Guus Bosman

Today we are taking it very easy, and that feels great. I'm having a really good time here, and the last weeks have been very nice, but it has also been quite tiring. We didn't really have free time last weekend since we just had to go out and get some basic furniture: it's not very convenient to live in a completely empty apartment. But after a relaxing Friday evening it's now weekend, and our house is at least partly furnitured. We had breakfast together, the way we were used to in Haarlem, and then we went out. Not for large shopping, but just for fun.

In the morning I opened a bank account. Friday I received my first salary, and because I didn't have a bank account yet, I received a physical pay check. Checks here are in general much more common then in Holland. By the way, my salary is paid every two weeks instead of each month, something that is quite normal here (Sasha's employer for example also does that). Anyway, we walked to a bank near our house that I wanted to work with.

It's been fun to choose a bank, and my choice is Rigg's bank. This is actually a local bank: they have only branches in Washington D.C. and the cities around it, not in the whole U.S. However, they have quite a lot of ATMs here, and (important), they have branches nearby my work and our house. They're also used to dealing with international financial transactions. It is important that a bank has a lot of ATMs around, because if you use an ATM of another bank, there are extra transaction charges that are at least $2,00.

Opening the new account took a while, as the lady that helped me was not very experienced. But we were not in a hurry and she was very friendly. I opened both a checking account and a savings account (spaarrekening), the latter giving interest. As long as you keep enough money in the account, the accounts are free. Sometime in the next few days my paycheck will be "cleared", and then I can start using the temporary ATM card that I received.

We went for coffee afterwards, and then we walked around in the neighbourhood. It's great to be just together and have time to walk around etc. We had lunch at home.

I also like it that today I have time to update my website. It's now 17:00 o'clock here, and I am writing this article on the PC in our apartment. However, we don't have internet here yet, so I'll put the text and pictures on a disk in a while and upload them downstairs in our building's "business center", basically a free internet cafe.