Hello!!

Here are some photos from last month when we celebrated Francis birthday at Nicoles place:

Francis and me making fun of each other 😉

Tanja & Karla

good food! and candlelight 🙂

Nicole, me and Francis

Last Tuesday night we decided kind of last minute to go to a concert in the Norwich Arts Centre. The support act was Kat Flint, see (&listen;!!) her website. I really loved it, some amazing (almost sciency) lyrics, would love to have her cd when it comes out!

Kat Flint

These photos are taken in the break…

Our new clothes! And a rarity, me in a skirt!!

There’s a story about me & the skirt… I bought it last weekend, absolutely fell in love with it and HAD to have it. Now Nicole decided that this concert was the perfect opportunity to wear it. Yes. Great. Ingredients: my bike, recently greased chain, a VERY wide skirt, very windy weather. Yeah that didn’t really go well… almost ruined the skirt and decided to walk there & back again to save my beautiful skirt from further abuse.

Colin & Nicole

The main act was Cara Dillon and her band. Very nice as well, she has a great voice and I loved how the band played many different instruments. I had a great time at the concert!

Cara Dillon and the band

After the concert I stayed around, gave my email address to Kat Flint so that I’ll know when her cd comes out, and I bought Cara Dillon’s cd. A man came to me and told me: Thanks for you performence tonight, that was lovely! Euhh thanks, I didn’t do anything?? I took me a while to realize that he was probably mistaking me for Kat Flint, just because we both have red hair… I can only wish I had her voice as well!!

On Thursday I went to March of the Penguins with Johannes, it was showing on campus. Great movie, really loved it. Not surprising since it’s about Antarctica… but it’s fascinating, beautiful, funny, cute, even romantic!! Go see it if you haven’t already 🙂

On Friday I watched the Magdalene Sisters (a movie) with Nicole. It’s about an Irish asylum for girls who commited “sins” (even just getting attention from boys is considered a sin!). They work in a laundry and are treated very bad. Worst of all, it’s based on a true story and the last of those asylums closed in 1996. Quite depressive movie, but very good.

Saturday I finally got some sleep, went to Waitrose and translated the Motifive website to English. At night Nicole made a great dinner, Sandra and Angel came as well and we had a very nice evening.

Sunday it was time to get out of Norwich!! I was going to the coast with Johannes, the original plan was to go to Sheringham and take the coastal hopper (bus) to one of the towns more to the west, but Johannes had a flat tire so we missed the train. We took the train to Lowestoft instead, the same one Paola and Nicole were taking!!

Nicole and Paola in the train

They got out one stop before Lowestoft to go for a walk there. We got out at Lowestoft and wanted to go to the beach. But somehow we didn’t see some of the signs and we went in the wrong direction, ending up in an industrial area with lots of car dealers, the city dump, a huge wind mill and lots of concrete.

The lovely beach walk!!

With inviting signs…

We did find the most eastern point of Brittain there, a circle with on the outside the distances to several cities, to Amsterdam it was only 133 miles!

We decided that there must be some nicer beaches on the other side, so we walked back and then we saw all the signs for the sand beach, and we even found the tourist information. Much better!!

We bought some chips and ate them in the rain… But we got treated to an amazing double rainbow, the first one of many that day!

Panorama image of the rainbow

It quickly cleared up and all that was left was this very pretty cloud

We walked along the beach for about an hour, it was nice!! It was good weather most of the time, with a shower every now and then, but they quickly passed.

Me almost falling in the sea 😉

Johannes thinks he is not tall enough 🙂

Another beautiful rainbow!

Johannes & the rainbow

After an hour we turned around and walked back to Lowestoft. There was quite a lot of wind and we tried to take photos of the sand blowing over the beach, which never turns out as nice as you want to.

Blowing sand

I loved the clouds!!

More blowing sand and the little houses next to the beach

Another cloud and rainbow

We bought ice cream in a little stall on the beack walk, and when we sat down to eat them, we saw Paola and Nicole again! I was waving and yelling, but apparently they are deaf and blind 😉 we had to walk over for them to notice us.

Ice cream!!

Nicole kept taking photos of me and my ice cream, you can see more of them here

Nicole, Paola & Johannes

Paola telling some funny story 😉

We walked back to the train station with them and we were just on time for the train back to Norwich. Johannes got another flat tire on the way back, he wasn’t very lucky 🙁 I made dinner and Veronika and a friend of hers came over. We had dinner and watched Planet Earth again 🙂

Yesterday Veronika invited me for dinner, it was all German (speaking) people, they spoke German almost all night and I was able to understand everything (well almost). Now I am really motivated to start speaking again, it’s such a shame how much I lost that cause I was quite good at high school!

Ok that’s it for now, I better get back to work 😉

Have a good day!!

Hanneke