Cake time!!

Hi,

I still enjoy my cake baking and decorating. Here a few pics as I like to play with my newly installed Picasa toy. Not many new cakes since we came to The Netherlands, but I do have a few "on order" for the next few weeks including the wedding cake for my brother and his fiancee. So I continue to work on improving my skills.



Cheers,

Mascha

Circle parties

Hi,



Just an example of Dutch society (and yes, it's true and it is indeed cringe time when it happens).



Happy reading!



Cheers,



Jeroen & Mascha



Going to a Dutch Birthday Party (copied from http://www.expatica.com)


So your Dutch colleague (or your girl/boyfriend) says to you, "Hey, why dont you come over to my place on Saturday, its my birthday" And you think great, Im making friends here, this is really kewl. Yo, party with the Dutch.



And like a good party-goer, you take a shower, put on a bit of cologne and dress up a bit for that you-never-know-who-you-might-meet moment.



OK, so the party is called for five in the afternoon on a Saturday, but no problem-o, that must mean dinner, and so you get a nice bottle of wine for your host and head off, fashionably late. Bzzzz.



Enter the world of the circle party.



Circle parties are a uniquely Dutch version of hell which level, Im not sure, but on the enjoyment scale they fit somewhere between doing your taxes and going to the dentist.



Imagine if you will, a group of adults sitting in a circle on folding chairs. You will be expected to shake hands and introduce yourself to everyone of them. Who brought their grandmother, you might be thinking, and why is she wishing me congratulations? Did I win something?



No, you did not. Take your gezellig seat and sit down for a cup of coffee. Cold coffee. And a piece of could-be-cake, could-be-pie, sure-is-awful.



Respond to every cold fluid and sawdust-flavoured morsel with a grin and mmm, lekker! Who brought their kids, and why are they running around? How can there be so much smoke when the party just started? And the heat Why is there no heat? Its November and the bloody door is wide open.



For the next two to six hours, everyone will sit in that neat little circle and try to make polite conversation.



Do not try to impress them with your Dutch or knowledge of Dutch society, because you will be wrong. Rather, talk about the quaint little things you like here; mention your travels; discuss Seinfeld. Keep it light. Do not mention that people are dressed as if in pre-1989 Poland; do not ask if you were supposed to bring a gag gift costing less than five euro.



There is no food. You got your cake, so shut up. Though the clock is moving slowly enough to prematurely age your twin on another planet, though it has struck six, seven, eight oclock, there is no dinner. Did they say dinner? Maybe you were supposed to eat beforehand.



And so it goes. Even Dutch people hate these things, and how could you not? How can you party with your new friends with Tante Helena showing you her surgical scars and little Jan-Jaap sticking the raisins from his cake up your nose.



Its not so much a party as an obligation; like flossing.



When Dutch people want to be friends with you or to entertain you, they invite you out, or they will explicitly say dinner-party, barbeque anything but the dreaded birthday party.



You cannot be part of Dutch society and avoid the circle party, but I do have some tips:



First of all, I limit my Dutch partner to six circle-party-credits per year, each good for four hours of fun with the family. An eight hour circle party (yikes, Christmas) uses up two credits; no more credits, and gosh, were so booked up!



The second tip is to set a time limit, say two hours if you wait for the party to break up naturally, you could have already developed stage ten lung carcinoma, not to mention malnutrition.



Finally, dont worry about being an oddball-buitenlander. Pick up a magazine and read, wander around and snoop, make calls from the other room. Trust me, nobody will notice.



But dont forget on your way out to say goodbye to Tante and Oma and cousins Jaap, Jan and Joris all of them -- again with the handshake (or three-kiss if they try) and the obligatory wasnt this gezellig. Well wasnt it?



Until the next time.



P.S. The Dutch take an obtuse pride in saying gezellig is not easily translated, but I find that it can easily be interchanged with this sucks. Try it, and youll see what I mean.

Time to reinstate our blog!

Hi all,

Remembered this week we had started up a blog with all good intentions in 2007. Started off with a long story with the aim of more frequent updates that would be shorter. Hmmmm, they never followed. So here a new fresh start as I got all inspired by finding out I could pretty the blog up, which was fun to do. Anyway, what have we been up to since our last newsy e-mail (oops, way way way too long ago)?!

We moved into our (rental)house in Voorhout where we are quite settled at the moment. It has worked out well with being close to the motorway, train station in walking distance and the grandparents closeby for visits. We live in the house on the corner. Jeroen's appartment in Amsterdam has been rented out for now as the buyers market isn't that great at the moment. We plan to stay in this house at least till August next year and then we will decide what we will do.

Sophie is growing up very fast. At 6 months she started her solids and she has loved eating ever since. She can be a bit picky when the food contains too much chewy stuff, but she is getting better and better!

First solid meal at 6 months

Just being cute at 6 months

The winter was long and cold! It was unfortunately the coldest winter The Netherlands has had in about 12 years!!! Just our luck to be back again when that happens. On the positive side, we were able to go ice skating, which was good fun! (But very tricky after not having been on the ice for about 10 years!!!!)


Sophie's first christmas


Ice skating (was very handy to have the buggy there as a support)





Checking out the apple tree we have rented for Mascha's dad at a big apple and pear orchard in a town nearby. It's only a little tree, but in autumn we will have enough apples for apple sauce, apple pie, apple muffins, apple slice, apple cake etc. till we get sick of it.





Trip to a goat farm. The hay was more interesting than the kids.

In March we went away for a weekend with the Moerenburg family. Mascha's parents had their 40th wedding anniversary and we went to a holiday park in Vaals in the south of The Netherlands. We had a great weekend away with some nice day trips. After Mascha's parents, her brother and his fiancee left we stayed for a holiday for the rest of the week.

Lunch with the anniversary couple

Lunch near Vaals

At the three land point (where Belgium, Germany and The Netherlands meet). (Mascha looks a bit pregnant, very unflattering photo as is definitely not preggers at all)

Sleeping beauty (or praying to Mecca?)

After our stay in Vaals we went to Vienna for the weekend for the christening of Fanni, Mascha's cousin and god-daughter. It was a whirlwind weekend and good fun. We were both impressed with the city as it was quite beautiful. So we will definitely visit again!


Four little Viennese girls and one little kiwi.



No more mush only food. Time to start eating sandwiches!




Yay! Springtime. No more winter jackets and time to have a look at the bulb fields. They look and smell gorgeous!!! It was also time for Sophie's first ever bike trip. She was a bit confused about it, but coped rather well. When we go out on the bike now she gets all excited and enjoys the trip even more if we see any ducks, dogs, cows, sheep or children to which she points and shrieks when she spots them.




First bbq of the season with Mirjam and Sander



In May we had our own family holiday going to France. We stayed at a campsite in Corcieux in the Vosges (in a caravan), but spent most of our time sightseeing in the Alsace and sampling the local wines. We saw many well preserved middle aged towns. Some of the places we visited were Strassbourg, Colmar and Riquewihr, all very pretty. One day we also we also met up with our friends Jochen, Jeremy and Erin who either lived closeby or were on holiday closeby. It was great to see them as we had not seen them since we were in NZ.




After our holiday to France we had a weekend in Munich with the departed/returned to home country PwC Auckland "crew". It was a great weekend away with lots of fun, beer drinking, eating and sightseeing. Sophie stayed home with Jeroen's parents. It was strange to not have to think about nappies, bottles and clean clothes for an entire weekend. We had a great time, but were happy to be back home with Sophie again as well.





Recently we did a trip to the zoo in Rotterdam. Sophie enjoyed the aquarium best as the fish swim by so close to your face so she had a lot more to see compared to the other animals in the outdoor enclosures.



Bbq at our house with Kelly, Douwe, Kaemon and Nelson on a bank holiday.



In the meantime Sophie just grows bigger and bigger and she is so much fun. She walks behind her Miffy "zimmerframe", "chats" on the phone, chases Poekie the cat, loves going to feed the ducks, spent heaps of time "reading" books, this week climbed the stairs to the first floor (with Mascha holding her to avoid crashing down the stairs of course), loves having other children around, explores every part of the house and her toys and it's just such an amazing joy to have her around. Last week she already turned one and she is getting so big, yet a year ago she was so tiny and helpless. Being a parent is an amazing journey and we love it.

12 months Sophie



Birthday girl

During our weekends we try to see friends, but that isn't always easy as there somehow isn't a lot of space for spontaneous visits in this country. This means planning ahead and Mascha especially is quite allergic to this. However, if you don't do it, it seems to turn into not seeing our friends much. We are trying to find a balance in this at the moment, which isn't always sucessful.


Our New Zealand life is still being missed by both of us (but especially by Mascha), but we are working on getting through the culture shock at this end again. Yes, it can even happen we you move back to your own country. In August we will have our first anniversary of being back in The Netherlands again, so we hope that things will be more and more settled by then. Some things that Mascha experienced as tricky in the past and are still here (bad customer service, rude blunt people, very negative attitude towards foreigners (yes, way worse than in NZ, at the latest European Union election last week one of the more right wing party was the biggest winner and that is really right wing, not just standard National type right wing as opposite to Labour), lack of a spontaneous social life, materialistic society and inflexible and judgmental attitude to name a few). The Netherlands is quite a strange country, on one hand it's very progressive and everything is possible (look at our marihuana availability, the red light district, euthanasia), but on the other hand it's incredibly conservative. Can't really get our head around it.


There is not much we can do about it, apart from changing our own attitude to our observations and live life like we like to live it and treat people the way we like to be treated ourselves. We decided to go back to The Netherlands to be able to share our life with Sophie with our family and friends and so far we are trying to make the best of it. Our family is so happy we are here and they cherish every moment they have with Sophie (of course with us two as well). So from that point the decision to be here has been a good one.


The missing of "raw" nature, the presence of endless winter months and absence of long warm summer is just something that we have to accept. So maybe we just need to conclude that whenever you have lived abroad and were happy there too, life will never be the same. When you are away from your home country you will always miss your family and friends from there. When you are back in your home country you will always miss your friends and life from the country you chose to be in. And that will just always be part of our life.


One of the things we wrote about last year was the lack of being able to get a good coffee. This issue has been resolved by buying our own espresso machine and working on perfecting the art of being a home barista. Mascha has lots of fun with this! With some home baking on the go it's nearly a real cafe here!


It has been great for Mascha to spend the last year at home with Sophie. Loved every moment of it. But as Sophie has turned one it's time to start working again. Finding a job has been a tricky exercise. The health system is very differently organised than in NZ and working as an acute SLT is just not really possible here. So after trying to do a career change into being a project manager for primary healthcare issues it turned into a speechie job at a rehab centre. The project manager job would have been very interesting. Unfortunatly they did not have any money left in the budget to hire her this year, so she might be lucky there early next year. Now she will start after the summer school holidays (end of August) with a 2 days a week job for the school aged team. It's a maternity leave cover for 4 months only, but at least it's a start.


During the week Mascha & Sophie still attend First Friends, the local international playgroup. Both enjoy going there very much! Sophie has also been going to a swim class in a pool in a town nearby. She loves it and even ducks her head under water without any drama, so mum and dad are very proud!


As a tiny tod at First Friends




Now as a bigger tod
Jeroen still works hard, but the company is noticing the crisis effects as well. So that means more time for the family, yay! He is currently training for the Dam to Dam run, which is a run from the Dam square in Amsterdam to the Zaandam (another city near Amsterdam), 10 miles (16.1 km). So he is getting fitter and fitter. Time for Mascha to get off the couch and do more exercise than only running after Sophie and doing the household!


Anyway, that's it for now! Enough photos to look at and text to read. Will aim to be better at keeping up to date!

Lots of love,

Mascha, Jeroen & Sophie