We have been on holiday for almost one week now.we are staying at the orderthe brother of one of our friends while they are on holiday. we are loving Holland because it is so green we have bikes to ride and a lovely home to stayin. now we need to figure out how to cook and eat differently since the food here is much more experience than at home! Today tom came home with a 4 pound bag of potatoes and said "this is our new rice!" At home we usually eat rice everyday for lunch but potatoes are much much cheaper here so I am looking recipes up on the computer. I have never really cooked potatoes!

please excuse the lack of punctuation! I am doing this on my phone and it is tedious ! I will include a few photos and update a bit later but we are all well and enjoying the reduced responsibilities. Tom still has to check in at work and stay on top of all sorts of things but it is still a holiday!

gorgeous gardens!!

bikes!! This is elsbeth our friend from home. We are dtaying I

 in her hrother in law's house. The kids had so luch fun playing together all day!! They missed each other for sure.

Enjoying european breakfast pastries!!

I would not survive without my packing cubes!! Keeps all our stuff in order!

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Family Holiday!!

We are taking off in a few hours! We need to be in Germany for a work things for Tom in August and we are SUPER excited. Our last trip to Germany two years was fantastic. It was hands-down the best holiday/work trip we've ever had....green everywhere, walking trails, cheap place to stay, great food etc etc.

We are excited to spend a few days in Paris before taking the train to Holland to stay in the home of a relative of one of our friends here in town! They are on family holiday themselves so we are again VERY privileged to be able to have a free place to stay for THREE weeks! We are looking forward to just walking and biking around Holland and trying all the food.

Can I also say that just about everything in Paris and Holland is free for kids under 18? How COOL is that. My amazing deal-hunter of a husband found teeny tiny hotel that will let the kids sleep on the floor for free! I thought Paris would be too expensive but apparently, the hotels are much cheaper than other international cities because they are older and smaller and more...uh...European in their amenities as opposed to flashy American.

So anyway - I doubt I'll be posting as much for the next few weeks but we'll have PLENTY of pictures to upload afterwards!!

Summer VBS

This summer....just before Ramadan started last week, a friend of mine wanted to run a VBS style thing for her kids and the children of some neighbors of hers. We were all grateful for someone organizing something for so many kids!

Her theme for this day was learning to forgive and learning to give good gifts to each other. So she pulled together some play kitchens, plastic food and kitchen items, lots of playdough, pretend menus and such we sat and ordered food while the kids made it.

She is very talented as a script writer and so she told a story which was translated by Elsbeth. I was furiously cleaning all the playdough off the floor before our next activity (= She told the story of Joseph told over the three days of activities.

     Someone donated some VBS-type stuff to her and she is happy to create different "modules" and to help others to implement them. What we can help her with is the translation into Arabic so Elsbeth and I feel like it is a great trade off!

And here you can see my two redheads playing kitchen (=

Perfect Example of the 1st World/3rd World dynamic

 
I've been dying to take a photo of this at the right moment. That means I'm not driving quickly, I have my phone, I can actually make it work and click without wiggling too much. Not an easy task (=

So I was thrilled when I got this right outside our front door the other day. This is what I mean by the clash of 1st and 3rd world in this previous post. Here is a perfectly modern garbage truck so you make some assumptions about garbage collecting being familiar to you.  And yet what actually happens is that there are large, metal, square containers with no bottoms to them and folks just throw stuff in or near or close by. You can find furniture, tree branches, cow carcasses, goat heads, community donations of working toys and clothes set a bit farther away from the pile.

So the modern garbage truck pulls up to the pile/container, 5 or 6 guys get out and flip the container on its side and then proceed to put the stuff in the garbage truck by hand. Hmmm. The first time I saw this I thought the container had slipped off the truck so all those guys were having to clean up the mess. Then I realized that was the SYSTEM. hmmm.

Do you see what I mean?.....one of the stressors of living here is seeing one thing and making assumptions only to realize it isn't the case. Once in awhile it isn't a bit deal.....but multiple times a day it can happen so often it gets draining.