Thursday, May 17, 2012

Finally settled....well kinda

Suppose it is time for another quick update.

I finally have a bank account set up with and active debit card and have some money in it.  Tomorrow it will have more money as it is payday :-)  i still need to go pick up my actual resident's permit, so hopefully i will have that within a week or two.  I also still want to go get a cell phone with a data plan.

i think i've been cooking a lot more for myself in the last month than i did in probably the previous 6 months.  Most of the dinners are some kind of pasta in a pesto sauce with various kinds of peppers.  Every now and then there's chicken in it as well.  I also made some mashed potatoes and breaded some chicken tenders (and then also bought some chicken schnitzel to eat w/ the rest of the mashed potatoes as i made too much).  Adding some cayenne pepper to the breading was definitely a nice touch i though :-)

Last Thursday i had made my way to play volleyball in Haarlem with a club.  It was quite fun especially since i missed playing a little bit.  The fact that it got me out of the apartment was also nice.  The training/practice wasn't too bad.  I had been worried that i wouldn't be at the skill level everyone else was at, but i think i was at least close enough (as long as i wasn't trying to spike, haha).  It was also interesting though as the coach was giving directions in Dutch, so i really wasn't sure what he was saying.  Depending on what it looked like the drill was i would just observe or ask either the coach or one of the other players and they would tell me in English.  Afterwards everyone went to the bar that was next to the gym, so that was nice as then got to talk more with the people.  I'm going to be going to the training/practice tonight as well and hoping to become friends with some of them so i'll have people to hang out with.

Hmm...what else....I'm in the process of making my first travel trip to meet up with my cousin who is in Spain for a month.  Right now the plan is to meet in Geneva, Switzerland on June 14th and be tourists there for a couple days, and then to go back to Spain since she flies back to the US on the 17th.  I'm not going to fly back to the Netherlands until the 18th though so i can see a little bit of Spain...mainly Barcelona and go to a beach :-)  part of me wants to stay until the 19th as the flights are cheaper coming back to the Netherlands, but dont really want to take another day off work and then also the cost of staying another night will cancel the cheapness of the flight.

I think that is about all i can think of right now.  Sorry my stories aren't all that exciting.  Maybe they'll get a bit more exciting when i find some people to hang out and do a little bit of traveling with.  Learning some Dutch could also help....haha.  Anyways, ciao ciao

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Dang! Has it already been a month? Hard to believe . . .
Glad you're getting to play some volleyball. We expect that with your Dutch coaching that you'll return a AA player. Just sayin.
How's the digs? Would love to see some photos of your "crib."
Keep writing!
-Jim