiden. They are going to produce one big play at the end of the year and in order to prepare for that they are giving four workshops and today was the first one. I didn’t even know about it until this morning, but I was already in Leiden for class so I decided to go. It was so much fun to do something with drama and the theatre again. I have missed it so much since secondary school. I mean, I know I’m not a great actress, but it’s so much fun to do something active and to be around all these creative people. I have no idea what is going to happen next. I would like to participate in the next three workshops as well, but I don’t know yet at what time of the week they will be given – nobody knows yet – so it depends on that whether I will continue with this. I hope to be in the big play at the end of the year. If I could just get a part where I say one or two lines I would be so happy already. I love being on stage and wearing costumes and make-up. And I love the atmosphere backstage. I just love the theatre and I thought this was a great way to get in touch with it again. So we’ll see what happens next. I’ll try to keep you up to date ;)

London, TVs, Dawson's Creek, Changes

2008-07-07T23:54:00.001+02:00

I know, I know, it’s been way too long since I last updated this blog. It’s just quite a lot of work to update all the travelogs for my ToyVoyagers and this blog. But some things have happened since I last updated this site :)

In June I went to London for a week together with Martijn. That was really great. We visited all the major museums, we went to Westminster Abbey and we went to the British Library, which was together with Westminster Abbey the highlight of my vacation. I mean, I saw a version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles. That was so amazing! That manuscript was written in the tenth century and I was able to see it with my own eyes! That was so cool! I also saw a Gutenberg Bible and Shakespeare’s First Folio. It was so great. I also really enjoyed my visit to Westminster Abbey. It was really special to walk around there and see all these tombs and memorials. Of course I loved the Poet’s Corner, but it was really impressive to see all the tombs of the great kings like Charles II and others. I thought it was very special to walk around in a country where everyone speaks English and I felt at home there. Once we figured out the Underground system, it was easy enough to get around the city. I had a great week and I’ll go back any time :D

I’m also still active both on Postcrossing and on ToyVoyagers. I’m currently hosting three TVs: Ceryni, Bellatrix and Moony. It’s still a lot of fun to take pictures of them and make up stories around them. I’m expecting to host a lot more TVs the next two months.

I’ve been watching a lot of episodes of Dawson’s Creek lately. I have the first three seasons on DVD and I think it’s a great series. I’m currently watching Season Two and I’m enjoying it thoroughly. I know, this season is from 1998, but I still like to watch it. I also went to secondary school in that time, so I can relate to it very much.

There may be a life change for me ahead, but I can’t say too much about it yet. I have a meeting about it tomorrow and we’re gonna see what comes from that meeting. As soon as I know more, I’ll let you know.

Sylphide and Mira

2008-05-21T00:16:00.000+02:00

I have done so many updates in the past few days that I kinda forgot to update here as well :) My first two TVs arrived!

Last week on Friday Sylphide arrived. You can check out her travelog on http://www.toyvoyagers.com/index.php?a=topic&t=102407 We have had a lot of fun together already. She has done a Quest for Wisdom where she interviewed some of the other animals here in the house and they shared some of their wisdom with her. And on the same day the feline creature Jaran had given to me was named! His name is Jason. I thought that name befitted him very well and of course he is named after a great legend.

And then today, there was another surprise in the mail, and this was truly a surprise. There was an envelope for me from Australia. I really thought this was Garfield so I was really excited that he had finally arrived. Then I got upstairs and opened the envelope and it turned out to be quite a different creature. He was a dog instead of a cat! And his name isn’t Garfield, but Mira. Mira has spent a while with his first host in Australia, but she never updated his travelog and she didn’t respond to messages from Mira’s owner. So I actually didn’t think he would ever reach my house safely. But there he was today! All safe and sound! This is his travelog: http://www.toyvoyagers.com/index.php?a=topic&t=101563

So we’re going to be quite busy in London. Did I already mention that we’re going on a holiday to London? We’re going away for a week in June. I already booked the flight and the hotel. And we need to bring along the TVs as well of course. I’m awaiting at least one more for the holiday and that’s Troddy Trafalgar. His wish is to visit Trafalgar Square in London and learn more about Lord Nelson and I’m going to help him with both these wishes. He is already on his way from Germany to my house, so I hope he’ll get here some time this week. So that’s what I’ve been up to these past few days.

My Pentecost Weekend

2008-05-13T01:19:00.000+02:00

As you can tell from the picture, a new member was added to our family. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have a name yet. He’s a really sweet guy, a bit lazy though. I literally had to drag him unto Yolanda’s lap to take this picture. He just likes to lie around all day and dream and not do that much. He is good-natured, because he always has that smile on his face. He only speaks German, because that’s where he was born. This weekend our German friend brought him over to us.
This German friend, Jaran, stayed with us over the weekend. On Saturday we went to Delft. We thought that would be a nice authentic Dutch city to show him. I had found out that there was a city-cache that would lead us all through the city, so we did that cache along the way. We almost stopped at the second assignment, because we couldn’t find the name that we needed, but at the last moment Martijn found it and so our quest continued. After we found all the clues, we went for dinner in an Italian restaurant. It was a nice restaurant; good food and not too expensive. Over there we calculated what the final coordinates should be and we went to see if they were correct. Sadly, on the way there, I got a steel pole on my head when they were taking down the market stalls. I was pretty shaken up by it and I still have a big bruise on my head as a reminder. But, despite that, we found the cache! I was so happy! It was a long multi-cache and Martijn and I kind of made a habit out of not finding those. But we did find this one! (It was probably because there was three of us now instead of two :)) So we left our Travelbug and Geocoin there (which we had for over a year – shame on us!), wrote down our names in the log and we went home.
Because the bump on my head was hurting me, I couldn’t sleep at all that night. Well, I slept like three or four hours, but that’s it. So I decided not to join Martijn and Jaran on Sunday. I just couldn’t bear the thought of having to walk out in the sunlight all day. So I stayed at home and played the Sims 2. I still love that game. Martijn and Jaran went to The Hague and Scheveningen. They didn’t do any geocaches; they just walked and played the tourist :). And by the way, on Saturday the three of us took 250 pictures together, each with our own camera. And on Sunday evening, Jaran went home again after dinner. I must say that I really enjoyed the weekend. We had never met each other in real life. Martijn knew Jaran from IRC, but they had never met before neither.
Today, Martijn and I didn’t do that much. We sat outside in the sun, Martijn did some laundry, he played Civ III and I played the Sims 2. I slept really well last night, and now I’m gonna see if I can do that again. Work tomorrow…

New Swatch Watch, TV Garfield, Picture Taken By Me!

2008-05-07T23:29:00.000+02:00

Yesterday I went on a shopping spree. Well, I didn’t buy as much as I would have allowed myself to, but still. I bought a new watch! I wanted to buy a Swatch-skin watch for a long long time, but because they are so expensive I postponed it many times. But I really needed to buy a new watch, or a new strap, and I decided it was finally time (no pun intended :)) for a Swatch skin. It is so flat when compared to my other watch. And it’s nice and pink. I love pink :) And I bought a new phone set for in the house, nothing special. We just wanted a set with an extra handset so that we can have one in the bedroom as well. So now Martijn has been calling me from the bedroom while I was in the living room. It’s cheaper than using our mobile phones. And I bought the latest Sims 2 accessory pack: Kitchen and Bath Interior Design Stuff. It’s not that spectacular, but it’s Sims, so I wanted to have it anyway. I was also looking for a MP3-player for Martijn and for some earrings for me, but I couldn’t find any that I liked. So I’ll have to find them some other day.

I’m eagerly awaiting my first ToyVoyager. Garfield (http://www.toyvoyagers.com/index.php?a=topic&t=101548) was sent to me two weeks ago from Australia and he still hasn’t arrived yet. I am kind of worried. I would love for him to be here over the weekend. We will have a guest this weekend, from Germany, so we’re going to play tourists and make lots of pictures anyway. It would be great if Garfield could hop along. I’m just so afraid that he won’t be here until after the weekend. But we’ll see what happens. Can’t do much about it anyway.

This picture to the right I took yesterday with my mobile phone. Isn’t it cool that my phone can take a picture like this? It looked so wonderful outside with the yellow and the green that I just had to take a picture of it. And it came out pretty nice. Maybe not as great as when I would have taken it with any of my real cameras, but still pretty cool. Well, talk to you later.

Cache, ToyVoyagers, Work

2008-04-27T23:28:00.002+02:00

Today, Yolanda, Martijn and I went for a walk. Martijn and I each took our photo cameras with us and our GPS receiver. And we found a cache! As you can see on the picture, we haven’t mastered all the settings yet, though most of the pictures came out quite okay. You can check them out at: http://www.charda.nl/gallery2/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=478 It was nice to be outside again. We hadn’t been outside like this since last October. But the next time won’t be that far away. I joined a website called Toyvoyagers: http://www.toyvoyagers.com It’s basically what I have been doing with Yolanda for a long time, except that Yolanda lives with me. The basic idea is that you send a teddy bear of some kind to another person and that person shows the teddy bear around where he or she lives. The person, the host, will take pictures of this and post them online in the travelogs on the website, or on the teddy’s own weblog. My own ToyVoyager (TV) is on her way to the US. The TV’s name is Sussy Greenfeet. This is her link: http://www.toyvoyagers.com/index.php?a=topic&t=210838 I am waiting for the arrival of Garfield. I’ll show him around the house here, and I’ll have to show him my part of the Netherlands of course. I’m quite excited about it and I hope he’ll arrive soon. I expect him somewhere next week.

Next week I’ll have to work all week because my colleague has the week off. But there are two holidays in the middle of the week, so it’s not even a complete week. And that’s about all the news I have right now :)

New Old Blog, New Job, Postcrossing

2008-04-17T00:13:00.001+02:00

Phew, I did it. I just manually deleted all the files of my Wordpress blog. There are still things on that ftp account that aren’t mine, but I’m not sure which of those I can delete, so I’ll leave them on for a couple of days until I know which to delete. Hmm, for those of you who hadn’t noticed yet: my blog was hacked. Martijn noticed it because he saw that a lot of spam was added to the blogposts that were imported into Hyves and Facebook. And I never updated my Wordpress account. I was too lazy for it and I didn’t really know how to do it. But now the spam was getting worse and worse so I had to do something. So tonight I decided to just delete it all. Luckily I can still access my account. I never made a back up of my blog, so I can’t put it back. I did save all the text files, so if I’m very active I can put the text back on one day, but I don’t think that will really happen. You’ll just have to live with a gap of 12 months in my online history.

But now about me. I’m doing okay. I started at my new job two weeks ago. It was quite difficult to settle there and get adapted to the new environment, but it’s getting better as we go along. It’s very different from my previous work of course, but it’s also a lot closer to my house, which is good :)

I have been very active at Postcrossing these last few weeks. I went to the Postcrossing meeting on the 29^th of March in Rotterdam which was really cool. I took a lot of pictures of Rotterdam. I had never really visited that city, only passed through it. But ever since that day I have visited the forum more often. I now also send postcards through ‘tags’ and ‘round robins’. You post a reply on a specific thread on the forum like ‘cat-tag’ and then you promise to send the person you ‘tag’ a cat card. And the next person tags you and sends you a cat card, which is great :) We exchange our addresses through the personal messages system of the forum. And with a round robin you make a group in a certain thread and then you send every person in that group a card, so you send four cards (in a group of five) and you receive four, usually with a specific theme. And I also exchange teas in this way with people. It’s just so much fun. I love trying to find cards, buying stamps, writing the cards and eventually also receiving cards from all over the world. Yes, I found a hobby :)

New Weblog!

2007-04-27T22:34:00.000+02:00

Yup, it's finally there. Today I finished my new weblog. From now on you can check everything about me at : http://www.charda.nl/wordpress Let me know what you think of it :-)

Caching Today

2007-04-22T23:21:00.000+02:00

Today Martijn and I did 5 geocaches. We wanted to walk around and I had chosen 5 caches in a row. They turned out to be in a nice row of each other. We walked only for about 7 kilometres today, but we are both pretty tired right now. The pictures are at: http://www.icewatcher.nl/pics/geocaching22april/

Essay, Christina Aguilera and my Grief for my Father

2007-04-18T00:07:00.000+02:00

I’m still playing around with Wordpress, but I guess half an hour just isn’t enough time to get it the way I want it. The main problem is that I don’t really know how it works, and I’m actually too tired to figure it out right now. But it’s still a work in progress…

Tonight I got back my Literature essay, the one about ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Emily Brontë. and I’m really happy with it. The mark is a 7.5 on a scale from 1 to 10. I’m very pleased with it, especially since I didn’t know what it was going to be. It was the first essay I handed in to this teacher, so you never know what they expect from an essay. He didn’t even comment much, so I’m just very happy.

I was less happy walking home from the tram. I had listened to Christina Aguilera when I just had to cry because of my father’s death. I’ll explain the Christina Aguilera thing first. On the 2^nd of December I went to her concert in Rotterdam and afterwards I posted a link to a video with a small story about it on my blog. My father had read that and then sent me an e-mail saying that he was jealous of me and that he would have liked to come along. That was the last e-mail I ever received from my father, the last contact we had, because he died a week later. I replied to his e-mail, but he never replied to that one. Apart from that, I cannot listen to the song ‘Hurt’ by Miss Aguilera, because of the lyrics and the way in which she sings it. That song always makes me cry. On my way home I was listening to her CD, not even the one with ‘Hurt’ on it, but still. I just had to cry. And then I got home in tears and Martijn was very afraid something had happened to me on my way home. This mourning process is weird. Sometimes I don’t think about it for days and then sometimes I just have to cry at the most crazy places, like today. I don’t feel bad about it; it makes me feel human. Because I’m still sometimes kind of embarrassed that I don’t think about it more often, that I don’t cry more often. My life kind of goes on like always. But then this happens and I’m a bit relieved that I can still cry about it and feel the pain. I guess that will stay forever…

Photos, Today, Blog

2007-04-16T23:40:00.000+02:00

The pictures from last weekend are on the website of the organization: http://mes.albertsweb.nl/mediagallery/album.php?aid=52&page=1
You can find me at about 2 or 3 pictures, so good luck finding me :)
I have to say that all the injuries you see on the pictures are fake, no matter how real they seem.
Today I worked all day, nothing really special happened. I slept very well last night. Tonight I tried to find a good template for my Wordpress blog, but I can't really find it. I'll have to spend some more time on that. I'll keep you posted.

First Aid Weekend, Moots I 2007, Sleep!

2007-04-15T21:41:00.000+02:00

I survived the weekend. I never thought I would, but I did. It wasn’t too bad actually. We didn’t do any of the scary exercises I thought we would do. We practised many little things, like how to do bandages and we have a small lecture about heart diseases, epilepsy and brain diseases. We rehearsed our resuscitating skills and we practised how to walk with a gurney. The only downside was that I didn’t get any sleep last night. We slept with 20 people in one room and many people were talking and making noise and just being annoying.

We also had a pet with us from one of the participants, a small Blackcap bird she has hand-raised, called Frank, even though it’s a girl. It was fun to see this bird and even hold it.

In four weeks time Martijn and I are going to participate as First Aid volunteers in a larp event, Moots I, just like I did last year. It’s like a real life Guild Wars experience. I am looking forward to it. It is hard work, to work long hours and usually not on too much sleep (we sleep in a tent), but it is fun to walk around there and see everyone fighting and being in-character. We’ll see how that goes in a little while. Now I’m going to take a shower and go to bed. I’m gonna try to sleep a few hours before having to work tomorrow.

First Aid Weekend, De Lama's

2007-04-13T23:50:00.000+02:00

Well, tomorrow is the big day. Tomorrow Martijn and I are going on our annual First Aid Rehearsal weekend. I am not looking forward to it. Last year I got very upset during one of the practices and that has made me very insecure. The weekend lasts from tomorrow afternoon until Sunday afternoon. I hope I will survive this weekend without bursting out crying and that I will pass the requirements so that my diploma will be extended.

I do have some good news though. On the 14^th of August Martijn and I are going to ‘De Lama’s’. This is an improvisation group, consisting of 4/5 stand-up comedians, who improvise throughout the show. They also have a television show, which is hilarious to watch. The day before yesterday I found out about their summer shows in August in The Hague, so I immediately made a reservation for 2 tickets and we even have pretty good seats. Today I received the tickets via mail. I am really looking forward to it.

Well, that’s about all I have to say right now. I hope I can get some sleep tonight, since it is really hot over here. I hope I will survive the weekend and I hope I will be back to play Guild Wars by Sunday evening.

New Website, New e-mail, No New Shoes

2007-04-10T23:58:00.000+02:00

Last Sunday I ordered a domainname and some webspace for me. I checked the domain charda.nl and it was still available. I registered this name and 500 MB of webspace as well. As yet there is nothing to see there, but I will add more in the coming weeks/months. Right now I'm still using this blog, and I might continue to do so. I mainly wanted the webspace so that I will have my own e-mail and that I'm no longer dependent on Hotmail or Gmail. For those of you who would like to know my new e-mail address, please e-mail me. I'd rather not put it on this website for all the spammers to find it. I will continue to read all my other e-mail addresses.
This afternoon I went shopping. I needed new shoes and a bag with wheels for this weekend. I didn't find any shoes. I actually hate buying new shoes, since I can never find shoes for my feet. I did buy a really nice bag. It's a regular weekendbag but then with wheels. I will need it this weekend when Martijn and I are going to the First Aid rehearsal weekend. I am not looking forward to it. I also bought the second season of Dawson's Creek. It wasn't that expensive and I wanted to have for a very long time.

Geocaching, Xofrix, Ashes

2007-04-09T22:48:00.000+02:00

Today was a very exciting day. I got up very early at 9 am, which is really early for me at a Sunday. And I know today wasn’t Sunday today, but it was Second Easter day, which is a holiday here in the Netherlands, so it felt like a Sunday to me. We went geocaching today. We first did the ‘Waar? Daar! Duivenvoorde’cache. It was a pretty short walk and we figured out everything easily.

Afterwards we met with Team Xofrix as they call themselves in the geocaching world. I know Xofrix from Guild Wars where we are in the same guild and we play a lot together. We’re both not the best players in the game, but we do have a lot of fun. Since we are both geocachers, we decided that we should try and a do a geocache together. And today was the day. The cache that we did together was very easy and we pretty much walked straight to it in one line. It was very cool to meet him and I hope we will meet again some time soon.

The pictures are at: http://www.icewatcher.nl/pics/geocaching9april/

Last Thursday I scattered my father’s ashes. I wasn’t as emotional as I thought I was going to be. I scattered the ashes myself. I had decided that I might do it up front if they asked me, and they did. My grandmother carried the ashes to the site. The site itself wasn’t that special. It was just a piece of land with trees and grass. I thought it would be prettier with flowers and such, but that wasn’t the case. So I scattered the ashes and I felt really clumsy while doing it. It was pretty heavy and it was just an awkward experience. I hope it was the last time I’ll ever have to do it. Martijn took a lot of pictures, but I won’t share them with you. They’re for me and my grandmother.

Talk to you soon!

Pictures Geocaching Last Week

2007-04-08T16:50:00.000+02:00

Here is the link to the pictures of our Geocaching expedition last week. We host it on Martijns website now instead of Flickr. I hope this works better and this allows us more freedom. http://www.icewatcher.nl/pics/geocaching1april/
I hope you enjoy the pictures!

Scattering My Father's Ashes

2007-04-04T23:28:00.000+02:00

Tomorrow my father’s remains will be scattered on a small field next to the crematorium in Almere. I can’t say I’m looking forward to it. My mother and my grandmother will be there and Martijn will come with me. I will also pick up the mini urn with a small part of my father’s ashes in it. I’ve been tense all week because of this. I know it will be over soon and I don’t think it will be very special or anything. I’m just not looking forward to going back to the crematorium and I’m not looking forward to getting very emotional again. If there’s time and the opportunity for it, I want to read this poem. It’s from the Lord of the Rings. My father really liked that book. It’s not one of the last poems about the Grey Havens, because those are too long. This one is about going to an inn after a long day, but I think it kind of applies to my father as well. It’s poetry, so you can stick any meaning to it if you like. I’ll let you know how things went, probably not tomorrow, but rather some other day. Please think of me around noon my time :-)

The Road goes ever on and on
Out from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
Let others follow it who can!
Let them a journey new begin,
But I at last with weary feet
Will turn towards the lighted inn,
My evening-rest and sleep to meet.

The Ethics of Blogging

2007-03-28T23:55:00.000+02:00

I know I haven’t written on this blog for a very long time, except for the few lines about Yolanda and our cache a couple of days ago. I really didn’t feel like writing anything.

It started when my mobile phone was stolen in the first week of March. I wanted to go home and write how it happened, but then I realized that everything that I write here will be ‘findable’ forever. I mean, this weblog is hosted on Blogspot and that is owned by Google nowadays. And we all know that Google saves everything. They link this info to my Gmail account and to all my search queries, which are quite a large number. So then I thought, okay, I can write about this mistake I made (because it was my own fault) but any new employer or whoever will be able to read that I made this mistake. It just set me thinking about the ethics of this blog. How much do I want to share with you? How much have I already shared? I mean, I love to write here and it’s like a diary for me too. I just had to consider these things for a while.

But I’m here now and I will share with you as much as possible. In the meantime, I have bought a new phone and a new mp4 player. I had to buy a new music player, because my old 20 GB hard disk player crashed and died. I bought a Sandisk Sansa E250, 2 GB with a micro SD slot. I really didn’t want another hard disk player anymore. Too many moveable parts which can break, like my old one did. The great advantage of this player is that it can also play movies. The screen is very small of course, only 1.8 inch, but it’s still cool that it’s available. I just ripped three episodes of Charmed and I can watch them on my player.

Yesterday and today I had some rough times in the ‘dealing with my father’s death business’. I had to call to the crematorium to make an appointment to distribute the ashes and there was one sentence which made me cry (only after the call, but still).

I said: “Hello, my name is Charda and I’m calling you about the distribution of my father’s ashes.” It was so strange to have my name and my fathers name in one sentence together with the words ‘distribution of ashes’. It sounded too impossible. The last couple of weeks the death of my father seemed very unreal to me. I mean, of course I know it happened and I have proof of it everywhere, but it felt unreal and I kind of liked that. Unreal is a better feeling than the pain of knowing it is over. When something is unreal, you can wake up and realize it didn’t happen, that it wasn’t true. That just doesn’t work with the truth.

And then some good news: Martijn and I have been together for 3 years this week. We are living together for almost 2 years now. We went out for dinner last night at a Thai restaurant. That was fun, although I didn’t really like the food I had ordered. I just stole some from Martijn. And the desert was really good.

And our travelbug which we sent into the world last Sunday has started its journey! Someone picked him up yesterday and I hope he will set him into a next cache real soon. I’m really glad he’s moving now.

I’ll try to update more regularly from now on. I can’t promise anything though…

Yolanda sitting on a tree

2007-03-25T19:44:00.001+02:00

Yolanda sitting on a tree
Originally uploaded by Charda.

Today we went Geo-caching. We did 2 caches and we walked for about 10 kms. Check out the pictures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/charda

The Sims 2 Pets, Homework, Victorian Novels

2007-03-04T23:27:00.000+01:00

I should have done a lot this weekend, but I didn’t do that much. Yesterday I should have done my grammar homework, but it was just too boring, so I couldn’t do it anymore. Instead I played The Sims. I have The Sims 2 with all the expansion packs, at least until Pets. There is a newer one out since a couple of weeks, but I don’t have that one yet. I think I will buy it shortly. I experimented a bit with the Pets-one. I didn’t like it as much as I had expected. I expected for the animals to interact more with the sims. Instead they just walked around and slept and such. They didn’t even interact with each other.

Today I did some of my Language Acquisition homework. I couldn’t really do all the exercises, because they assumed we had some knowledge of syntax, which I don’t have yet. I also had to write a short paragraph, but I’m really not pleased with what I wrote. I wanted to write about ‘why study literature’. I just couldn’t find anything about it. Finally I found an article about why not to study literature, so I used that, but it doesn’t really make sense what I wrote. I will look at it tomorrow and try to enhance it.

This morning I finished reading ‘Silas Marner’ by George Eliot. I thought it was a fun book. I really love the Victorian period. There has not been one book I didn’t like. Right now I have to read ‘Alice in Wonderland’, which won’t be too hard to read either.

And now I’d better go to bed since I have to work tomorrow.

Grief

2007-02-28T23:52:00.000+01:00

I wanted to show you this picture I found of my cat, who died a couple of years ago. It’s a really cool picture, but I forgot the CD with the pictures at work. I’ll try and post it tomorrow if I don’t forget it.

Nothing special has happened the last couple of days. I’ve been really tired, because I didn’t get enough sleep. Like right now, I should have been in bed at least half an hour ago. I played Guild Wars tonight for about 2 hours. It was really cool. I finally reached Droknar’s Forge, which is a city that I really wanted to reach. You can buy really cool armour there and it’s basically just a high-lvl area. That makes me feel really cool.

Next Tuesday I have a meeting in Almere to select an urn for a tiny bit of my father’s ashes. When I have selected one and ordered it, we can make an appointment to distribute the rest of my father’s ashes. I have postponed this meeting for a while, because I’m not really looking forward to it, but it really doesn’t matter how long I postpone it. I have to do it someday anyway.

I’m having a hard time in dealing with the grief. I usually cry at night, because I can picture my father best when I’m in bed. I also cry when I hear the song ‘Hurt’ by Christina Aguilera. The text doesn’t completely apply to me, but it really touches me. I can’t really define what I feel. I just feel sad. Usually when I work things are all right and I can just go to class and do what I need to do. It’s when I’m at home that I have time to think and to realize and feel how much it hurts. And I know the pain is there to stay forever. It will become less and I will learn to deal with it eventually, but the truth is I don’t have a father anymore. I can’t buy a card for Father’s Day, my father will not be at my wedding, he will never see my children, and my children will never know their grandfather. Those things just really hurt.

Like I said, it’s not like I’m crying and blubbering about these things all day long. I do go to class, I try to prepare all my homework, and I still play Guild Wars. It’s just so very hard.

My grandmother sent me these lines:

There is no death

When you think of me, I’ll always be with you

*Edit 1-3-2007* Here's the picture of my cat.

Lots of Achievements Weekend

2007-02-25T23:42:00.000+01:00

This has been a really productive weekend for me even though I had to work last Friday and so missed one day of the weekend. Yesterday I finished all the grammar exercises I had to do for this week and a read many pages in Bleak House. Today I actually finished it. I’m really glad to have finished it, because I was afraid it was never going to happen :) I really enjoyed reading the book. It’s written by Charles Dickens. I can’t really say what the story is about, you’ll have to google around for it, but it’s really great. He has so many characters, and each of them is totally different from the other. The book has almost 1000 pages, so it took me a couple of weeks to get through it, but I finished it today!

I also made a presentation for the Language Acquisition course. I had to pretend to give a presentation to the sixth form of my former secondary school about the pronunciation of the ‘th’ sound. I made a Powerpoint presentation of it and I also finished that assignment. I burned it on a CD and I will hand it in on Tuesday.

Tonight I sent an application letter to a company. It’s a small, relatively new company who deals in gadgets, small appliances which cost a lot of money and really have no use. They are looking for someone at the office to do some customer-service work and to do other administrative work. Tonight I sent them my application letter including my cv and passport picture via e-mail, so I hope they will respond quickly. Their office is very close to my house, so that would be really cool.

And after that I played some Guild Wars and I had my first character ascended! I was so thrilled about it. It was a bit of an anticlimax after that, because I wanted to do the next mission, but I couldn’t find anyone to do it with me. And then I wanted to do it alone, and then I had a fight, nothing serious, with my boyfriend and I just quit.

And tomorrow I gotta work, as always, and I’ll talk to you soon.

CameraManHamster & Muis, Huishoudbeurs, My Father, GW mini pet, Memory, Tomorrow

2007-02-18T23:43:00.000+01:00

The two little friends you see on my screen are the newest additions to my stuffed bears family. The one on the right is my Cameraman Hamster. He is given out by one of the largest supermarket brands here in the Netherlands. They appear in TV-commercials. Martijn bought it for me as a Valentine’s Day gift. The one on the left is Muis, which is Dutch for ‘mouse’. He doesn’t have a name yet, although I like Muis a lot as a name. I bought him at the Huishoudbeurs last Friday. He doesn’t have any special features. I just liked the looks of him and that’s why I bought him.

The Huishoudbeurs is a bit hard to explain for people who don’t know anything about it. It’s like a trade fair for housewives. It just to be about the newest inventions for the household, like the vacuum cleaner was first introduced on this trade fair (in the Netherlands at least). Nowadays it’s just a commercial gathering where are the big brands try to sell as much as possible. I went there with my boss and we had a fun evening. I bought lots of food and then mostly cookies and chocolate and such.

Last Monday I spent all day at work scanning the pictures of my father. It was really quiet and I had promised my grandmother I would send her some pictures. The downside was that I was really depressed and sad when I came home. I’ve been crying for most of the evening afterwards. It’s so annoying that I have to consider myself before doing something, like putting together a photo-album with my father’s pictures. I just know I have to wait in doing it. I don’t want to upset myself too much and I still need to deal with my emotions. It’s so confusing to go through a period of mourning. I wish I had no need for it.

Today I played Guild Wars and there was the Canthan New Year event. It was so much fun. I got many gifts and I received a mini pet! I got a mini pig! I am so happy with it. I’ve never had a mini pet before and I just got this one for free. A lot of people received it, so it’s nothing special anymore, but I’m really glad that I’ve got it. I even sent a letter to ArenaNet, the producer of Guild Wars, that I really appreciate the fact that they organise these events and that I love them for it. I hope they’ll continue doing these things.

Last Sunday I bought some upgrades for my computer. I bought a new hard disk, 250 GB and 2 new RAM memory modules, 512 MB each, so that I have a total of 1536 MB RAM memory. I’m very happy with it and I hope this will make my computer last a couple years longer.

And tomorrow there’s work again and the day after I really need to do some serious homework. I haven’t done that much this weekend, at least not on the homework front.

Snow

2007-02-08T22:58:00.000+01:00

Snow in the Netherlands!
You wouldn't believe it! The whole country was in an uproar today because they had predicted some snowfall today. They actually predicted very heavy snowfall, but it was kind of disappointing after all. Most had disappeared at the end of the afternoon. I got to leave work early luckily, and the trains were only a little delayed. Nothing too serious.

I didn't have class tonight because the university got a new rector today. I don't know who came up with the idea to skip all of the lessons for the rest of the day, but apparently someone did. I only heard about it yesterday from a classmate I met in the train. No one had bothered to tell us anything about it. I called the secretary this morning to make sure I had no class.

Well, I'm gonna read some pages of Bleak House now and then I'm going to sleep.

My Father's Ashes

2007-02-08T00:35:00.001+01:00

Tonight in the train home I talked with my mother on the phone. Her best friend died two weeks ago. They had been friends for a very long time, I guess since my mother was 18 or 20 years old. The woman died of lung-emboli. My mom was pretty shook up by it of course. Her friend was only 52 years old. I have seen her a couple of times, but I didn’t really know her. We also talked about the situation with my father of course.

I still have to decide what to do with my father’s ashes. My mother suggested that I should have the ashes spread out in Almere where my father lived and that I should keep a bit of the ashes myself in a small box, so that I have some left. I have been thinking about this tonight and I’ve browsed over the Internet to see what I could find in the range of mini-urns. I have found some nice ones. I found some really cool glass-urns in which the ashes are distributed in the glass itself. It looked really nice. I’ve also seen some simple small urns.

It’s so very hard to think about this and to make the right decision. I can only decide once and I can never do it again. I really don’t want to decide and I just wished my father hadn’t died. It would have been so much easier for me.

Mini Holiday, Exam Tomorrow

2007-02-05T23:49:00.000+01:00

This weekend we went on our mini holiday. We have had a really good time. You can see some of the pictures at: http://flickr.com/photos/charda/ It felt so good to be away from home to these ‘vacation-like’ surroundings. We brought many coordinates with us to look for geocaches, but we didn’t really succeed in it. We found one on Saturday, but we couldn’t go looking for the next, because we had to walk to the village which was closest by so we could buy some groceries. There was a small supermarket on the terrain itself, but it was really expensive and they didn’t have any fresh fruits or vegetables. We just wanted to visit a real supermarket and get some decent groceries.
On Sunday we tried to find a second geocache, but we failed. It was a multicache, which means you need to look for some clues and figure out the next coordinates for yourself. The problem was that we couldn’t find the first clue and from then on we couldn’t find any other hints either and it was one big failure. We walked back home and we planned to eat out in the restaurant on the terrain that evening. But we hadn’t made any reservations, and the restaurant turned out to be completely full when we got there, so we couldn’t eat there. We just went to the snack bar next door. On Saturday afternoon we went bowling for one hour. This was fun to do. Martijn and I had never done that together, but it was fun to do with just the two of us. I think Martijn won. He was better at throwing all the pins down, while I kept throwing only 8 of them over.
Tomorrow I have my Linguistics exam. I haven’t studied at all. I just glanced over the mock-exam this afternoon, but I don’t know anything. I can’t answer a single question. I can’t not go, because I requested this special exam for me. I’ll just go and fail and I hope I can do it again in August.

Ill, Vacation

2007-02-01T00:04:00.000+01:00

The last couple of days I have been ill. It wasn’t much fun. I went to visit my cousin last Saturday. I hadn’t seen her in a couple of years and it was good to see her again. I think I picked up a bug of some sorts at her place. Afterwards I remembered that she told me they had been sick last week.

We visited them for almost a complete day. We just hang there a bit and we talked to them. Mainly Martijn did the talking, but that’s okay. We ate there as well, and it was a really nice dinner. We had a fondue, like I had with the Brothers at Christmas. The only difference was that this wasn’t made with oil, but with bouillon. It felt a lot healthier at least. The last days I’ve basically spent in bed. I felt really weak, but I’ll spare you the details. Tomorrow I’m going back to work.

The day after tomorrow I’m going on a holiday. A really tiny one that is, only 3 days, but it’s the only thing close to a holiday we’ll have in a long time. We’re going to the Eastern part of the country and spend 3 days in a bungalow. We’ve already looked for some caches nearby that we might look into. And of course we’ll also bring Edward and Yolanda with us.

I don’t really have much to tell right now, so I’ll get back to you soon.

Late late late

2007-01-18T23:29:00.000+01:00

I made it back home! There are very heavy and violent storms here at the moment. I left work at 4 pm and I got home at 11 pm. Not too bad I’d say. Just for comparison, usually I leave work at 6 pm and I get home by 7:30 pm. The main problem of today was that the trains didn’t ride anymore. When I left work I was hoping to catch some train to The Hague, but there weren’t any at all. I took the bus to Schiphol and I met Martijn there who also took a bus from his work to the airport. I was really happy to meet him there, because I already figured this would take a long time before I would get home. I thought I was going to have to wait for a few hours on Schiphol, but that some trains would depart from there to The Hague. But nothing happened. We ate something at Burger King and we waited for about 3 hours. Then we heard from people around us that all trains had been cancelled and that there was not a big chance of it getting back this evening. We called Martijns sister and she checked our other possibilities. We chose to take the bus to Haarlem and from there take the bus to The Hague. If you want to know why the busses still drove and why all trains were cancelled: I have no idea. I think a train is much heavier and steadier than a bus. Anyway, we took these buses. It took a very long time to get from Haarlem to The Hague. By train it is a little more than half an hour; we did it today in an hour and 45 minutes. We went to the coast to all kinds of little villages. And now it’s almost midnight and I have to get to bed, because I have to get back to work tomorrow. I have no idea whether I’ll be able to get to work. The wind has gone away by now, or at least has become a lot less strong. There’s still lots of stuff on the railroad which will have to be removed before the trains get to drive again. We’ll see how that goes tomorrow. I called my work already to ask if they’ll be in time tomorrow because I might be late.

Our First Geo-cache

2007-01-14T23:04:00.000+01:00

Today was our first successful geocache hunt. You can check out the photos at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/charda/

We had lots of fun looking for the caches. Once we got to the locations of the caches, we found them fairly easily. I was the one who found them every time. Once because a pencil was sticking out of the ground, I found another one because it looked too much like the leaves and branches had been placed there and I found another one because I saw the plastic of the bag. I swapped a wup, a keychain and a little ball for some other small goodies I put in there. Right now my feet really hurt and I’m really tired. So I’m off to bed soon.

The Church, Martijn and me

2007-01-10T00:21:00.000+01:00

And here I am yet again, only one day after my last update. Not as soon as I expected actually, usually there is more time between my posts.

This afternoon I finally brought my bicycle to the bicycle-repair-man (no idea what that’s called in English). It’s gonna cost me a lot of money to have my bike repaired, but it does mean I can ride it again, which is very good. After that I went to the post office to pick up a package with the pictures I had ordered via the Internet.

Then I went to the Brothers of Saint John. I had a regular meeting where we discussed the catechism as preparation for my Holy Communion and Confirmation. Nothing extraordinary happened until about halfway through the lesson. He told me he had to tell me something delicate. He told me I am not allowed to take the Holy Communion and be confirmed until after I am married. At this moment I am living together with Martijn, but we’re not married yet, and we don’t have any specific plans to get married really soon. We first want to move to a bigger house, because we really need more space. After that we will save money for a wedding, but that will take at least two/three years.

I was very put off by this news. I have always known that the church is against people living together while not being married, but no one has ever told me that I am not allowed to take the communion while I’m not married. I know it makes sense and I might have guessed it, but if I had known it up front, I wouldn’t have tried to go to church. I wouldn’t have sought the guidance. It’s all useless now anyway.

I’m not sure what I’m gonna do now. I don’t think I want to go to mass anymore. It’s pretty useless. The church doesn’t want me around, because I’m a sinner, so why should I attend mass? It’s not like I will do the First Communion any time soon. I can read the Bible at home and I will download a sermon somewhere to listen to. I suppose I shouldn’t receive a blessing either since I’m living in sin. I’m not sure what to do with the youth group and with the lessons this Brother is giving me. I’m not sure I will continue with those.

I want to make one thing clear. I am not angry with God. I’m only very angry with the Church and with the rules they have set. I mean, I have a healthy, good relationship with Martijn. I am faithful to him and he is faithful to me. The only difference is that we haven’t promised to stay together for the rest of our lives yet, while it already feels like we have. It feels very much like God has blessed our relationship the way it is now. For the first time in a long time I am happy and I have peace of mind now that I live with Martijn.

Martijn is also very upset about this. It makes him feel like I have to choose between him and the church, and in a sense that’s true. But I have made my choice. I just don’t know what steps to take next. *sigh* Why does life have to take away the good things from me?

Long Update

2007-01-09T00:34:00.000+01:00

Sorry I haven’t updated in a very long time. I’ve been keeping myself busy in many ways, but these ways didn’t involve thinking about anything or any kind of reflection. I’ve been working, just regular days as always. I have played a lot of Guild Wars. This was a lot of fun. The cool thing is that this is just a very different world so that I don’t have to think about any unpleasant things in my real life. And my characters have increased a lot in level, which was a nice addition. On the picture you see the view from the car at the gas station. Martijn was tanking our rental car and I was waiting and bored with my new phone (a very cool Nokia 6233) so I took this picture. Looks like autumn in wintertime, right?

I haven’t done any studying lately, except from reading in the Bible. I should be making my exams tomorrow and the week after, but I’m not going to. I haven’t studied at all and I don’t know enough to pass these exams. I feel really bad about it, because this means I’ll have to take them in August, which is half a year after I had the classes. We’ll see how that turns out. I will do my Language Acquisition 3 exam soon, the language lab one. I have studied and practised so hard for it, I’m really glad I will take this exam.

To keep my brains sharp I’m going to take a short Philosophy course for 4 weeks. The course is given by one of the Brothers of Saint John and it’s about freedom. I’m really curious what it’s going to be like. It means I will have to skip one night of school, the introduction night when they give us our curriculum, but so be it. That’s a lousy, useless evening anyway.

Since last weekend we have digital TV. It’s so cool. Instead of the 35 channels we used to have, we now have 123 channels. We have this many channels because of the 10-day trial period. After that we will have about 60 channels that are a bit interesting, maybe some more remain as well. We now have Discovery Civilization, Discovery Science, Discovery Travel and Living, Hallmark TV, BBC 1-4 and lots of other channels as well. We can also listen to the radio via the television and we have 40 extra music channels. I’m listening to one right now. I’m really excited we finally decided to buy it.

Last Sunday we had a ‘Running Dinner’ with my youth group of the church. Some people had prepared some food for all of us and we travelled from house to house by bike. I was pretty nervous in advance, but it turned out all right. I borrowed a bike from one of the girls, because my bike is still broken. We had a fun day.

I haven’t been thinking of my father that much. I do feel a bit guilty about it. It’s strange that life can just continue and I’m still able to go on, and to make jokes and have fun, while my father is dead. My work just goes on as ever and I can play Guild Wars and watch TV and make jokes with Martijn. I don’t even think that much about my father. Only now and then I realize that he will never read this, he won’t be at my wedding, he will never see my children, things like that. That’s still the hardest part for me. And in the meantime, I just have to go to work and continue living, even when both of my parents have lost faith in life.

Update

2006-12-27T01:20:00.000+01:00

Here’s a really short update from me. As you can see, all my stuffed children are doing fine. The red nose on the left is of course our Christmas friend Rudolph. As for me, I don’t really know how I feel. I mean, I feel fine, but the news of my father still hasn’t hit me yet. It just doesn’t sink in. I have had many days off the last couple of weeks. I have worked only 2 days and I have spent a lot of time asleep and playing Guild Wars. Tomorrow I’ll have to start working again. I’m not really looking forward to that, but I don’t really have a choice. I might tell you some more about the funeral and the memorial service some other day. Now I just have to get to bed really quickly. I’m still alive.

My father

2006-12-12T18:51:00.000+01:00

This is probably the hardest message I have ever had to post on this blog, but I have to do it. Yesterday when I came home from work Martijn guided me up the stairs and told me there were two people waiting for me. There were two police officers waiting for me. When I saw them I asked Martijn: “Is it my family or is it yours?” He didn’t answer me and told me to sit down. He then told me that my father was found dead in his house that morning and that it was an unnatural death.

Later that evening we went to Almere where my father lived. Martijns father and partner brought us by car there. A police detective waited for us there at the hospital. Then I went in a room and my father was there. I was there with Martijn and I said a prayer for my father there. I can’t describe him right now.

Afterwards we went to the police station where the police detective told me that my father didn’t show up for work that morning. The hospital where he worked didn’t trust it and called the police who went in the house and found my father. He probably has injected himself with insulin and took some alcohol to calm down a bit or to sleep well. My father worked in a hospital as an ICU nurse, so it was easy for him to obtain insulin. I also gave a statement to the police detective about any recent contacts I had had with my father. His last e-mail to me was that he was jealous of me that I had been to the Christina Aguilera concert. He had wanted to be there as well.

I really don’t know why he ended his own life. He didn’t have a perfect marriage with his new wife, it was more for her residence permit, but I didn’t think he was this depressed about it. I know suicides are usually done instantaneously and egoistically. This one probably was. The only problem is that men do it right when they want to commit suicide. Women usually take less invasive methods, but since my father was a nurse, he knew how to do it right. I didn’t see this coming and I am very sad that he thought this was his only way out. He wasn’t a religious man, but I will pray for him. I want to ask you who read this to also pray for his soul and for me a bit as well. I think I will need it. I had to write this on my blog, because my father used to be one of the most frequent visitors of my blog. He checked in almost every day, or at least every other day. This is the first post I know for sure he’s never going to read and that hurts.

Edward, Blog, Essay

2006-12-05T00:10:00.000+01:00

Yes, as you can see, I am proud to present a new member of our family. Another teddy bear, I hear you say? Nope, this isn’t just a teddy bear. This is a very special teddy bear. One who is special on this inside, and doesn’t just look cute and cuddly and soft. This teddy bear is microwavable. It has grain inside so I can heat it in the microwave and this bear will stay warm for about 2 hours. And the best thing is that he is filled with lavender, so I can sleep very well with him :-) I actually thought he was a girl when I bought him, so I tried to figure out a female name for him, but luckily I saw in time that he already had a name! He is called Edward Warmheart, as you can see under his foot and I’m really happy he has become a member of our family!

I was thinking the other day that maybe I have too many negative posts on my blog. The problem is that it’s always easier to write about the bad things. Maybe the teddy bear episodes bring some light into my blog, silly as it may be.

I just looked at the university catalogues for information for my literature essay which I still have to write, but I didn’t find anything. I really must go to the library and copy some chapters over there; the only problem is that I don’t have the time to do this anymore. I don’t know how I’m going to solve this. I don’t really have anything else to tell right now, so I’m off to bed.

Christina Aguilera - Back to Basics Tour -

2006-12-03T00:52:00.001+01:00

Tonight I went to the concert of Christina Aguilera together with my friend in Ahoy in Rotterdam. It was a wonderful show! I know this video is of a low quality, but it let's you see how wonderfully she can sing and this is my favourite song of her CD. If you want to see other songs as well, just search for Christina Aguilera Back to Basics on YouTube and you'll find many more. I had a great evening!

Busy with Work, School, SHP, GW, GPS

2006-11-29T00:30:00.000+01:00

Ok, so here’s a really short update about me. In the last 3 weeks I have sent out 3 different application letters to 3 companies, but I haven’t heard from any of them. I don’t expect an invitation from them anymore, since I applied to shops, and they should reply quickly or they probably will never reply anymore. Two weeks ago I applied at a supermarket and I never heard from them either. Today I applied at another store of this supermarket for the same kind of job, and I hope they will let me know something. I should try my utmost best to find another job, because if I won’t, I will still work at my current job for the next 10 years or so.

I have had so many troubles with the trains these last 2 weeks. I am so tired of travelling to Amsterdam every day. I really hope that will be over soon, although it doesn’t feel like it’s really going to happen. I also want to work fewer hours than now, because I’m really going crazy at the moment. I don’t have enough time for my homework, I can’t do any in the weekends anymore, so I only have the Tuesday for my homework, and that’s simply not enough. I thought that I wouldn’t leave my current job and I would just tell them that I want to work fewer hours, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. At this moment we don’t have any personnel, so I can’t cut back on my hours.

I’m doing reasonably well in school with my homework for Linguistics and Philology. I’m also practising a lot for the Language Lab exam. The only thing that really worries me is Literature. I never read everything I’m supposed to read before class and I still need to write an essay of 1200 words before Christmas. I don’t know when I’m going to do that.

I also still have my private lessons with Brother Ignatius for my preparation for First Communion and Confirmation. This doesn’t take a lot of time, but I should invest some time in it and prepare the lessons.

I also have to write for the Secrets of Harry Potter podcast and my friends at Guild Wars are asking me when I will be back.

Martijn also wants to spend some time with me and go out and walk with our new GPS unit.

* sigh * There are just not enough hours in one week.

It's me, Yolanda!

2006-11-28T00:47:00.000+01:00

Let me introduce myself. My name is Yolanda and I live together with Charda and Martijn. I don’t know anything of my past. The first recollection I have is of waking up in the hospital on Martijns bed. The day went by being a bit blurry. I remember something of being undressed by Charda and her sister in law, but that might have been a dream as well. Martijn and Charda have been taking really good care of me, as you might have seen on the pictures. I have been fed well, I always sleep with them in the bed and they let me watch TV. I have to do some chores around the house, but I don’t really mind. They show me their study books and tell me what their lectures have been about. It’s really interesting stuff, both the English lessons and the Law classes.

Today I had a quiet day. Charda left early for work and Martijn left some time after her. The good thing about Mondays is that I have the whole house for myself, and as long as I clean up after myself, they’ll never know what I do during the day. First I watched some TV, but there wasn’t anything cool on, so I turned it off again. Afterwards I ate some chocolates which were lying around. They won’t miss it anyway. Then I turned on the computer and I googled for the ‘Carebears’ and ‘Scooby Doo’. I know he’s a dog, but he’s so funny! After that I decided it was time for some exercise so I climbed around the house to keep my body as toned as it is now. Afterwards I took a nap and then it was 8 pm and Charda came home and found me sleeping in the bed. She gave me some pasta to eat as you can see, and some dessert after it. Right now she’s asleep while I am typing this little story for you. I just hope she won’t wake up because of the noise! Well, I’ll update soon to tell you lots of other stuff that I do during the day.

Hyves, Work, Today, Tomorrow

2006-11-20T23:49:00.000+01:00

Ok, almost no one has seen it yet, only Martijn and his sister know about it, but now I’m making it official: I have a Hyves account. For all you non-Dutch people, I’m sorry, you probably don’t know what I’m talking about. Hyves is like the MySpace of the Netherlands I guess, although I’ve never seen a MySpace account. It’s a place where you can add a profile, and then you can add all your friends, and you can look at their friends etc, etc. I also checked out some people I have been to primary school with. It’s funny to see them with kids already. The link is http://charda1982.hyves.nl

Today I worked with my colleague. It was all right, nothing too spectacular. The machine hadn’t been working properly on Saturday, but I didn’t have any problems today. Everything worked as it should. I cleaned up the mess they had left on Saturday. The turnover wasn’t too spectacular, but it was fine.

Yesterday I ordered Christmas cards at Vista Print. I used a picture Martijn made with his camera on Saturday. Nothing too special, it was a picture of a pine tree with pineapples. I added a template and some text and now I’ll have to wait till they arrive. I’m curious what they will look like for real. I also ordered some pictures. Martijn and I made some pictures with our cameras under the same circumstances. I ordered some of these pictures so that I can see what they will look like in print. I ordered 55 prints for less than 10 Euro. I also ordered a new memory card for my digital camera today. I ordered it at our supplier. It has 2 GB and it has about 80x speed. I wanted a faster one than normal, because sometimes it takes a longer time to write the pictures. The price was really low, about half the price the shop asked for it where I bought my camera.

Tomorrow I have to study at the library, and I’m curious to see whether I will actually go there or not. Last week I was having too good a time at home doing nothing. At least Yolanda is studying hard for our exams.

GPS walk, New Jobs, Pictures

2006-11-19T00:14:00.000+01:00

Last week we ordered our GPS navigator. We received it yesterday, and we had to try it out of course. Today we went to Meijendel, near The Hague, to walk around and to see if we could find a geo-cache (for more info, check out http://www.geocaching.com). Everything went all right, except that we left kind of late. We first slept in, then we went to the supermarket to buy the groceries, and then we were ready to leave, which was about 3 in the afternoon.

We went by tram to where we wanted to walk. We walked for a while and we took some pictures. I brought my new camera, because I wanted to try it out and we wanted to compare some pictures taken with my camera and with Martijns. When we were about half way there, I was already a bit tired and it was getting dark already. We would have to walk for another half hour and then we would still have to find the cache. Since we were close to a big road at that moment, we decided to go back home and to not pursue our quest for the geocache. I was very disappointed, but I didn’t want to be in a secluded area without streetlights after dark, and then especially because we were going to a place where many people were shot to death in the Second World War. I know it was a bit cowardly, but OK. At least we did check out our new GPS device. It does work and I think it’s kind of fun to walk around with. I’m really looking forward to trying out some of these geo-caches, but I’m afraid I won’t have time for it in the next few weeks. We’ll see how that goes.

These past two weeks I’ve responded to 3 job vacancies. One of which is a simple cash-register job in a supermarket close by. I expect to be invited for an interview by them at least, if the other 2 won’t. I’m very nervous about what might happen if I’m hired at one of these companies. My new colleague just resigned and if I leave as well, they won’t have any personnel left. I know, that’s their problem, and I shouldn’t worry about it, but I do, and it’ll break my heart if I would quit right now. But I also know that there will never be a good time. There’s always something going on and they’ll never be happy to see me go. I really have to think of myself first, but that’s very hard.

By the way, I checked out the pictures at home, and I preferred the pictures made by Martijns camera. My pictures weren’t very sharp and they were too magenta, too purple. I hope that if I use different functions that it’ll get better, but I wasn’t too pleased with it.

That’s about all the news I have right now. Tomorrow I will go to church and afterwards I have a date with a classmate to practice our pronunciation.

Yolanda

2006-11-14T13:29:00.000+01:00

Check out these pictures of Yolanda, our adoptive teddybear. Martijn received this bear from his sister when he was in the hospital for his appendicitis a couple of weeks ago. Since then, we've been taking good care of her.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/charda

My New Camera, GPS

2006-11-13T00:59:00.000+01:00

Today I bought a new camera. First I went to church of course and afterwards I met with my classmate to practice our pronunciation and our fluency of speech, needless to say we talked in English. Afterwards I went to a big electronics store close to the library where we studied. I looked at the available cameras, I chose two I really liked and then I called Martijn to check out the Internet information about them for me. I ended up buying the Canon Powershot A530. It’s not the best camera there is, but I was looking for a cool compact camera. This one has 5 megapixels and 4x optical zoom. I really wanted my own camera so I can also make pictures while Martijn is taking his with his camera. I didn’t want my camera to have all the options his camera has, but I wanted to be able to take ‘nice’ pictures and I wanted a compact camera so that we have a camera to take with us when we go out for dinner with family or when we visit family.
Martijn and I are considering buying a GPS navigator. I was talking with Xo last week on Guild Wars and he told me he had been geocaching. I had heard about this, and I told Martijn about it. Since then we’ve been looking around for a GPS navigator. We want to spend somewhere between 150 and 220 Euros and it’s kinda hard to find a suitable device. We do think we want one with the ability to read maps and we want to be able to upload our own maps or at least user-generated maps so that we don’t have to buy the very expensive cd-rom with maps. We’re still looking around and there aren’t any cheap stores in The Hague where we can buy this. We want to order it via the Internet, but we’re not quite sure which model we want and which brand. But I’ll let you know once we’ve decided.

Today: Church, Library, GW NF

2006-11-06T00:34:00.000+01:00

I know I didn’t write the last couple of weeks. Let me first say that Martijn is doing fine. He’s still feeling a bit under the weather, but the wound is healing nicely and he feels better that he did last week.
I am feeling OK. I had to work all week this week and that was very hard for me. I didn’t have any time to spend on my homework, so I don’t know how I’m going to do that next week with my classes. Today was my first real day off this week. I mean, I did have Tuesday off, but then I had Pilates, an appointment with Brother Ignatius and I had classes in the evening. This afternoon I went to church. I was happy to be there, because I hadn’t gone last week. They sung contemporary songs and I liked that. The homily was a bit boring, so I don’t really know what that was about. I didn’t see anyone I know, but that was probably because of the Catholic Youth Day here in the Netherlands. I would have loved to attend it actually, but I just couldn’t do that this week.
Afterwards I went to the American Book Centre. I wanted to have a simple English Bible to take with me to the youth group and such. I found a really simple Catholic Bible, one which is not pink on the outside :)
Then I went to the library and I studied my pronunciation with my classmate. We just talked about regular things and we looked at some of the words we have to study. It was pretty nice.
Afterwards I went home and I finally played some Guild Wars. I received the new addition Nightfall yesterday. It was fun playing on the new continent. I always played with one of my older characters together my Xo, my guild friend. It was fun to play together with him again.
And now there’s another long week of work, classes and homework. I’m not looking forward to it.

Jack, the Depressed Pumpkin

2006-11-01T23:22:00.000+01:00

Martijns late appendix

2006-10-27T14:51:00.000+02:00

Here’s a very short quick update by me. I just spend the whole day in the hospital. Not for me, but for Martijn. He had had a stomach ache for two days and it had gotten really bad yesterday evening. When we woke up at 7 am, it still hurt a lot, so I suggested that we go to the doctor. We did go to his family doctor and she suspected it was probably an inflamed appendix. She sent us to the hospital and we went there immediately. They helped us very quickly and they took some blood and a urine sample. We had to wait for about 2 hours in this small examination room for the lab results. The surgeon wasn’t convinced that it was a really bad infection, so he also ordered an ultrasound scan. That scan clearly showed that his appendix was inflamed and they said he had to be operated. I was really upset when I heard this. I knew it was one of the possibilities, and one of the most likely ones, but I was very shocked that it had to happen. The most awful scenarios played through my mind. I know that general anaesthesia is always a bit risky and I was just too afraid that Martijn would die somewhere during the procedure. I know it’s a standard procedure, but people always make mistakes, even surgeons.
The surgery was scheduled somewhere between 4 and 6 pm. His mother and sister were with him, so I left him and went home to eat a bit and to gather his clothes and stuff that he needs so that I could bring it to him after the operation.
They didn’t do the surgery until 10 pm. That was a very tense hour for me. I watched some TV, and that helped quite a bit. After the TV shows I prayed the rosary and while I was in the 4th decade, the surgeon called me that the operation had succeeded and that there had been no complications. I was very relieved when I heard that. Martijns appendix wasn’t punctured, so they just took it out, did some self-dissolving stitches, put a band-aid on it and it was done. I was really relieved. Five minutes later I got another call from the (male) nurse of the intensive care unit where Martijn was that everything had gone all right and that the operation had succeeded. I pretended I didn’t know that yet, I just reacted to the information he gave me, and while he was talking, I heard Martijn talking in the background. So the nurse saw that he was waking up already and he handed the phone over to Martijn. I was so happy to hear his voice! He sounded really drunk, but he was happy the operation was over and that everything was done and we just chatted for a couple of minutes. He even told me one of the nurses in the operating room also has a ‘lazy eye’ like him. He sure hasn’t lost his speech abilities and his wit. I am so glad that the operation went well and that he recovered from the general anaesthesia. He needs to stay in the hospital probably till Saturday. I hate being here home alone. I’m going to bring him his clothes and belongings early in the morning and I can visit him for about 3 hours in the evening. I don’t know what I’m gonna do all day tomorrow. I got tomorrow and the day after off work. I’m very happy about that. I hope I can do some homework, or else I’ll just rest. I haven’t had a good night sleep in 2 nights and today was a very emotional day for me. I don’t know how many times I have cried or how many tears I have shed, but there were lots of them, but I’m very glad to say they were completely useless.

Sick and tired, Cleo

2006-10-17T23:14:00.000+02:00

Here’s a small quick update by me. I’ve wanted to write earlier last week, but I just couldn’t find the time. And I should be in bed right now as well actually, but I thought I’d postpone that for 5 more minutes so that I can write here. These last 3 days I’ve felt quite bad actually. I got a headache on Sunday when I came from church and it got worse and worse. I couldn’t eat dinner at night and I just felt really bad. I stayed at home from work yesterday, for the first time in 3 years, and I just watched some TV, I slept some more and I did some homework. I planned to go to Pilates this morning, because I was feeling a bit better, but then when I woke up I felt like I was going to have another head ache and I was really tired. I hadn’t slept well last night. So I cancelled Pilates and I went back to bed. I slept till noon and I went to Brother Ignatius later in the afternoon. I really enjoyed our being together. I feel like I’ve learnt a lot and I also dare to ask him some controversial questions, like why Protestants don’t have a pope, while the basis for it is in the Bible. We also talked about Martijns family. I’m glad we didn’t cover my family yet, because that’s a very long story and it always gets me a bit emotional. I told my new colleague about my family last week and when I told her everything in a nutshell, it sounded like a bad story of a soap opera. I had dinner with Martijn at the university and I went to my first class, Linguistics. I was so tired during that class that I decided to skip the next one and I just went home. I asked one of my classmates to copy her notes for me and I went home. And now I’m here, typing this story while I should’ve been in bed by now.
I have one big scoop for you, I bought a Nintendo DS last Saturday! A black one and I also bought the Nintendogs game, the Dalmation and Friends version. It is so much fun. It’s really great. I chose a golden retriever for my first dog and her name is Cleo. I can actually call her through the microphone and I’ve already taught her some tricks. I’m saving money in the game now to be able to buy a second dog. I might get a Dalmatian, but I’m not completely sure yet. The dog on the picture above isn’t my dog, but she looks a bit like her. I also bought the Starwars III game and the Harry Potter game. The only other game that I still want to have is the new Sims Pets game, but that isn’t released yet, so I’ll have to wait another month for that.
Well, this is a short update of my life and I hope to talk to you soon.

Yesterday, Priest, Work, SQPN future

2006-10-05T00:30:00.000+02:00

Yesterday I started with my Pilates class. It didn’t go too well. I was still very sleepy and I couldn’t do one exercise, the ‘Roll over’. I got very frustrated about that.
In the afternoon I actually did my homework and I did everything I had planned to do. That’s pretty special for me; I didn’t even play Guild Wars.
In the end of the afternoon I had a meeting with the priest of the church I attended for a while. Yes, I know, it’s the church I have attended for the last few months, but I’m not planning to go back there anymore. The priest invited me to come to the introduction meetings of the Neo-Catechumenal group on Monday and Thursday. That was basically all he offered. He said he couldn’t forbid me to get the preparation by the Brothers, but he wasn’t a big advocate of it. He says you have to be a part of the community in the preparation for the Holy Communion. He also advised me not to participate in the Confirmation class on Saturdays. He said I would be rushing things too much and that the next opportunity would be in 2 years time. I think he’s right on that part, but I’m just not too happy with it. I was really disappointed that he only guided me towards the Neo-Catechumenal community and I’ve really decided I don’t want to do that. It will ask even more time from me and I don’t want to invest that at this moment. Perhaps I will in a couple of years, but not right now. I want to learn and study the regular liturgy, and for my extra catechesis I go to the youth group at Friday nights. I don’t want to have even more groups and extra catechesis on Saturday night. I do want to spend some time with Martijn.
Martijn and I went out for dinner last night together with his father, his partner and Martijns sister. We went to a Greek restaurant. We had really nice meal and a nice time together.
Today I worked with my new colleague. It went pretty well. I was still a bit tired, but we worked well together and she has done most of the photo work.
Tomorrow I’ll have to work again and I’ll have 45 minutes class in the evening, Language Lab.
I also read today that the next Daily Breakfast podcast is about the future of SQPN. I haven’t listened to this podcast yet, I’m gonna do that tomorrow morning on my morning commute. I just want to say that I’m pretty anxious what that’s going to be like. They want to go commercial and get ‘incorporated’ or something. It means they’ll grow bigger and bigger, and the cosy, intimate feeling of the podcast will get lost, I’m afraid. These are just my feelings, and I don’t have anything to base it on, but I’m very afraid that that’ll happen and that I’ll lose my favourite podcasts. It’s like a sacrifice I have to make for the greater good, for all the other thousands of people who will discover Fr Roderick’s good work. We’ll just see what’ll happen in the future.

Today, Tomorrow Pilates, Priest, Dinner

2006-10-02T23:52:00.000+02:00

Today is my grandmother’s birthday. I sent her a card with 2 sunflowers on it. I thought that was kind of cheerful.
Today I worked with my colleague at work instead of with my boss. It was a bit of a relief. It wasn’t too busy. I don’t expect that much work this week. Most of the people have gone on vacation earlier and it’s too early to buy Christmas and Sinterklaas gifts yet. We did make a lot of passport pictures today.
I do have some real news. I have an appointment with the priest of my church tomorrow. I sent him an e-mail regarding my preparation for the Eucharist and Confirmation. We talked over the phone this morning. He invited me to come to the Confirmation preparation on Saturday. After this preparation, the bishop himself will probably administer the Confirmation to the people in November. I really like that idea. I’ll just see what the meeting will be about tomorrow. I need to ascertain that there is no case of any Neo-Catechumenal influences in this course and otherwise I’m fine with it.
Tomorrow I have Pilates class, I have the meeting with my priest, I need to do some homework and I’m going out for dinner with my father in law, his partner, my sister in law and Martijn.

Pilates, Brother, Wollstonecraft

2006-09-26T11:57:00.000+02:00

Today I had quite a busy day, but I’ll start with telling about yesterday. I went to work, as usual, and I worked with my new colleague. She was already there, just for one day, because she’ll start officially next week. I had to explain a lot to her, but she understood most of it (I hope) and I had fun working with her. I told her a lot more than I intended to tell her, especially on our first day of working together, but she asked for most of the things and I just answered her questions basically. I’m glad she’s going to be my new colleague.
Today I started with Pilates. We had Pilates with the ball again, which is always fun. My teacher didn’t even mention me not being in class last Saturday; she only said that I had to take another class someday.
Then I went home, I had some lunch and I went to the supermarket to buy dinner for tonight.
At 2 pm I had an appointment with one of the Brothers. It was a really nice meeting. He told me that I need to talk to my priest and ask him if he’s all right with me being guided by a brother and then having the sacrament in the church. We also started with the studying a bit as we looked at the beginning of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. I was really happy after this meeting. The Brother is really nice and he really listens to me and it seems that he understands me.
The only thing is that I just saw on the website of my church that next Saturday they’re starting a course for people – young adults and adults - who have to prepare for the Sacrament of Confirmation. It takes like 8 Saturdays and then the Confirmation will take place in November. That’s about the speed that I want for me as well. I guess I’m gonna have to call my church administration tomorrow and discuss this with them. I’m not sure at the moment what will be the right way to choose.
Tonight I had Linguistics and Literature classes. I was late for the first class, because some fool left a suitcase at a suspicious place and all trains were stopped so the police could investigate what was in it. I arrived in Leiden too late and was like 10 minutes late for the first lesson. Luckily the teacher wasn’t mad or anything, he didn’t even say anything, so that’s good. I didn’t really like the Literature class. We were discussing Mary Wollstonecraft and I read the literature fairly well, also because I liked her style of writing. This woman had a very turbulent life and as a result of that felt pretty lonely and depressed some of the time. So when she went to Norway and Denmark and looked at the nature there, she was really impressed by it and wrote this down in a romantic manner, which was her timeframe. But, when my teacher discussed these passages in class, he made it sound really funny and the whole class laughed at it. I didn’t think this was fair, but I didn’t dare speak up either. As a person, I could relate to Mary Wollstonecraft and I understood why she would feel this way. And it might be a bit overdone, over the top and melodramatic, but sometimes you just feel that way. I felt like the whole class was ridiculing her and I didn’t like that. They also couldn’t understand why a feminist like her could cling on to a very bad relationship with an unfaithful, disloyal man. I’m convinced that she was in love and that she wanted to establish a family with this man. She even had his baby. I just didn’t agree with the tenor of the class.
Tomorrow I’ll have to work and if there’s time I’m gonna call the church probably.

Last week

2006-09-25T00:41:00.000+02:00

It’s already quite late here and I should have been in bed already, but I’ll still give you a small update.
Friday night I went to the youth group again. It wasn’t as spectacular as the previous nights, but I still really enjoyed it. We had a Catechesis lesson about many subjects. I can’t really summarize it, but I did make notes so I can read through it again. I was really tired Friday. I was happy to have attended, but I was also happy to be at home again.
I should have gone to Pilates the next morning, on Saturday morning, but I didn’t. I was really tired and in a way it was only an extra lesson, so I turned my alarm off and I went back to sleep. I feel a bit bad about it, especially since I do have to go to the Pilates class on Tuesday, but I’ll get through it. It felt like the right decision at that moment, and that’s important. Martijn and I went to the city on Saturday afternoon and I bought a new mouse. It’s a new laser mouse and it’s ergonomically shaped. I really like it. I also bought a USB stick, 512 MB for € 11,11.
And for the unprepared class on Thursday, nothing too special happened. A lot of people hadn’t prepared it, because they didn’t know they should have downloaded a file. We’ll discuss the vocabulary this week. That’s fine with me.
This morning I overslept. I woke up at 10 am, exactly when the mass begins. I was really angry with myself. I got up and watched mass on TV, but that isn’t anything near actually being in church. I did some homework the rest of the day and I played some Guild Wars. I’m actually the leader of the guild now. I don’t really know what to do with that. I want to set up a website for the guild, probably just a blogspot website, but I don’t know when I’ll have the time to do it. On the picture it's me together with Xo, the actual leader of the guild. I’ll have to work tomorrow and on Tuesday I have Pilates and I have the meeting with the Brother.

New Internet, New Hair

2006-09-21T00:35:00.000+02:00

Well, it’s Wednesday and here’s an update from me late at night. Yes, I do have Internet again! The connection isn’t yet as quick as I hoped, but that might have to do with the people we download from as well. I mean, if the maximum download speed is 2 mbit and my connection is 15 mbit, that doesn’t do any good. We’ll see what happens and how it turns out.
It’s really late already and I should’ve been in bed by now. I also should have done some studying and studied the vocabulary I needed to learn for tomorrow. Connecting the Internet was more important to me tonight. I did get the connection working all by myself. I’m a bit proud of that. I only didn’t connect the phone line correctly, because I didn’t know how to do that. But Martijn fixed it and now all works all right.
Yesterday I’ve been to the hair dresser, and in stead of being blond, I’m now a brunette. I’m really happy with the result. I had in mind that I wanted it a bit darker than the light blond colour that I had, but when my hair dresser suggested to colour it dark brown, I was OK with that as well. I really like the way it looks.
Well, tomorrow there’s work and after that an unprepared class. Looking forward to it already.

Last Week, Bad Cold, Youth Group, Internet

2006-09-16T00:03:00.000+02:00

It’s harder than I thought to update a blog without an Internet connection at home. I can’t really write anything at work, because it’s much too busy for that. And I don’t really like writing it at home and then putting it on the blog a day later at work, because then there’s a big delay and some of the information may not be relevant anymore. But now I’m at home, writing this offline and I’ll go online briefly to post this.
Last week hasn’t been too spectacular. I’ve been to work, I’ve had my first classes and I’m having a terrible cold. I feel really bad and sick. Well, maybe that’s a little bit exaggerated, but I feel like I need to be pitied. Yesterday I had a sore throat and today I’ve been sniffing and sneezing and blowing my nose all day long. I just hope it’ll go away quickly.
Tonight I’ve been to the Youth Group again. I was at home between work and the group for half an hour to eat and I doubted whether or not I should go. I felt really tired and sick because of my cold and because I’ve worked 3 days in a row. I just decided to go, because I felt so good about it last week and I wanted to see if I could experience that again. Tonight we had a night of Praise. We sang some Praise songs together in an improvised little chapel and we had Eucharistic Adoration for about half an hour and one of the Brothers talked to us about Mary, because it’s one of her feast days.
After the adoration we went back to our own room and talked to each other and had a few drinks. I just sat down on a chair somewhere, just listening to some conversations when Brother Ignatius came and sat down next to me. He started talking to me, first about my parish and then some more about me etc. I showed him the book that I am reading (“We Believe” – A Survey of the Catholic Faith) and we talked some more. I told him that I was looking for someone to help me and guide me in my development as a Catholic. I also told him that the pastor of my parish is involved in the Neo-Catechumenal Way and that I am unsure whether that is something for me. I also told him that I have the materials for the ‘Alpha Course’, but that the contents of that are too shallow for me. He really seemed to understand me very well. Then he said that the Brothers might be of some help to me. They can also guide people in their development towards the Holy Communion. So I made an appointment with him over 2 weeks. I’m really excited about it. My Language Lab teacher said we’re not allowed to call things or people ‘nice’ anymore, but that we need to describe it in another way, so let’s try. He’s a really sweet guy (the Brother, not the LL teacher), he’s not too old (not yet 40 at least), he’s from Austria and he speaks German, French and Dutch fluently, as far as I know. We had a really nice (whoops) conversation tonight and I feel like he kind of understands what I need. I explained to him that I know a lot about Christianity and the Church already, I just don’t know a lot about the Catholic Faith, the depths of it yet. I really hope this is going to work out and that they’ll be able to help me and get me started somewhat. I feel like God didn’t want me to choose and just gave me another option and that this is kind of the answer to my prayers.
I have some other great news as well. If all goes well, and that means nothing can go wrong, then we will have Internet again by next Wednesday. There’s still a lot that could go wrong. We still need to receive the modem, they need to activate our ADSL line by Wednesday and there are probably a whole lot of other problems I can’t even think of right now. But we might have Internet by Wednesday, or I hope at latest at Friday, if we can fix all the problems by then. I really hope it’s going to work out and that we will have Internet again, and a really fast connection too. That would be so awesome.

Youth Group, My Catholic Future

2006-09-09T16:09:00.000+02:00

Here’s a small update by me. We have no more Internet. Since last Thursday we have been disconnected, and I can assure you: it’s not much fun without it. I can’t check my e-mail every minute like I’m used to, I can’t look up things on the Internet, because it takes too much time. It basically stinks. In the best-case scenario we will be reconnected in 4 weeks. I really hope that’ll work out.
Yesterday evening I went to the youth group here in The Hague. I was really nervous about what was going to happen, because I didn’t know what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised. There were 14 youngsters, ages ranging from 19 to 31. Lots of them have birthdays in September and October, but that’s not too interesting :) The group is led by a Brother of the Brothers of Sint Jan. He’s a really nice guy. First we introduced ourselves to one another. I had to talk a lot about myself, but I was a bit nervous so I don’t think my story made any sense and I told a lot which was quite redundant. Then we read in the Gospel of John together and the Brother talked about it and explained about what the story said. He also included some basic Christian lessons, like about sin and the Holy Spirit. After about an hour we went upstairs to a chapel and we had half an hour of adoration before the Holy Eucharist, together with another group of people. That was really cool. We prayed together and we sang together and we just sat there in the presence of the Eucharist. I really enjoyed it a lot. After that the meeting was over, but we just hang around some more and I talked with some of the people there. I was really impressed by the evening and also by the other young people. I think it is amazing that these young people are all Catholics and believe in the same things as I believe in and are able to talk about it and do these activities together. I’m really looking forward to next week.
This meeting with these people really got me thinking. Because I really want to join the church, but I feel like I haven’t found the right person to guide me in that process yet. I know I should make another appointment with the priest from the other church, but I’m somehow not too comfortable with that idea. I read the material he gave me and that we are supposed to study together, but I feel like I knew this already. There’s not much news in it and it’s not what I want to learn. I need some personal guidance, but at my level. I need to learn more about the specifics of the Catholic Church and how I can join the church and receive the Holy Eucharist. I’m in serious doubt whether I should contact the other priest or if I should contact the priest of my current church and make an appointment with him to see if he can help me. That would mean I would have to cancel the arrangement I made with the other priest, but it might mean that I could get what I really want. I’m just very much confused and I don’t really know what to do.
At least I’ll be going to mass tomorrow and I’m going to see the bishop. I’m looking forward to that :)

No More Internet, Yesterday, My Future and English

2006-09-06T23:13:00.000+02:00

Wow, this is the last update via the Scarlet Internet connection. Tomorrow we will be disconnected for a long long time… That’s at least how it will feel to me. I wish they would find a way to accelerate the process somehow.
Yesterday I had a very relaxing day. Somehow I woke up before 6 in the morning without no particular reason. I was really tired the rest of the day. I went to Pilates, when I got home I did some Philology homework, and after that I went to bed. I watched some TV, some more TV (Animal Planet), my friend called me for a couple of hours, and then I took a shower, did some groceries, cooked dinner and went back to bed to watch some more television. A really busy day it was…
Today I worked with my boss. Sometimes I really had to keep my patience. I just had to think and keep calm and not say anything I’m going to regret later on. One of the children she baby-sits was there and I’m really fond of him. He’s so cute and so fun to talk to; he’s 5 years old. That made up for a lot of things.
The last few days I have been thinking of my future education. Next year I’ll have to choose what subject I want to follow and what kind of emphasis I want to put on my education. The two main courses of this education are that you either become a teacher, which I really don’t want, or that you become a translator. The last few days I have been thinking of this option. It would mean that I can go to work straight after I leave the university and that I will have pretty good chances for a job. That’s what’s really important to me right now. I mailed the study-coordinator with some questions, so I hope she’ll write back soon. I’ll probably discard these ideas in a few weeks or months, but for now I like to ponder on them for a while. After all, I need to decide this year and a year goes by faster than you think. I’ll keep you posted…

My 24th Birthday!

2006-09-05T00:02:00.000+02:00

Today was my 24th birthday. I didn’t really feel birthdayish today. The Dutch word for having your birthday is ‘jarig’, but I don’t think there’s an English equivalent to it. The first one to congratulate me this morning was the train conductor who checked my ticket and saw my birthday on it. I had a lot of luck this morning. I went to the tram, but there was no current, so I had to walk to another tram, where they didn’t have current as well, so I had to go to yet another tram. I was just in time at work.
When the boss and his wife arrived they gave me my presents. I got two bed spreads (for 1-person beds while we have 2-persons). I also got 6 coffee cups and a set of a shawl, gloves and a cap. I’m glad they thought of me, but they weren’t the best gifts ever. I didn’t say so of course and I shouldn’t comment upon gifts given to me.
It was really busy at work today. We had lots and lots of films to develop and lots of work. My boss wanted to send me home by 5 o’clock because it’s my birthday, but it was just impossible. I worked till 6:15 pm and then I went home.
When I got home, Martijn had the pancakes ready for me. I had ordered them as special birthday food. He made my special apple-raisin-cinnamon-sugar pancakes. I really love those. That was really great. His birthday gift to me was a big bag of candy and the DVD of Lost, the second season first part. I had asked for this and I’m really happy with it. I’m curious to see what’s going to happen in the series.
Oh, and Fr Roderick is back from his holiday. I’m really happy with that, because finally I have a new Daily Breakfast to listen to. I also watched the show tonight in which he stars: ‘Dat zal ze leren’. I really enjoyed it. I also watched ‘Holland’s Next Top Model’, but I didn’t really like it. It looks so simple with Dutch people and it doesn’t have the special feeling of the American version. We’ll see how it turns out.

University, Last Day, Church

2006-09-03T22:16:00.000+02:00

Thursday evening was the first night I had to go back to the university. I had some mixed feelings about it. I want to go back to study and learn more, but doing nothing and just relaxing is also something I can get used to. I wasn’t really happy to see my classmates again. I mean, it’s nice to have someone to talk to while there, but I know these people talk about me behind my back and I could feel that while I was talking to them again. The night itself wasn’t that spectacular. We received our new curriculum and I bought a new reader. We got some really disturbing news. I knew that the teacher that I had last year in the first semester for Language Acquisition was very ill, I heard the rumours at the end of last semester, but I didn’t know what had happened to her. I mean, for as far as I knew, she could have a broken leg or something. Now we were told that she has Acute Leukaemia. I was very shocked by that news. She’s a young woman with three children, she can’t be older than 40. I was pretty upset.
Friday was the last day my colleague worked with us. She got me a great birthday gift, I was very much surprised, and pleasantly surprised. She gave me the latest Harry Potter DVD! I hadn’t bought it yet, but I really wanted to have it. I’m really pleased with that gift. We worked together all day, but we didn’t have a very upsetting goodbye or something. She’s starting her new education tomorrow and I really hope this is something she likes and something she can finish.
Yesterday we did our groceries and we did little else. We just relaxed and watched some TV and I played some Guild Wars.
This morning I went to church. My own priest wasn’t there, so some other man led the mass, but it felt a bit strange. Next week the mass will be led by the bishop and I’m really looking forward to that. The link to our church is at: http://www.sintagnes.com Today we did the dished together, we cleaned the kitchen and we did the laundry. I played some Guild Wars and I guess I’m going to bed soon.

Passport Pictures, University

2006-08-31T00:21:00.000+02:00

Today was a long day at work. I worked with my colleague, which was fine, but it was really really busy. We do have a new machine to take passport pictures with, and the background is even grey, but the flash doesn’t work all the time. The flash kind of works at random. That’s really annoying, especially if you have like 5 people waiting to have their pictures taken in our very small shop. It’s not much fun. We also have to turn the board with the background every hour or so, with every elderly person with white or light grey hair. We have many of those customers in our shop, so that means a lot of turning. It’s just very annoying and there’s not much we can do about it. I hope my boss is going to call the supplier tomorrow and that they’ll have an answer about the flash thing. My colleague managed to connect the camera to the monitor, so that saves a lot of trouble. I didn’t think it was possible, but she knew how to do it. Well, she just tried and found the right connection.
The passport pictures thing is so big an issue now in the Netherlands. About 30/40 % of all the pictures is being rejected right now by the people who accept them (or actually don’t accept them :s). The news even started with a small report on the pictures and how silly the new rules are. I’m just afraid that it won’t change anything. It’s those new passports which include a chip with all the biometric information and stuff.
Tomorrow evening I have to go to the university, the first time after the summer holidays. I have some mixed feelings about it. I’m glad that I can go back and that I won’t have to work in the photo shop all my life, but I’m sad to think about all the hours I’ll have to spend at making my homework and reading all the literature. I hope to see all my classmates again tomorrow. I don’t have any class yet, I only get my curriculum and some general information I guess. I think I’ll be done in less than an hour. But that’s fine.

Shopping Spree

2006-08-30T00:02:00.000+02:00

Today I had a true shopping spree. It’s funny how you don’t have a Dutch word for that term. I went to Pilates this morning, I took a shower and I had lunch at home. Then I went to the centre of The Hague to go shopping. I had bought slippers for at home but there was a hole in them after only two days, so I returned them and chose some others. I also bought 4 new pairs of pants: 2 pairs of jeans and 2 regular pairs of pants. I didn’t really needed all of these, but my current jeans is showing signs of wear and I can’t wear it for too long now. The two regular pants were very cheap, also made of cheap material, so I just had to bring these as well. I also bought a robe for at home; a really soft and fluffy very bright pink one. I hope no one will ever see it except for Martijn, because it looks awful, but I think it’s very comfortable. I also bought a CD player for in the bedroom. I thought these were cheaper by now, but I was a bit disappointed when I saw the prices. I especially wanted one that could play MP3’s, since all my music is now in MP3 format. This CD player also has a USB slot, so that I can use Martijns MP3 player if I don’t want to play a CD. Well, and after that I was out of money. I only went to buy groceries together with Martijn. I bought all the groceries that I will need for the next 3 days, so Martijn was a bit astonished with how much I was buying. But he was with me so he could carry the heavy things.
Oh, and tonight I prepared dinner and I kind of screwed up. I didn’t boil the eggs long enough, I didn’t add enough water to the potatoes and I messed up the sauce I wanted to add to the meal. I spent about an hour in preparing the meal, but it didn’t taste like I wanted it to. I was very disappointed.
I also bought a new mouse pad today with silver and with a space to add your own picture to it. I think I’m going to add this picture of the prairie dogs which we took in the zoo the last time. I’ll see how it turns out.

Regular Day, Pizza, ANTM

2006-08-29T00:03:00.000+02:00

Today was a pretty regular day at work. We still don’t make any passport pictures. My boss phoned the technicians again today and we might even order a complete new system to make the new passport pictures. That costs about as much as not selling passport pictures for one week. Yup, you make a lot of money with these pictures. We had one customer with 22 films today. That was fun :) (and a lot of money). It took us about all day to print those films, but we finished them in time. The only annoying thing today was the last customer we had. He ordered his pictures really late and I had to stay for half an hour extra to print his pictures and it wasn’t even worth that much.
When I got home, Martijn had already prepared pizza. He bought cheap prefab pizzas and created his own topping. Usually I’m not too fond of his pizzas, but today it tasted really good.
I also received a letter from Rosary Army in which they acknowledged that they had received my rosaries and thanked me for them. It was really funny: instead of Den Haag they had spelled Den Maag (The Stomach roughly translated). I was really glad with that letter. It’s fun to receive mail from the States.
Tonight was the season’s finale of Americans Next Top Model. We’re one season behind America’s season I think, so I didn’t dare check the website because I didn’t want to see who won the series before I saw all the episodes. And now I know who won and I’m not happy with it. Nicole won. And she’s the last one I wanted to win. She’s young and childish and very American and just stupid. I just wished Nic or Bre would win, because they were more mature and more pretty.

Friday, Shopping with my Mom, Today

2006-08-27T23:57:00.000+02:00

Friday was a regular day at work again. I worked with my colleague instead of my boss for most of the day, so that’s good. We tried to make some passport pictures, but one customer returned with his that they had been rejected for a passport. The colour is still way off. I don’t really mind, I just have no idea how they are going to fix this.
Yesterday I went shopping with my mother. She looked all right, I mean, I’ve seen her worse. Her hair is now really long, which is quite funny because mine is very short and it used to be the other way around. I didn’t have a very great time. We went and sat down for a drink 3 times, but the problem is that when I tell my mother something, she responds to it, but she doesn’t ask any further questions about the subject. She just listens. I’m not that great a talker, so the conversations are a bit difficult sometimes with these awkward silences. I can’t talk to my mother about Guild Wars, because she just wouldn’t understand :-) She’s about the only Dutch person without an e-mail address. She bought Martijn a really lovely morning robe (if that’s the correct English word) and she bought me this pair of Nikes as shown on the picture. It’s actually my birthday present, since it’s my birthday in one week. She was really happy to have seen me so it was good that I went. They did change the shopping centre of Almere a lot since I was last there. There’s a whole new part added to it with all these huge stores. I can’t really say that I like it, it’s big and a lot of concrete and stone.
Today I felt really bad. I was tired all day long. I went to church this morning but I was really glad when I was on my way back home. In two weeks time the bishop will be presiding our mass in our church. I’m kind of looking forward to that; that will be very cool. I went to bed this afternoon as soon as I got home. I slept a little bit, but not really well. The rest of the day I just hung around, watched some TV, and played some GW. My friend Xo, and I know he’s reading this, got back from his holiday to Paris, so we chatted a bit about what that’s been like and how his GW addiction has been. Hmm, I just remembered that I need to get the laundry out of the washing machine, as I should have done some hours ago. Let me post this quickly and I’ll go and get the laundry.

Passport Pictures, Job Interviews, TV night

2006-08-25T00:10:00.000+02:00

Today was a really busy day at work. I have to renew the photo paper twice. That is very unique. I don’t know if it has happened before, but it certainly hasn’t happened a lot of times. We printed 1349 pictures for one customer, and we still haven’t finished yet. It took us all day and we also had to print all the one hour service jobs and all the reprints and such. My boss was still working to get the passport pictures right. It’s still not working like it should. The lamps are in place now, but the colour of the pictures isn’t optimal yet. During this the boss’ wife was just walking around and talking and pretty much doing nothing. This meant I had to help all of the customers and do all the photo work. I wasn’t too happy with this.
We had two job interviews. I didn’t know about the first one; that was a bit of a surprise. She was a 22 year old girl, a mother, and the daughter of a friend of my boss. The second applicant was the one I had invited. He didn’t impress me as much as his resume had done. I’m convinced he could have done the photo work; I don’t really know whether he would have been good with the customers. So we chose the girl and she’s gonna start working for us soon. I’m curious to see how that’ll go.
Tonight I didn’t do much. I micro waved my food, I watched Dharma and Greg, Everybody Loves Raymond, CSI New York and House MD. I really like that last series. It started here last week and I’m really enthusiastic about it. Dr House just says the things as they are and I love that. It’s so refreshing.

Really Really Bad Day at Work

2006-08-24T00:07:00.000+02:00

Today I had a really really very bad day. It already started when I walked to the tram platform this morning. There was a whole row of people waiting for the tram. That was a lot busier than normal. I also couldn’t find the seat that I always like, so I started off wrong. Then there was the train. I wanted to take a certain train, but it was just too busy. I was in front of a door, but I couldn’t get in, because there were too many people there and I wouldn’t fit in. So I didn’t get on the train, and I waited 15 minutes for the next train. That train was fine. Then I entered the shop where I work. Everything was wrong and off, and all the photo frames were somewhere else and it didn’t look like the passport pictures thing was solved yet. They kind of moved the complete shop yesterday, and they left while being somewhere in the middle. The whole day we have been working at the passport picture problem and at tidying the frames and doing the regular photo work as well. I felt really bad. I don’t like it when everything is off the regular place and upside down and everything. Things don’t need to be really tidy, although that is sometimes nice at work. I just don’t like it when it’s this big a mess. Yesterday Martijn and I had taken a picture of ourselves so that we can give it to our parents so I printed one sample, and it was really horrible. The quality was not good enough to give it away. I was upset about that too, because this Saturday I’m going shopping with my mother and I wanted to give it to her as a present. Now I don’t have a gift for her. It was just an awful day, so I was really glad to be home and to play some Guild Wars. It feels like I’m in another world which has nothing to do at all with my work and such.
Tomorrow at work we still have to finish the passport picture problem and we have a applicant for the job opening. I’m really curious what that’s going to be like. He sounded nice on the phone, I don’t know what he’ll be like in person and whether he still wants to work in our shop once he has seen it. Well, we’ll see how that goes tomorrow. First, I’m gonna try to get some sleep.

The Last 10 Days

2006-08-21T00:42:00.000+02:00

It’s been another very long time since I last updated my blog. Last weekend and this weekend I played a lot of Guild Wars. My main character is now lvl 20 en my other character is lvl 15. They’re both doing pretty well. I found this really cool guild. It consists only of a few people, but they are really nice and they’re Dutch. Usually I don’t like Dutch people to play with, but these are cool. They live nearby and are just laid back people.
Last Tuesday I went to the Holy Eucharist to pray. I also prayed along with the first Prayercast episode. It was a pretty intense experience. I keep on thanking Jesus for my life at this moment, also for Martijn and for everything else. It felt really special.
Last Monday I think it was I spoke with my friend over the telephone. I hadn’t talked to her in a long time. I was glad to hear from her again. We updated each other on our lives and I told her about me going to church. I always find it difficult to talk about, but she was very enthusiastic and even told me that she’s going to do her first Holy Communion next year. I was a bit surprised by that.
At work nothing too special happened. We had a really busy period on Wednesday. We have lots of problems with our passport pictures. They changed the requirements, and we can’t make them according to the new requirements yet. It isn’t needed until the 26th of August, but you need to explain this to every customer. And sometimes the people who accept the passport pictures demand it to be according to the new standards already, so the customers come back. It’s so much fuss. It’s just annoying. And we’re still looking for a new employee. I placed an advertisement on a website. I hope I will have some new candidates tomorrow who checked the website over the weekend.
Martijn had a lot of re-sit exams the last week and he has the last one tomorrow. I hope he did all right. We’re going out for dinner next Tuesday, just because I want to.
Today I spoke to my mother on the telephone. She sounded OK, she was a bit bored because it was Sunday. She really doesn’t want to move to the new house they have found for her. It’s just a small room and she needs to share the bathroom and kitchen with someone else. She was really upset about that. I really don’t know what she has to do with her life. All I can do is pray for her I guess.
Well, going to work tomorrow, and that’s about it.

Bad day at work, Bad King Kong

2006-08-09T22:45:00.000+02:00

It’s still very early over here, but I’m gonna watch some TV and then I’m off to bed. I’m really tired. I didn’t really sleep much last night. It was a really busy, hectic day at work today. It was pretty awful. I worked with my new colleague and we had a lot of customers and a lot of bad things happened at the same time. I felt like I was flying and running all the time while she was just relaxed and not doing much. I’ll only have to work one more day with her and then I hope she won’t work with us anymore. Perhaps one day now and then, but I hope that’s it.
Last night and tonight I tried to watch King Kong, the new version by Peter Jackson. I had great expectations, because Fr Roderick said he liked the movie very much and I love the LOTR trilogy by Peter Jackson, but I really don’t like this movie. I watched the first hour last night, but that was very boring. I watched most of the second hour today with King Kong. It was just crap. Suddenly there were dinosaurs in the movie on the island. Why dinosaurs? By the way, I didn’t see the original King Kong, so I don’t have any connection to King Kong. They defied many laws of physics and the movie was just not believable. The good thing is that I rented the movie, so I didn’t buy it yet and I’m definitely not going to.

Miraculous Stories

2006-08-07T23:48:00.000+02:00

It’s been a couple of days since I have last written, but I will make up for it with this special story. I haven’t actually told anyone, because I don’t really know how to explain this when talking to someone. I think I can write it down though (and share with all of the world while at it :-))
I first have to tell you that I lost my Bible when I moved to this house last year. I had two Bibles, an older Dutch translation and the new, latest, translation. I lost this newest one. It must be in some box I can’t reach or it must have fallen behind somewhere I guess. Anyway, I have looked all over the house, but I can’t find it. When I went to church in April, I really wanted to have a Bible, but I knew I had the newest translation somewhere and I didn’t want to buy a new one, because that’s just too expensive. So I prayed to the Lord about helping me to find my Bible or helping me to get another one. The other day I bought the New International Version in English, because that didn’t cost too much money and I liked having an English Bible. Last weekend we went to visit my mother in law. She had said before that she had some Bibles for us, but I hadn’t really thought of that. But she had a bag for us when we left and at home we unpacked it. It contained 3 Bibles, one of which was the newest translation, including the books only the Catholic Church recognizes. I was so happy when I saw that. It wasn’t until later that I discovered that the Lord did answer one of my prayers. It took some time, yes, but I think this is my first official prayer-answer :-D
The other thing happened this morning. I was on the train praying along the ‘pray as you go’ podcast (www.pray-as-you-go.org) and they talked about that you had to think about the people around you. Are you too much alone? Do you spend enough time on your own? Do you spend enough time with other people around you? I was contemplating this when the idea of the youth-group of Catholic people kind of ‘re-entered’ my mind. It’s a group of young people who come together every Friday evening and just pray together, read the Bible, sing together and I don’t know what else. I had read about them on the Internet but I hadn’t really decided what I wanted to do with this. But this morning it just hit me that I really should do that. So I found their website again and I mailed about when the next meeting will be and if I could come. I got a very friendly e-mail back that said that the next meeting will be on the first of September and that I am very welcome. He also wanted to know what my expectations are so that they can consider that. I’m pretty excited about it. The youth group is led by the Brothers of St Jan (http://www.stjan.org/) They also have a chapel for Eucharistic Adoration, so I need to check that out real soon, see if I can pray there. That was another one of my wishes :-)
That was about what I wanted to share with you. Tomorrow is my day off, so I’m gonna sleep in and do really nothing. Talk to you later.

My Tuesday

2006-08-01T23:49:00.000+02:00

This morning I had Pilates class by an American teacher. That was kind of funny, because she would mix Dutch with English. There was only one other person with me. That’s not really a good thing, because that means that the teacher can pay attention to you privately and she also notices every mistake you make and everything else you do wrong.
When I came home, I took a shower and I went shopping. I first picked up the two study books and after that I went looking for a gift for Martijn. I found a gift and two smaller gifts too, but I can’t say anything about it, because he just might read this blog. I also bought two really cool photo albums for myself. I needed some new ones, because my last one was almost full. I bought one at V&D with 100 black pages, and it’s a bigger size so that the bigger pictures that I order via the Internet will fit nicely in it. I also love the black pages. The price was only € 12.95 and they had a 20 % discount. When I would buy a comparable book in my own shop, the regular customer price would be at least € 28.95. The quality is better of course, but for these pictures of mine, which are not important, just my zoo pictures and of the weekends and such, this is just fine. I also bought 4 of my favourite pens which they had in stock. I’m really happy with those, because I had been looking for them for half a year. I love the way they write.
Then I baked a bread and I prepared dinner for Martijn and me and tonight I played some Guild Wars (but I quit after I had died twice), I finished one photo album so that we can show it to Martijns mother on Saturday and I watched JAG. And now I’m ready to go to bed.

Broken Machine, ANTM, Tonight

2006-08-01T00:02:00.000+02:00

Today I worked, as usual on Monday. When I came in this morning, the screen on the printing machine was flickering. So I called Kodak and I tried to explain what was going on. That’s pretty hard for me early on Monday morning, but I guess the technician got the gist and he came over. Turns out that he couldn’t fix it like that. He tried adjusting the monitor with the buttons that are on the monitor itself, but that didn’t work. So the VGA-card is probably broken. He said he’d order it and that he’d have it as soon as possible, probably tomorrow. The result was that we’ve been working with a flickering screen all day, and it was a pretty busy day. After I printed some films, my eyes were all teary and I was wondering how that could be. But that must’ve been because of the screen. I hope he’ll fix it tomorrow, although I doubt that he will. I guess he won’t have the supplies he needs by tomorrow. I’ll see how it goes on Wednesday.
I watched ANTM tonight. It’s still so much fun. And tonight, they didn’t even eliminate someone, and I was really curious to see who had to leave. They’re off to London now.
I didn’t play Guild Wars tonight. I am so tired right now that I just finished some things (like listening to the new Secrets of Harry Potter episode: http://www.sqpn.com/?p=253 (listen all the way to the end ;-))) And now I’m updating my blog. I’m gonna read in my Bible and then go to bed. Tomorrow it’s Pilates and I’ll probably go to the centre of The Hague to buy my study books and to try to find a gift for Martijn’s birthday on Friday :-s

Diergaarde Blijdorp Zoo

2006-07-30T01:18:00.000+02:00

K, so here are the pictures as promised: http://www.flickr.com/photos/charda/sets/72157594216524772/

Guild Wars, Last Weeks, New Job Application

2006-07-30T00:32:00.000+02:00

Wow, I didn’t know I hadn’t updated anything in ten days now. I thought it was less…
As you can see in the pictures, I am kind of addicted to playing Guild Wars now. Martijn also really likes the game, which is nice, so we can talk about it together and look at each other playing. My Mesmer/Ranger is lvl 15 now and my Elementalist/Monk is lvl 11. I’ll try to make a better screenshot some other day, but now you get a chance to see what I look like. The objective of the game is to reach lvl 20 by murdering monsters, such as Grawl, Charr, Fire Imps, Hydra’s and anything else you can imagine. By murdering monsters you gain experience which eventually takes you to the next level. A couple of years ago I played Everquest, which is a bit alike Guild Wars. I really like this game now, because it doesn’t have a monthly fee (I think I mentioned that before) and it’s fairly easy to play. I can even get myself better armour or a better weapon. I always found that much harder to do in Everquest. The maximum lvl in Guild Wars is lvl 20, while in Everquest that’s lvl 60. That takes a lot more hours to reach. The fun of playing these games is also that you can do it together with other people. I really like that, even when people make mistakes or just leave in the middle of something important.
And for the rest, I’ve mainly been working. That’s about how I spent these last two weeks: working and playing GW. Since my computer is the only computer that has Guild Wars on it, sometimes I couldn’t update my blog because Martijn would be playing GW on it. It’s much too hot over here to do anything else. Nothing too spectacular happened actually. I picked up my study books about two weeks ago. I still need to pick up two more, probably Tuesday if I have time and if I want to go. I did find another job to which I may be applying. It’s a job behind the reception/cash of a theatre about two blocks from here. The job is only for 20 hours a week, but I love the theatre and I think I would enjoy working there. I just don’t know if they’ll have me, since I go to the university two nights a week and I don’t know if I want to leave the photo shop. We’ll see how that goes.
Today Martijn and I went to the zoo, I’ll post the pictures later tonight or tomorrow. I’ll try to update my blog more often from now on…

Today Work, Yesterday Study Books

2006-07-20T00:23:00.000+02:00

Here’s a really short update from me. I really should be in bed right now, but I thought I’d update a little before I went to bed. Today I worked all day. I worked with my new colleague. It’s fine to work with her, as long as it’s quiet without much work (that’s the same, isn’t it?). Luckily, today was a really quiet day. It was way too hot to shop or do anything. In our shop it wasn’t that bad, because we have good air conditioning. Tonight I just prepared some food for myself and I watched TV. I watched some stupid TV-movie and an episode of ‘Crossing Jordan’. The actor who played Philip Banks in the Fresh Prince also played a character, that’s always fun to see.
Yesterday I picked up my new study books. I also received the schedule of what I have to read for literature in what week. It seems like a lot, but I’m glad I’ve already started and I’m still reading for this course. And tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, I’ll have to work. *sigh* Sometimes it might be nice to stay at home and do nothing.

DSCF0330

2006-07-17T23:23:00.000+02:00

DSCF0330
Originally uploaded by Charda.

One sample picture for you :-)

Summoning XI 2006

2006-07-17T23:22:00.000+02:00

Hey, I'm back, I survived and I actually had a lot of fun. Here are some pictures, I'll tell the stories and I'll add the comments later. http://www.flickr.com/photos/charda/sets/72157594202628106/

First Aid Weekend

2006-07-14T00:57:00.000+02:00

I should be going to bed right now, as Martijn is asking of me next to me here. I just wanted to update before I go away on my First Aid weekend. I am pretty nervous about it. We’re going to take the train to Apeldoorn tomorrow at 10 o’clock. That’s not too bad, I guess we’re going to leave our house at around 9 o’clock. I’m gonna wave at Fr Roderick as our train is going through Amersfoort. Apeldoorn is about half an hour away from Amersfoort by train. I think I packed everything. I just figured that I also packed the t-shirt that I need to wear tomorrow, so I’m gonna unpack that. Now I’m going to bed, to see if I can get one night’s sleep before I sleep awfully in a tent the next few days. Please wish me luck and think of me this weekend.

GW, Church, Busy Work, Rosaries

2006-07-11T00:23:00.000+02:00

I’m sorry it has yet been another week since I have last written. I just seem to go to bed real late and then I don’t want to write anymore. Or I just have little to write about.
Like last weekend. Basically, all I did was play Guild Wars. I had great fun doing so, although sometimes at night I still dreamt about playing. The fun part is that Martijn and I kind of do it together. Usually I play and then Martijn sits next to me and gives me hints and helps me. I also played with my father the other day. That was really fun. My dad was at his home behind his computer and me over here. I also teamed with other people now and then, and that’s also cool, although I die a lot when I do that. My Mesmer/Ranger is now lvl 10, which is as high as my Elementalist/Monk.
Yesterday when I went to church I went to a different church. They existed 75 years and the bishop was there to celebrate mass. It was really busy, like 400/500 people. In a regular mass, there are about 100 people. I liked seeing the bishop and being part of that celebration.
Today at work was a really really busy day. I was with my colleague who was also on the 12 of 12 of last month. I was really glad to work with her, because I couldn’t have done this much work with anyone else. We had a good turnover, so it was worth the effort, but I was a bit happy when I was at home tonight and was able to sit down and watch ANTM.
Tomorrow I have Pilates class and little else to do. I might have to prepare something for next weekend, but I’ll see that tomorrow. By the way, the rosary on the picture is one I dyed myself. I thought, the World Cup is finally over, so I can make some orange again as if I'm proud of my country. I ordered some twine by Michael of the Rosary Army Forums and it was really great. The American twine is different from the Dutch twine. It's much thicker and softer and the knots look a lot better. I also received some crucifixes for my own use (I ordered them) and I got some twine donated by a mysterious/anonymous donator. That was really cool. Today I sent my first rosaries to the Rosary Army, 8 pieces. I hope they’ll be of some use to them, cause I know they aren’t perfect yet. I already have 5 more ready right now. Don’t know what colour I’ll make them yet. Talk to you soon!

Pilates, Bad Sleep, Shopping

2006-07-04T22:48:00.000+02:00

It’s still so very hot over here in the Netherlands. I think in the daytime it is around 30 degrees Celsius. This morning I went to Pilates. It wasn’t the last lesson of the course as I had hoped, and we didn’t practice with the ball. We did all the exercises very easily because the temperatures are this high.
When I came home, I tried to sleep some more. I had an awful night last night. I was awake till at least 4 o’clock. I wasn’t really awake, but I kept falling asleep and waking up every 15 minutes, or it felt that way at least. Then at 4 I thought I heard a mosquito and I turned on the light, but I never saw it again. Then I saw my book and I decided to read for some time. After I went to the bathroom I finally got some sleep until 8 o’clock when my alarm went off.
This afternoon I went shopping. I hate shopping, especially when it’s 30 degrees outside and even more when I have to buy jeans which I have to try on. But I went anyway because I really needed a new pair of jeans and in the end I found and bought two. I also bought some slippers, because with this temperature I needed some open shoes. I also bought some things for Martijn which he needed and some supplies for our camping adventure next week. I was only too tired and late to buy the groceries, so Martijn had to them after work. I’m a bit ashamed about that, but I don’t think he really minds. Tomorrow I’ll have to work, in my new jeans and shoes, and in the air-conditioning, so I hope things will be better then.

Miscellaneous

2006-07-03T23:18:00.000+02:00

Since it’s been more than a week ago since I last updated, here I am. I’m not so sure what I’m going to tell you, but we’ll see.
Last week I placed 2 orders via the Internet. I ordered a CD by Brian Littrell of the Backstreet Boys and the game Guild Wars Factions. I found this cheap website and I’m waiting for them to arrive. I also ordered some rosary-supplies yesterday. I ordered 15 crucifixes so that I can finish some of my own rosaries and see how they look with a rosary on them. I also ordered some twine. This store sells twine by foot, so I ordered about 5 different colours and I get some reduction because I am a Rosary Army forum member. I actually read more than that I post, but I am gonna use this twine to send it to Rosary Army, so that’s fine. I was talking about it with Martijn that it’s nothing short of a miracle that I can shop in the USA, pay it via credit card and then have it delivered to my home, in about one day time. Well, the delivery takes a little longer, but the ordering takes only that much time.
Yesterday I finished my new SHP script about Remus Lupin. I posted it on the SQPN wiki, but I haven’t gotten any reaction to it yet. I hope they will like it so that it can be recorded and then finally published on the Internet.
I’m still reading ‘Sense and Sensibility’. I still like it very much. I’m about more than halfway through it already, so I will at least finish it before September.
Today I worked with our new colleague. She’s helping us out for a couple of weeks in the vacation. It’s sometimes hard to work with someone new, because I have to watch her every step and I need to look after everything she does. I hope we will find someone who’s going to stay with us so that I can teach that person how everything works and they can take some of this workload off of me. The store where I work now exists 8 years, so we’re kind of celebrating that with some sales and reductions. My boss heard today that he will need a complete knee-replacement, but his knee still needs to heal from the last surgery. He also needs to lose weight, but that’s nothing new. He might have the surgery in about 3 months.
Tomorrow I’ll have my Pilates class and I should go to the mall to buy some jeans, but it’s way too hot to go shopping. I think I’ll stay at home, read a bit and play some Guild Wars. I started a Mesmer/Ranger character yesterday and it’s fun to play with. Maybe some of my packages will be in the mail tomorrow.
Martijn and I are very much looking forward to our First-Aid event next week. It’s already next week. I’ve read the story-line online, but it’s still a bit vague. It’s a good thing I’m going to be First-Aid staff and not a participant.

Church, TV, Soccer

2006-06-26T00:10:00.000+02:00

This morning after mass I had the talk with the man at the church, the assistant-priest I think he is. I was really really nervous about the talk, but it turned out not to be too special. Pretty early in the conversation he proposed that he would give me the texts of the Dutch version of the RCIA classes. It’s not really RCIA, it’s called an ‘Alpha-course’, it’s a general introduction into the church. Anyway, he’s going to give me the texts so that I can study them at home when I have time. And then once a month or every 2 months we get together and we discuss what I’ve read. I think this is a great idea, since I’ll never have time the next couple of years to follow a course like this in real time. I just don’t have a night off to do this, and these courses are usually on Tuesday or Thursday evening. He also said that I should take about 2 years for the process of joining the church and that was a bit longer than I had expected, but OK, I guess I can live with that. I also asked about that I live together with someone, unmarried, and that I take the birth-control pill. He said I shouldn’t worry about it too much. He says God loves me anyway and He wants me to grow slowly to Him. The priest also said that ultimately marriage is about two people making each other happy, and that living together like Martijn and I are doing now, is already a bit like that. At the end of the conversation, which lasted about 15 minutes, he blessed me. I really liked that, if I can say that of a blessing.
I was relieved when the conversation was over. He didn’t say anything really shocking. I’m a bit disappointed that he said that I should take about 2 years before joining the church, but I knew that was a possibility. What he said about me living together was what I had hoped to hear. I always thought that God wants me to be happy, and if that means living together with a boy, then he’ll accept that of me. Of course I want to get married, but I want to know for sure whom I’m going to marry and I want to know all the bad things about my future husband. And I also want to have some money to have some kind of a decent marriage.
The rest of the day I did really little. Martijn and I went to bed and watched two episodes of Charmed after we had eaten breakfast. Tonight I watched some more TV and I knotted two rosaries. One of these days I’m going to colour a new batch of them with KoolAid.
Oh, and our national soccer team lost tonight of Portugal with 0-1. I’m not too sorry about it. It means we can finally get back to our daily lives and we can get rid of all the stupid orange decorations. I do think a lot of people are disappointed over here though.

Nothing to tell, First Aid, Literature

2006-06-22T23:24:00.000+02:00

I’m sorry I didn’t update in the last few days. I didn’t really live anything spectacular. I went to work, I went home, I played the Sims, I went to bed and I went back to work.
Today I could sleep in for an hour because I was allowed to come one hour late. That was really nice, because I was just calm and there was no hurry. It was a relaxed trip to work today.
At work, there was this girl who’s going to help us for a couple of days. She’s really nice, about 20 years old, and she’s going to study Psychology at the same university as where I studied Psychology. It does give us some topics to talk about. I’ll work with her most of tomorrow.
Tonight I continued playing the Sims. I have started this couple at the university and now they’re old and aged and I’m kind of waiting for them to die. It’s not nice of me to say that, but that would mean I finally finished one family. I usually leave them about half way through, because I’ve gotten bored with them.
Oh, I’m going to another Larp event in July, ‘Summoning’. I’ll be on the First-Aid team again, like in May with the ‘Moots I’. The best thing about it is that Martijn is coming with me. We both have arranged to have the days off work and I’m excited about what’s going to happen there. I hope it’s better now that Martijn will come with me.
I decided a couple of days ago that I wanted to start reading the books for Literature for the next semester, so I wrote an e-mail to the bookstore for some information. They told me that they don’t yet know which books are needed for the next semester and that they will have the books in 3/4 weeks. There go my weeks of reading in advance… I will pick up one book next Saturday which they did have already, ‘Sense and Sensibility’ by Jane Austen. So that’s what I’ll be reading the next few weeks.

Bad day at work

2006-06-20T00:01:00.000+02:00

Wow, I really had to work hard today. That’s not supposed to happen on Monday. I hadn’t even had my cup of coffee and I was already forced to work real hard and to think. People know my brains don’t work until I’ve had a cup of coffee and I’ve checked my e-mail and the SQPN forum.
It was just a busy day with lots of work. We had to print lots of pictures, but we also needed to help customers with frames, albums, passport pictures etc. It was really awful when one of the first customers came into our shop, crying, because she wanted to have the pictures printed of her still-born son. The pictures were really hideous to see and I think I will remember them forever. The woman was 41 weeks pregnant when they told her they couldn’t find a heartbeat and the baby was born a week later, on 6-6-2006. The baby looked so terrible. Both me and my colleague got sick to our stomachs of these pictures.
Later that day we also got a picture we had to reprint and I had to do some retouching because this was the only good picture she had of her daughter and she was going to die soon of Cancer.
And then finally there was a picture I had retouched last week of two dogs, and the woman told me that the big dog had died, because he choked on a tennis ball. Just unbelievable.
In that sense, we didn’t have a really cheerful day. The turnover was pretty good. I hope things will be better tomorrow.

I did it!

2006-06-16T13:38:00.000+02:00

Here's a really short update from work. I just received all my marks for the exams via e-mail. I passed them all! I am so happy, you just can't imagine. Some courses I passed barely with a 6 and a 6,5 (out of 10) but I have an 8 for Literature 2a! I'll never have to read Gulliver's Travels or Tom Jones again! And the best part is that I won't have to do any resits in August. This means I have vacation until September, at least from my studies! I am so glad and relieved.

12 of 12

2006-06-12T23:59:00.000+02:00

Today was my 12 of 12. A picture says more than a 1000 words:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/charda/sets/

Hot, Today, Yesterday, Rosaries, Dinner

2006-06-12T00:35:00.000+02:00

I’m so incredibly hot. And that’s purely because of the high temperatures over here. The temperature reached 30 degrees Celsius here in the Netherlands this afternoon. I can’t even move or I’ll sweat. The only thing I did yesterday was buying groceries. For the rest I just read, played the Sims, and I watched TV. My friend also called and we talked for a couple of hours. I was really glad to talk to her again, since we hadn’t spoken each other for a long time.
This morning I went to church. There weren’t too many people there. I was still a bit tired, so I had some difficulty listening to the homily and really understanding what it was about.
When I came home I played some more Sims and I got my Sims to graduate from University. Then Martijn had woken up by that time, so I had to stop playing and prepare breakfast (like I’m some kind of woman who does that all the time :-p). The rest of the afternoon I just read in my Virginia Andrews book, I made another rosary and I dyed my rosaries with the Kool-Aid dye I received yesterday by mail. It was fun to do that, though it was a bit warm to nuke something in the microwave and then play with it. I was really surprised how well they turned out. I dyed them with the Black Cherry flavour and they’re a really nice colour of red now. I wasn’t sure the twine was 100 % nylon, because it didn’t say any ingredients on the website. I also didn’t know what the colour was going to look like. I was afraid it would turn light-pink or something, but this colour is really cool. I only need to get my knots closer together and then they’re ready to be shipped off. I’m not sure what I’ll do with these rosaries.
Tonight my boyfriend and I had dinner in a Chinese restaurant. It’s a really cool place where you choose your own ingredients, you put them on a plate, and then the cooks stir-fry them with the sauce of your own choice. It’s a good way for Martijn and me to both be able to eat something we like. Because of the high temperature I wasn’t too hungry, but I had a really nice time and it was good to be alone with Martijn.
Tomorrow is 12 of 12 day, so I’ll bring my camera to work and I’ll try to make some picture. I hope my colleague likes her gift.

No more exams, Shopping, SHP

2006-06-10T01:51:00.000+02:00

Wow, finally, all my exams are over. I’m just so happy and relieved it’s all over. I have no idea how I have done and whether I have passed them or not, but right now there’s nothing I can do about it. The results will be sent to us on the 22nd of June, so I guess I’ll receive them a day after that. I’m really curious to see what I’ve done, because most of the exams didn’t go too well and I hope I did them well enough to have passed them.
Today I enjoyed my first no-study day and I went shopping. I had to buy a present for my colleague who turns 17 next Monday. I usually don’t buy gifts for her, but I know it’s her birthday and we work together, so I decided to be nice. I also bought a new Bible for myself. I bought the newest translation of the Dutch Bible before we moved to this house, so I have no idea where it is. I only have another Dutch translation, but it’s 50 years old (the translation, not the Bible) so that doesn’t read too easily. Now I bought an English Bible, a New International Version. It’s a really cool edition, because it has a pink cover. I also bought some other second-hand books. One of them is concerning Murray of the Oxford English Dictionary. I saw the book and I remembered that my teacher had recommended this book if we ever saw it for sale somewhere. So I decided to be a good student and buy the book. Then I bought some cheap clothes, both for Martijn and myself. I went by the hardware store to buy some more twine (100 metres) and then I was pretty much fed up with shopping and I went home. The temperature is really high here at the moment. I was so tired tonight, that I have slept for two hours. That felt pretty nice.
What you see on the picture is my new Bible and one of the rosaries I have knotted myself.
I also sent out a mail to the scriptwriter’s team of the Secrets of Harry Potter podcast. There hasn’t been a new podcast in a long time and I was wondering if people were still interested in working on it. As it turns out, they were still interested. Since I have the next couple of weeks off, I hope to have some time to spend on scriptwriting. I really hope we can get this podcast back on the Internet.
That was about all I did today. Tomorrow morning I have Pilates, for once on a Saturday, and I don’t really have plans for the rest of the day. I only have to buy groceries, together with Martijn, but that’s it.

ANTM, Literature Exam

2006-06-06T23:56:00.000+02:00

Yesterday I didn’t do too much, nothing really spectacular. I only discovered that last night America’s Next Top Model is back on TV! I was really happy. Now I watch Britain’s Next Top Model on Saturday and America’s Next Top Model on Monday and in the autumn we will have Holland’s Next Top Model. I just love these shows and I’m so happy that I’m able to watch them.
Tonight I had my Literature exam. I was really anxious that it would be very hard and that I would do it really badly, but it didn’t go that bad. I knew most of the answers and I wrote down an answer at every question. I think I answered about half of the questions correctly and I hope I will still gain some points for the rest of the questions. With some luck I hope to have passed this exam. When I was finished, after two hours of straight writing, I talked to my classmates, but they all thought it had been extremely difficult. I don’t know why they thought that, because I wasn’t surprised at the questions. They were pretty much how I expected them to be, I was only surprised that I knew how to answer them. But I’m really glad this exam is over and I’ll see what the mark turns out to be in about 10 days. Only one more the day after tomorrow.

Whitsunday

2006-06-05T00:30:00.000+02:00

Today was Whitsunday. I went to church this morning. It was pretty cool, because the mass was in Dutch, Spanish and English. The people of the Spanish parish, who have their mass after our Dutch mass usually on Sunday, were all at the mass tomorrow. It turned out that the priest, an old Dutch man (that’s what he looks like anyway), speaks Spanish fluently. I was really surprised when I heard that, because I could tell that he wasn’t just reading out loud some texts.
Yesterday evening I got a telephone call. It was already 10 pm, on Saturday evening, so I thought it would be a prank call or someone dialled a wrong number. But the call was meant for me. It was the man from the other church I went to before, the man who lent me the book. I has sent him an e-mail about a month ago that I would like to have a talk with him. He never responded, so I didn’t even think about that mail anymore. But now he called and we scheduled a meeting on the 25th of June. The only problem is that I now go to the church really close to my house and not to his church anymore. But I was really glad that he invited me to meet him, so I’ll just go and meet him and I guess then I’ll tell him that I’m going to another church by now. Or I’ll just attend his church. I don’t really know what I’m gonna do yet.
This afternoon I should have studied for my exams, but I didn’t. Well, I read some pages, but I didn’t even do half of what I should’ve done. Today I decided that they should abandon exams. I’ll attend all the classes, I’ll do the homework, I’ll write some essays, but please, don’t make me do those horrible exams!
Tonight Martijn and I went to an Omnimax Theatre, the Omniversum, right here in The Hague. It was really a lot of fun. We saw two movies actually, since the second movie was half the price. We saw the movie ‘The mystery of the Nile’ and after that the movie ‘Greece’. www.omniversum.nl I preferred the latter movie, because it was calm and peaceful with lots of nice photography and information. It didn’t make me nauseous like the first one. Martijn preferred the first one.
We found out some pretty cool stuff in Guild Wars. I finally got some new skills by completing some quests. I’m really happy about that, because I hadn’t had any new skills for quite some time. I need to figure out what they do exactly, but they look good.
So tomorrow is another day off. I can sleep in, since there’s no mass tomorrow. I’ll study a bit, play GW, and perhaps watch some DVDs. I bought the first season of Charmed and I also bought the Xmen 2 movie. After I’ve seen that movie I can go watch episode 3 in the cinema. That’s one of the ‘after-the-exams’ plans. I can’t wait till it’s Thursday and it’s all over.

100th post, Exam, Rosaries, Work

2006-06-01T00:30:00.000+02:00

Today is my 100th post. That’s quite something for me, a lot of posts since November last year. Yeah, I’m a bit proud of myself.
Last Monday I had my exam of Language Acquisition. It was a multiple choice exam about vocabulary and grammar. I really have no idea how I did. The grammar questions weren’t that bad, but I don’t know if I answered them correctly.
I was supposed to study for my next exams yesterday, but then I thought of making my own rosaries and I found that more interesting. So I travelled throughout the city yesterday to find some nylon twine of the right thickness. That was pretty hard to find. I finally found it and then went back home to try and make a rosary. I downloaded the video and the pdf file and I actually did it. I’m not too good at making things with my hands, and knots aren’t my speciality, but I managed pretty OK. Today I made another one and that one is even nicer. It’s hard to get the knots at an even interval. The reason why I am doing this is to send them to the US, to the Rosary Army. I’ve been listening to their podcast for quite some time now. Their apostolate is to make rosaries and have other people make these rosaries for them, and they will send them away for free to anyone who requests one. I’m now going to try and help them by also making rosaries. And since the only twine available in the Netherlands is white, I have been looking around for ways to dye it. There is this fabric dye, but the description looked a bit tough and I didn’t want to try that. The alternative method is to dye the nylon with ‘Kool Aid’. That’s a kind of lemonade powder, when you add water to it you’ll have lemonade. Apparently there’s so much colour-stuff in there (and it’s an acid) that you can use it to dye nylon and wool with. So I just ordered 10 flavours at a website in the UK and I’m going to dye my own nylon. I’m really curious what that’s going to look like (and taste like) and whether it will work out all right.
Today was really busy at work and I still have lots of pictures to print for tomorrow. I hope I will finish everything in time and that tonight I’ll sleep enough.

Sorry

2006-05-31T00:43:00.000+02:00

I'm really really sorry that I didn't update today, I really wanted to, but it's so late already that I must go to bed now. I'll try to write something tomorrow. I'm fine, I did an exam last night and today I made my first all-knotted-twine-rosary (instead of going to the library to study)
Talk to you soon!

Yesterday, Today, GW, SL

2006-05-26T00:40:00.000+02:00

Here’s a short update from me. Yesterday I worked and nothing too special happened. I did get myself a great take-out dinner. I was in the train and I suddenly thought that I could get this dinner. It’s a Surinam meal called ‘roti’. It’s not that expensive where I bought it, so that’s why I went and got it. I was really happy with it. I ate my dinner while I watched the ‘Spongebob Squarepants Movie’. That felt really good.
Today I went to church in the morning. I thought it was going to be really quiet, but it wasn’t that bad. The priest of the Spanish part of our church did the sermon today, and it was really good. Today was Ascension Day, at least here in the Netherlands it was. The priest talked about Jesus having been on Earth to experience what it was like to be human and to experience that all. I never really realized that until now.
This afternoon I studied some of my grammar. I didn’t do enough, but I did something at least. Tonight I played Guild Wars. I am now lvl 7 and I entered the Post-searing part. That means that I left the tutorial areas. I only don’t really know what to do now. After that I played some Second Life. I found the Library and I visited some churches. And now I have to hurry to go to bed, because I have to work again tomorrow.

No Housewife, No Student

2006-05-23T23:10:00.000+02:00

Today wasn’t really that productive. I figured out two things: I don’t want to be a housewife and I don’t want to be a student. The main problem is that I am a little of both, and I am a working woman as well.
My Pilates class didn’t go through this morning, because my teacher had to do another lesson at the same hour as my class whose teacher was ill. I was invited to go to that class, which was a sort of Steps/Aerobics class, but I didn’t want to go to that class, so I stayed at home in bed. Not that I was really rested, because I woke up at 6 am, when I had to go to the toilet, I woke up at 7 am, because Martijn had to leave for work, I woke up at 8 am when the phone rang that my class was cancelled, I woke up at 10 am when my alarm clock went off and I finally woke up and got out of bed at 11 am.
I spent most of the afternoon on editing my essay. I added all the quotes and I changed some parts of the text where the sentences were strange or they just didn’t make sense. Then I took a shower, I cleaned the shower and I went to do my groceries. I got all the groceries fine, except for the chicken. Now, this is really bad, but I always buy the chicken which is already cut in pieces, because I really hate having to cut the chicken myself. But now, they didn’t have that, so I had to cut it myself. That is something I despise. When I got home, I made a bread so that Martijn will also have bread tomorrow and after that I washed the dishes, something else I despise. Then Martijn got home from work, so that the food wasn’t ready when he came home as I had planned. Then I made the dinner and I burnt stuff and it just all went wrong. I didn’t even really like the dinner I had made, since it was a new recipe I tried, but it was OK.
Then after dinner, and after watching Law and Order, I got back to my essay. I still had to make it in MLA style. I got really frustrated and even cried because I was so fed up with everything. Martijn has an exam tomorrow, and he was just lying in bed, watching television, and all he had done today was read through his books in the train. I just wish my study would be like that and that I could be relaxed about it. Finally I finished my essay, with the help of Martijn. I just hope so much that it’ll be a 6 so that I won’t have to do the entire course again. But I’ll have to wait a couple of weeks for that. And tomorrow, there’s work as always.

Pastry, Results, Exams

2006-05-22T23:26:00.000+02:00

Yup, I lived through today. I wasn’t too sure I would, not when I finished updating my blog and when I went to bed, I got really nauseous. I eventually fell asleep, but I was still feeling bad when I woke up. I did go to work, because this usually goes away after a while, and it did. I even had some pastry at work because it’s my boss’ birthday today. I don’t even know how old he got. Somewhere round 68 or 69 I guess.
I got an e-mail from my teacher with the grades of my presentation about Chomsky and of an essay I wrote. For the presentation I got a 7 (out of 10) and for the essay I got a 5.75 (out of 10). And no, I’m not really pleased with that. It means my average is pretty low and this means that I’ll have to do well on my Vocab/Grammar test. I hope that’s going to work out all right, since the test is next Monday.
I’m gonna be really happy when it’s all over in 2.5 weeks and I won’t have to think of any exams for the next few weeks thereafter. I’ll just have to work hard the next week now.

First Aid Weekend, Past Week, Guild Wars, Today

2006-05-21T23:10:00.000+02:00

Yes, I’m still alive and I’m behind my computer. I did survive my First-Aid weekend. The weekend wasn’t even that spectacular. I was a bit disappointed when I found out that most of the time I was just sitting, just hanging around the First-Aid tent a bit. We didn’t have any great casualties, which is a good thing of course, but all I’ve done is clean some wounds and put on some band-aids, like 3 times. For the rest I’ve been watching how the others handled the wounds, like some blisters and the removals of some ticks. I’ve also walked around, always together with someone else, when there was a big fight going on. I was at a LARP event, Life Action Role Playing, called Moots I. So as you probably have seen on the pictures, everyone was dressed up in a way they liked it and they had to fight each other or the monsters. The monsters were played by a special group of people to keep the story going and just to create some fun. Do not ask me what this main story was, because I have no idea. I only know that they usually live on the planet Vortex, but this weekend they had gone to another planet by means of a warpstone, but I don’t even know the name of the planet. The camping on my own bit of the weekend went OK as well. I put on the tent, with the help of some others, and everything went fine. The food was really great in the weekend; that was well taken care off by the organization of the event. I’m not sure whether I want to do this again. I didn’t like the other First-Aiders that much. They were nice and friendly and all, but I don’t have a lot in common with them, and they won’t become my best friends. I’d like to have Martijn around next time and I’d like to have more to do, even reading my book would be fine. I didn’t want to do that this time, because I didn’t want to do anything strange so that the others would find me strange.
This week I didn’t feel too good all week. It wasn’t until today that I felt a little like my old self again. I have been feeling weak all week, I’ve slept some extra hours almost every day and I was feeling nauseous now and then. No, I’m not pregnant; I was just a bit under the weather. Today I didn’t sleep any extra, and I got out of bed early to go to church, so I’ve had a long day, and I’m a bit tired, but I feel OK.
Last Tuesday I bought a new game, as I was inspired by the role-playing I had seen over the weekend. I bought the game ‘Guild Wars’. A couple of years ago I have played Everquest for about a year, but I did not want to play that again, because then I would have to pay a monthly fee. The great thing about GW is that there is no monthly fee and there are some other in-game advantages as well. You get your own copy of any explorable area you play in, so that there is less lag and people are not able to steal your loot. You do get to meet other people in towns and cities. I’m still very much a newbie and trying to figure out how the game works, but I really like it so far.
Today I finished my big essay on ‘Clarissa’ and I finished the assignment I had to do on the ‘Corpus Linguistics’ workshop of Philology. That was a lot of work together, so I’m really happy that it’s done. Now I only have to finish the details of the essay and study for my exams.
I’ll try and update more often this week, I hope I’ll be feeling better and I’ll talk to you soon.

Past Weekend

2006-05-15T23:41:00.000+02:00

I'm going to postpone the complete story of last weekend till tomorrow or the day after, but I did post my pictures to the Flickr account. Some were meant for the 12 of 12 series, that's why there's one of me in bed and one of my alarm clock, but the rest were taken over the course of the weekend. And yes, I'm the one in the yellow coat with the hat on doing the dishes while the grand end battle is going on in the back. Take a look for yourself: http://www.flickr.com/photos/charda/

Here are some other pictures made by someone else of last weekend: http://catjasphotos.fotopic.net/

Last Lecture, Machine, Camping

2006-05-12T00:22:00.000+02:00

Today was my last lecture of this semester, and probably the last lecture by this teacher. The lecture was about ‘The Vicar of Wakefield’ which I had read completely, so I enjoyed this class because I could follow what they were talking about. The teacher also showed some example exam. That looked pretty hard, as I had expected.
Yesterday at work our printing machine broke down. Apparently the hard disk crashed and couldn’t function properly anymore. The mechanic fixed it today, so we could get back to printing at about 1 o’clock, but then I had to print everything that couldn’t be printed yesterday and I was very busy. I printed all that I had to in time, so that was good.
Tomorrow is the big day. Tomorrow I’m going to camp and pretend to know everything of First Aid. At the moment I’m not as nervous as I have been, but I’m not relaxed either. My boyfriend and I packed my bag together. I think I have everything, except for the last things that need to be added tomorrow. I’m very curious what it’ll be like and what’ll happen this weekend. I am going to make my 12 of 12, but I won’t be able to post them until Sunday or Monday. (If you don’t know what 12 of 12 is, please check my post on the 12th or 13th of April). Please think of me and I’ll let you know how it was.

Language Lab Exam, Corpus Linguistics, Pilates

2006-05-10T00:00:00.000+02:00

Tonight I had my Language Lab exam. It went pretty OK actually. I didn’t really think of my r-deletion, which is a standard feature of RP, but I talked fluently in my discussion topic, and that’s important as well. We had this list of words which we had to pronounce correctly, maybe 200 words or something, and we were asked 20, but I knew them all, so I think that went well as well. It now depends on how they attend to the precise pronunciation of all the features, such as the r-deletion and the voicing of consonants, which I usually don’t do when it should be done. I wasn’t as nervous as I was last semester. Now I’ll just have to wait for my grade.
We also had a workshop of Philology regarding Corpus Linguistics. A corpus is a body of texts, a collection of texts from a certain period or concerning a specific language and in these texts you can research words. You can look at how many times they occur, or in what instances, or spoken by a man or a woman. I thought it was pretty interesting, though some of my classmates thought it was pretty boring. I even checked my own website to see which words occurred most often, and on nr. 1 was the word ‘I’. And no, that’s not a good thing, I know, buy hey, this website is about me and my life, so well.
I also had Pilates this morning. It went pretty OK. We were only there with the 3 of us and that was nice. I was even able to sit up straight with my legs stretched. I was really proud of that and the teacher said that my back is better than it was better. It’s not so round anymore. Tomorrow I’ll have to work. I hope my colleague’s back from his vacation. I heard that there was a lot of trouble with the printing machine today, so I hope things will be all right tomorrow. We’ll see.