29 November 2006

Busy with Work, School, SHP, GW, GPS


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.

28 November 2006

It's me, Yolanda!

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.

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20 November 2006

Hyves, Work, Today, Tomorrow

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.

19 November 2006

GPS walk, New Jobs, Pictures


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.

14 November 2006

Yolanda


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

13 November 2006

My New Camera, GPS


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.

06 November 2006

Today: Church, Library, GW NF

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.

01 November 2006

Jack, the Depressed Pumpkin

Profile for charda