My Camera Works!

No really it does! Also-- I haven't been kidnapped and sold into the sex slavery here. Just been too busy to update.

Oh my gosh I love it here. The weather's been so wonderful (though I'm told that won't last very long) and the food is amazing and the people are all so friendly my family bought me a freaking

diabolo set! Uh YEA! So exciting. Except I'm so terrible and already the kids are showing me up. :( Haha. But I'm super excited-- because Csilla (an au pair from Hungary) and I have gone out to Vroesenpark near where I live with my hula hoop and her diabolos, juggling balls, and pois and having a blast in the sunshine that's manifested Rotterdam this past week.

Ermmm-- but yea let's see. My second week here Csilla, Marianna (Mexican au pair) and I made a trip to Amsterdam. It was our first time trying to figure out the trains and I think we purchased discount tickets when we shouldn't have but no one checked us on either the ride there or back so we'll never know. :) But we met up with a couple of other au pairs from Mexico and then they were meeting up with like 7 other friends from Mexico so it turned into a very large group that was speaking exclusively Spanish. Which was ok at first and then got a bit exasperating as I love contributing to conversation but was unable to. :( Boo hoo.

girls: Marianna, Maria, Andrea boys: no idea

Haha Amsterdam was a lot of fun. But it's hard to get anywhere very quickly with a large group because you walk like 50 feet then stop. Walk then stop. Sigh. I wanna go back with a much smaller group (3 max) and do a bit more exploring. And go back earlier in the day.

Umm... let's see. Went to a Dance Vibezzz (sp? idk) festival yesterday. That was fun. I was a bit hesitant to go at first... I had agreed to go a couple of weeks ago then kind of forgot about it until Maarten (my first Dutch friend I'd made) reminded me. But he, Ewoud (his bff), Csilla, and I went around 4:30 to it (it was a little over an hour away from R-dam) and had a blast. There were a bunch of DJ's playing (of course) house and the like on an unnecessarily large stage. And that's one thing I love about Holland-- you don't walk in a bar or club and hear country or Nickelback. Ever. Even if the electro is generic or cheesey you can at least dance to it. But yea the festival was super fun. Except that they expected you to pay €2.50 to go to the bathroom. And there were strict signs outside the festival that...

Me, Ewoud, Csilla

...I think were saying you shouldn't pee on the streets. O well. Had a blast regardless.

And I leave you, dear readers, with this:

'Ole Skippy wants to eat your children

An image of the vacuum with which I clean Ineke's office. I don't know what it is about this vacuum but I think if Stephen King ever saw it he'd definitely have inspiration for a new book. There is something inexplicably creepy about Skippy (yes for some reason the name kept popping in my head as I was vacuuming. This dustsucker is definitely named Skippy and it scares me.) If I turn up missing over the next few weeks, be sure to disembowel this smiling red death chamber, just to make sure.