Daily Archives: 4/26/2005

HAPPY (LATE) BIRTHDAY SHOUT OUT!

KELLY!

happy birthday lady, to one of the most gracious and sweet and interesting ladies I know. Yes, dear, you are a LADY. we should get big hats and wear them out to tea one day. and spike our tea with whiskey, and I won’t let the whiskey make me cry, either.

The Netherlands

Man, but I had a great trip. It was beautiful there, lovely weather, lovely wedding, and I can NOT emphasize enough to you how fantastic it was to be in a place that values public transportation and bicycling and very small cars. I felt so much at home. Except for the whole being zillions of miles away from my family and not speaking the language thing.

The mister has the digicam with him so hopefully I’ll be able to get photos off of it once he returns home tonight. There probably aren’t a lot of genius beauty ones but still, I’d like to see them!

Highlights:
* missed the first flight due to awful traffic and a brush fire.
* slept in the next morning so was not terribly exhausted on the flight over.
* flight over was good and also I watched the House of Flying Daggers on the flight, and cried at the end. The mister laughed at me because I cry at ALL pretty kung fu movies. They’re not just about fighting, they’re beautiful love stories!
* had a nice acclimation to the Netherlands by walking the scenic route to get to our friends apartment. Then had breakfast.
* I love dutch coffee! it’s so good.
* The Euro is easy to spend because it pretends like it’s a dollar. A shiny, colorful, pretty dollar that’s worth 1.3 dollars, that is!
* I ate a lot of chocolate. European chocolate is so much tastier than American chocolate.
* Our hosts are the most wonderful, thoughtful, well prepared, sweetly accommodating people in the whole world, probably. It was so easy to travel to a foreign country and not feel like I was travelling blind because they took care of EVERYTHING for us and still made us go sight seeing in the city and to take public transportation. Wonderful!
* Flight back was good, I was solo, and I watched Spanglish and Bride and Prejudice because I couldn’t sleep. And at least 3 people vomited on the bumpy landing. Yuck. I am so glad I didn’t join them!

I was kind of blue about missing a whole day on the flight back because I left at 9:30 and returned at 11:30, so that was essentially 8 – 12:30 in airports and airplanes, but when I got back home and sat on the couch for a few hours and then just went to bed at 7PM US time I realized it is an AWESOME way to travel. I woke up at 6AM for work today feeling not exactly fresh, but not terrible. Not like the way I felt when I woke up on Sat., with my head foggy and full of cotton, and the spinning when I closed my eyes — I guess that’s what it’s like when non-morning people wake up, hey? how TERRIBLE.