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Month: April 2006

Holkham Beach

Holkham Beach

Hello!

We went to the beach last Wednesday after work. Great news: I got into a car share!! Colin got a car and asked me if I wanted to split the insurance costs and share the car. Of course :)) So that’s very exciting!! For now, I am not on the insurance yet so I am not allowed to drive it, but that should be fixed in a couple of weeks. Anyway, we took the car and went to the beach…

Holkham Beach

Holkham Beach

Eating chips in Wells-next-the-sea, a cute village on the north Norfolk coast. The ducks wanted chips as well!

Holkham Beach

The car!! And guess what, it’s an automatic, and I don’t care how girly I am, but I really like that!

Holkham Beach

Tanja, Nicole and Veronika at the beach

Holkham Beach

On our way to the sea

Holkham Beach

Too bad it was cloudy, but the sun came out every now and then!

Holkham Beach

Colin & Nicole

Holkham Beach

Loved the skies and the reflection in the water!

Holkham Beach

Tanja eating her glasses

Holkham Beach

For the last part, we had to take off our socks&shoes;, and wade through the water, it was quite cold!

Holkham Beach

Proof that we almost went swimming :))

Holkham Beach

Tanja giving a lecture

Holkham Beach

Me being happy πŸ™‚

It was a great trip, when we walked back to the car it was dark already. It will be so much fun to have a car and be able to go on trips every now and then.

My parents are coming to Norwich tomorrow, till Monday probably. Should be fun! Then next week is filled with courses, I start the Teaching Skills course and I also have the second part of the Further Unix course. Fun fun fun πŸ˜‰ And then in the weekend I am going to Stratford-upon-Avon with Veronika, to be a REAL tourist there hehe.

Have a good weekend!

Hanneke

Easter in the Netherlands & bike tour around Norwich

Easter in the Netherlands & bike tour around Norwich

Hello πŸ™‚

Hope you all had a nice Easter break! Mine was very nice πŸ™‚ It was great to spend a couple of days at home.

I left on Thursday, everything went fine, though the ferry was really really crowded, worse than at Christmas! Mostly football teams, rugby teams, scouting groups on their way to Easter tournaments I guess. I mostly had a very quiet weekend, I didn’t feel like running around meeting people because I had been busy enough here in Norwich. So for once it was nice to just sit down and do NOTHING hehe πŸ™‚

On Friday night I went for dinner at my sisters new apartment in Haarlem. It looks really nice!! Red and pink is not my favorite combination πŸ˜‰ but I still really like her place.

@ Laura's place

dinner!

@ Laura's place

My mum, my sister and me

@ Laura's place

Laura and me… πŸ™‚

@ Laura's place

Instead of helping with the dishes, I was creative with my camera πŸ˜‰ this was a placemat

@ Laura's place

The macro function works quite well!

@ Laura's place

Nice mirror!

On Saturday I went to the beach in Scheveningen with CΓ©lia and Gert-Jan. The weather was a bit boring, grey and quite cold. But it was very nice to see them and we went for a long walk on the beach and in the dunes.

flowers

I took this photo from the train between Haarlem and Leiden, the tulips were not blooming yet!

Scheveningen

Scheveningen

Scheveningen

Gert-Jan & CΓ©lia

Scheveningen

Scheveningen

Scheveningen

Scheveningen

They are crazy πŸ˜‰

Scheveningen

KΓΌrhaus at the boulevard

On Sunday we had a Easter brunch at our house with the whole family. 11 people at the table, very busy! Bart and Kaya even decided to hide eggs in the garden, you should have seen Paul, Esther, Laura and Robbert run outside to start searching, you would think they were like 7 years old πŸ˜‰ hehe.

Easter Brunch

Laura, Robbert and Bart in matching outfits πŸ˜‰

Easter Brunch

My dad and my aunt Els (his sister)

Easter Brunch

Joop, my mum and my dad – My dad is crazy and my mum *really* appreciates my efforts to take photos of family gatherings (if looks could kill πŸ˜‰ )

Easter Brunch

Kaya & Esther

Easter Brunch

My cute little brother who loves to be in a picture with me :))

Easter Brunch

Bart and Kaya hiding eggs

Easter Brunch

The children looking for eggs.. notice how Kaya is searching as well!!!

Easter Brunch

A full garden! Esthers family came to visit as well. My dad stole my camera to take this picture!

On Monday I didn’t do much, mostly worked on my website… I have dreamweaver on my computer now and I’m working on a MAJOR update, I hope to finish it soon!

Tuesday morning I went shopping with my mum, to buy lots of thing to bring to Norwich πŸ™‚ And then it was time to go back already. I had a good trip back, all went fine, this time the ferry was less crowded so a bit more comfortable.

Veronika came by at night, she left for Scotland the next day and I lent her my digital camera. That means I am finally forced to use my SLR again, boyyy that was a long time ago.

I went back to work on Wednesday, it’s so quiet… The office is often empty. But that did help me to work a bit harder ;). And before I knew it, it was weekend again!

I spent Saturday buying food, doing laundry and cleaning the house, so exciting πŸ˜‰ The weather was so nice though!! Very sunny and quite warm, I wore my sandals for the first time. My housemates had a BBQ, and I had Tanja, Patama and Nem over for dinner which was really nice.

On Sunday I went for a bike ride with Patama, unfortunately the weather changed to the usual overcast/grey/boring weather but at least it wasn’t raining! We biked to Venta Icenorum at Caistor St Edmund, not very far south of Norwich. This used to be a big roman town surrounded by city walls. All that remains now are the city walls, but you can walk around and they have some information about how it used to look. Plus there were lots of sheep with lambs so that was nice πŸ™‚

Biketour

This was the most impressive part of the wall

Biketour

Lots of sheep!

Biketour

This one was very curious πŸ™‚

Biketour

The lambs have red legs! And though they have a huge field, they need to eat from the same place πŸ˜‰

Biketour

We found this nice church surrounded by daffodils in a very small village!

Biketour

Patama and her brand new bike!

Biketour

There was a ruin of an old church on the other side of the street

Biketour

Patama reading one of the very old gravestones

We stopped at a tavern for some tea/hot chocolate and very nice cheese cake. We were following a cycle route that Patama got at the tourist information, but we didn’t like how it often used busy roads so in the end we made our own route taking little country roads. They are very nice! Really narrow, and we saw lots of flowers and birds and cute little houses. We even saw fields and fields of daffodils, felt like home πŸ˜‰ Too bad they were already wilting.

The last part of the trip was very scenic, on a road with warning signs for deep tanks and rottweilers and passing the Norwich water treatment facility, what a horrible smell!!

Now I am just relaxing, next week will be a busy one. Then on Saturday my parents are coming to visit! Should be nice, I hope the weather will be good so we can go to the coast on Monday (the 1st of May is a bank holiday here).

Other news… I decided to go to Switzerland for 2 weeks at the end of June. I am really looking forward to that! And this time I am not going to look up all train time tables in advance and book all the youth hostels πŸ˜‰ I found out last year that it’s not really necessary and it will be fun to have some freedom. I will also visit CΓ©lia for a weekend!

That’s all for now!

Hanneke

Haircut, History lessons, new House and going Home!

Haircut, History lessons, new House and going Home!

Hello!

Just wanted to post an update before I am going home tomorrow early in the morning. I will be in the Netherlands till Tuesday!! I am looking forward to it, happy to take the ferry again and I am sure it will be nice to be home for a while. I will also meet Celia and Gert-Jan on Saturday to go to the beach in Scheveningen, should be fun!

Last week flew by, I’ve been quite busy. I went to see Ice Age 2 in the cinema with Nazir (from Afghanistan), really loved the movie!! Now I have to see the first one πŸ™‚

On Fridaynight I went to Nicoles place. She cut my hair!! I haven’t been to a hairdresser for like 16 months so it was about time.. even though I didn’t really want to. I think it’s too short, but it will grow back so I’ll just be patient πŸ˜‰ When she was done, she asked me to cut her hair as well.. scary, I had never done that! But Nicoles hair is thin and straight so quite easy. Here are some photos:

Hair cut

Before!

Hair cut

And after πŸ™‚

Hair cut

That’s how much I lost…

Hair cut

I was threatening to cut off a LOT hehe

Hair cut

Having fun πŸ™‚

Hair cut

See the difference, and the length that we cut off was about the same!!

Hair cut

Nicole as a redhead πŸ™‚

More photos can be found here

In the mean time, Niko (her housemate) had prepared a typical Finish meal, which was really good!!

On Saturday I didn’t do much, but I did take this photo on campus:

Daffodills

Spring time!!

On Sunday I met with Nicole, Veronika and Patama. We visited Origins. This is a museum about the history of Norwich and Norfolk. It’s really nice! All interactive, lots of computer games to play and things to do, like learning the Norfolk dialect and listening to legends from around here. It was amazing to find out how big the Dutch influence has been here, actually there are lots of Dutch words in the Norfolk dialect. At some point 1/3 of Norwich was Dutch!! They called the Dutch immigrants Strangers… nice to know πŸ˜‰ Here are some photos taken there:

Origins

Playing a computer game πŸ™‚

Origins

READ THIS!!!

Origins

Serious students!

Origins

Oceanographer at work πŸ˜‰

We spent a couple of hours there, then went to the unlimited Pizza Hut buffet for lunch.

Origins

Nicole = crazy

Veronika came for dinner at night, but we were both still so full that we just ate dessert and we watched the movie The Story of the Weeping Camel Very nice!!

On Sunday, I also went to visit a house with Patama. Last week we decided to look for a house together, also for Celia. We visited one house last Thursday, it was really nice and we could have had it, but the landlord wanted full rent for July and August and Celia and Patama won’t be able to move until September. The house we looked at on Sunday is also from July, but he lets us have it for half rent for July and August. Perfect! It is a great house, really beautiful. It has 3 huge rooms, and one small one, a big open kitchen, (pink!) living room, and best of all: a conservatory!! It’s really close to university (less than 5 minutes by bike, I am going to be lazy πŸ™‚ )

So we decided to take it!! Yesterday we found a fourth housemate for the small room, her name is Jenni and she will move in July as well. The house also has a garden and even a glass house so we want to plant vegetables. I’m really looking forward to moving to this house!!

Here are some photos:

house

The kitchen, it even has a dishwasher!

house

The lovely pink living room πŸ™‚

house

The best place, the conservatory… we plan to put lots of pillows there and make it a reading room

house

My new house!

house

And the street πŸ™‚

Other than that, the campus is deserted now since the undergrads are on their Easter break. For a MONTH, students here are so lazy πŸ˜‰

Yesterday we played monopoly at Karla’s and Veronika’s place, it was good fun!

monopoly

Veronika, Paola, Irina and me

monopoly

And one with Karla in it πŸ™‚

Ok that’s all! Today is not a very productive day at work but never mind. I’ll try to do a bit more work and then I am going home to pack my bag, get some sleep since I have to wake up early tomorrow.

Happy Easter to everyone!!! (Easter = lots of chocolate :)) )

Hanneke