A few weeks ago Marco and I were at a Dutch store called Big Bazar. One of the bins was full of tiles with sayings on them – who knows what culture had them first – translated into Dutch.
Ervaring is leren van je fouten. Sommige mensen hebben veel ervaring!
Experience is learning from your mistakes. Some people have a lot of experience!
Love is in the air… Jammer genoeg kan ik niet vliegen.
Love is in the air… Unfortunately I can’t fly.
(jammer genoeg = unfortunately/sadly/regrettably)
For the rehearsal dinner, my brother and his bride chose Gino’s East in St. Charles (Illinois). It’s a pizza place, but they also served us penne pasta, breadsticks, and salad. Yum! And that was before another guest broke out the container of freshly homemade chocolate chip cookies…
They had some pretty interesting pizza, from the classic Chicago style deep dish to the thinner crusts. (While they even had a sausage patty pizza, which included a full size patty as one of its layers, I stuck with the thin crust pizza.) The most interesting and delicious thing was the crust, which was definitely seasoned well.
The restaurant decor itself was pretty interesting. The first thing that caught my eye was the Homer Simpson poster above (made up of individually colored elements, though I forget what they were. Probably scenes or characters from the show).
The other crazy thing was that you were allowed to write on the walls. It did provide character to the place. There were a few places that they asked you to not write on the walls, like the bathroom. The sign there said Don’t graffiti here or similar, which of course someone altered to say Don’t gravity here.
It seems like life is returning to a bit of normalcy this week after getting back from Chicago last week. Jet lag is, of course, quite evil. I slept 12 hours (9:30PM to 10AM) the first night back in The Hague. The second night sleep was very difficult to come by…
On our last full day at my parents, Marco and I went for a long walk, exploring the local woods and then the recreation center and townhall. Our adventure took us past the local amphitheatre, which was built after I moved to New York so I had not seen it yet. Amphitheatres are open air theaters.
the area with the musical notes is also used as the dance area
from this angle you can see that the stone half circles are actually benches
landscaping around the edges
On Saturday my brother got married in Geneva, IL at Riverside Receptions. The wedding was absolutely gorgeous, as it overlooks the Fox River. The bride and groom worked very hard to pull this off, and it definitely showed! The pictures that the photography company (Le Cape Weddings) took were very creative and absolutely stunning.
Here’s a view of the Fox River, from one of our cameras:
Marco and I have found a photographer! This was the last major thing on the wedding to-do list, so we’re pretty happy right now.
We chose Anna Green, a freelance photographer who is a friend of a friend of a friend…you know how it goes. Her website has the tagline “To the Moon ‘n Back” and includes a lot of beautiful photos.
To celebrate the occasion she also gave us a bottle of Helfrich champagne. How sweet of her. 🙂
At the time of this posting, Marco and I are probably waiting at Dublin’s airport for a layover to Chicago (go scheduled WordPress posts!). We’ll be in Chicago for about a week for my brother’s wedding.
Here is a fun story for you. Of course, it wasn’t so fun for Marco at the time…
In the summer of 2009, Marco visited me in New Brunswick, New Jersey. As fate would have it, he arrived a few days before my job interview at the college I ended up working at as a librarian. He was thus able to come with me to New York for the interview, though he stayed behind in Pearl River when I took a taxi to the job. But that’s actually not part of the story.
The interview was on July 2nd, 2009. After it was over and the taxi pulled back into Pearl River, I was so relieved. I could finally relax and look forward to the fireworks show in New York on July 4th! We ended up going into the city in the morning and staking out a seat around 4PM for the 9:30 or 10PM fireworks showing. It was spectacular, of course.
fireworks set off from 6 barges in Hudson River… this was actually only the fireworks from two barges. The same show was repeated (exactly) on all barges at the same time.
The only thing you were missing was being so close to the fireworks that you could feel the explosions in your chest…
Anyway, so that was Saturday, July 4th, 2009. I believe that Marco was scheduled to leave the States and return to the Netherlands on Saturday, July 18th. On Thursday the 16th, early in the morning, I took a shower and left Marco to his business in my living room.
When I came back, it looked like a tornado had come through. Luggage strewn everywhere, clothes, documents — everything. I didn’t understand right away what the issue was, but Marco calmly told me that he couldn’t find his passport. 48 hours before his flight home!
Of course, I had taken so long in the shower (haha) that he had already looked up the rules on the Dutch consulate in NYC’s website, so he knew exactly what he needed to do. The embassy required a police report to be filed. Although he had last seen the passport on the morning of the 4th before we left for New York City, we had no proof that the passport was lost there. So we decided to file a police report at the New Brunswick police station.
When we went there we had to wait around for a bit for a police officer, but we eventually had one arrive. After a lot of filling out of forms, he told us that it normally takes 72 hours for a police report to be filed. After we explained that the flight was in 48 hours, he mercifully said that since it was a bit slow at the station, he might be able to speed things up. Come back tomorrow (24 hours before the flight or so!) to pick it up, first thing in the morning.
So we did – arriving right when they opened. We had to wait around a bit to be seen (not as long thankfully). Once we had the report we walked over to the train station. I had to go to work so Marco was on his own there. He went to New York, arriving around 10 or 10:30AM (not sure). He was told to get some passport photos. When he came back, he was told that he could pick up his passport on Monday morning, due to the time differences. It was 6 hours ahead in the Netherlands, so the offices were closed (after 5PM).
While of course Marco wasn’t too upset about getting to spend a few extra days in the States, that did mean taking a few extra days off work and changing his flight. He lucked out for a second time however — he had copies of his passport and he had his Dutch ID card. This turned out to be enough proof that they were able to go ahead with his emergency passport.
So in the end, he ended up getting home on time… I think it was a bit of extra questioning at the airport, but nothing too bad. The emergency passport was only good for getting back into the country once — he had to get a new passport before he came back to the States, and return the emergency one.
And here it is:
So that is the story of the emergency passport of July 2009. Pink! We never did find his original passport.
Tonight Marco, Roger and I went to Sumo, a sushi and grill restaurant, one of our frequent places to eat. But this time we went to celebrate Roger’s awesome grades on two exams he was doing for his work. Two 9/10s! I think he only needed a 6 or 7 to pass… but of course he went above and beyond and studied his brains out. 😉 Go Roger!
Sake and chopsticks
This was also the first time that I ditched my practice chopsticks (oefenstokjes, you can see a random image of them here). The practice chopsticks are held together with a small bundle of rolled paper at the top which causes the ends of the chopsticks to have a bit of spring or bounce to them. Simply squeeze them together and you are good to go for grabbing something.
But nope – this time I forgot to ask for oefenstokjes and decided to shrug and try it with normal chopsticks. It wasn’t that hard, but I admit that I stared quite closely at Marco and Roger’s hands to see the placement of their fingers and try to copy them. It mostly worked!
Just a quick blog post to say that we finished up the wedding invitations and and requested a sample from the printer. It looked beautiful! So Marco and I went ahead and submitted the order.
We received the email today that the order had shipped. We should have if in the next day or two. It’s nice to finally see things starting to come together, especially as we are leaving for America next week for my brother’s wedding. (Yep. Poor Mom has two weddings to deal with in two months!)
Today Marco and I officially purchased our wedding rings. Here is his:
I kid, I kid. You think I’d show the wedding ring off before the big day? But the reason I used the Hello Kitty design is because he’s been known to jokingly like Hello Kitty. When I first met him he had a tiny little Helly Kitty accessory hanging off his phone (I forgot who gave it to him). When it broke off, I got him another one as a joke. But of course he put it on there because he liked it! Or me. Yeah, probably the second thing…
And let’s not forget the $1 Hello Kitty band-aids mom found on discount some years ago. He was also gifted those. I think they were found recently somewhere in this apartment.
If it wasn’t going to be a picture of a Hello Kitty ring, I was going to post a picture of the decoder ring in A Christmas Story, another one of my favorite movies. I grew up watching it every Christmas with my folks, and Marco has seen it a few times now as well. Unfortunately it is not actually a ring…
The blog title was suggested by him, but we did just watch the first Lord of the Rings movie (The Fellowship of the Ring). Not sure when we’ll put the second one in.
At work a coworker offered me mint tea. With fresh leaves! It is the first time I have ever had it. It seems to be really popular in this country – not something I had seen before in America though I probably didn’t go to the right places.
The wedding stuff is going along well for Marco and I, although the stress has started to hit with trying to make the invitations out and get them sent to the printer. But it’s almost done…
Life in the Hague 