Guus Bosman

After the movers delivered our things on Monday (7/24) I slept one more night in the hotel in Cary , a place near Raleigh.

On Tuesday I worked till late. After work I did shopping for the first time in the Kroger supermarket near our house and came home around 9.00 pm. I spend the evening searching for the essential items such as pillows and bed covers, and a plate for breakfast.

The next day I made more progress and I assembled the bed by the light of one of the lamps that I had found in the boxes. On Friday Sasha arrived and we had our first weekend in Durham together. We bought a shower curtain and small items for in the house.

On Monday we were invited for dinner at Bonnie and Nunik's place where I met Sasha's colleagues for the first time. Bonnie and Nunik also live in the Belmost. During the week we had guests a few times, and spend our our time on unpacking boxes and assembling the rest of the furniture.

Saturday evening we had a BBQ. Sasha invited her class mates, and there were almost 25 people enjoying burgers, hotdogs and good company.

During the day we did shopping with Beia, Emily and Christoph. We went to Cosco, where we bought the food and necessary atrributes. Cosco sells items in large quantities, so we were done quickly. Every time I realize how convenient it is to have a car... can't believe I've lived without one for so long.

In the late afternoon Beia and Madeline came to help preparing and made a (excellent) guacamole. There is a public barbecue place in our apartment complex between the swimming pool and the lake. Bonnie, Emily and Matt went to the BBQ place to reserve the one of them (it's first come, first serve) and around 6.30 pm we got started.

The party was very nice: great people, good weather and hamburgers, of course. We had music and a lot of different beers, even a local beer from Morrisville.

On the same day that I got my drivers license the movers came to pick up our furniture. So on Friday night we slept in a virtually empty apartment. Everything that remained in the house we would have to take with us by plane. Our only piece of furniture was a large inflatable mattress.

On Sunday I flew to North Carolina, where I would stay for a few days in a hotel until our furniture arrived and I could move to our own house. The traveling didn't go as planned -- I had booked a ticket for a flight at noon, but that got cancelled and American rebooked me for a flight at 4 pm. Because of bad weather this flight was delayed and I finally arrived at RDU around 7 pm.

I picked up my rental car, a white Dodge Stratus, and immediately got lost in the area around the airport. My original plan was to check into the hotel, and then drive to work to see how to get there in the morning, but it somehow it took me over 2 hours to get to the hotel (it should have been no more than 30 minutes). I drove on many, many roads in Cary, and even when I finally found the right street, it took me a long time to locate the hotel, it because it wasn't very visible from the road and it was dark already. I quickly learned how to drive on a 4 lane highway after sunset.

I was staying in a Red Roof Inn in Cary, very close to where I work now. When I arrived there it was close to 10.00 pm and I didn't even have dinner yet, so I drove to downtown Cary and picked got some Chinese for take out. I also visited Kinko's to read my e-mail and print the Google map directions from my hotel to work. Driving from the Red Roof Inn to my work turned out to be really easy, and the next morning I arrived safe and on time at my new job.

Friday evening I picked up Sasha from the airport. After my initial adventures last weekend I found the airport at once -- a week of practice in reading maps and remembering directions paid off.

It's been a very busy week with a new job during the day, and assembling furniture and unpacking in the evenings. It's really nice to have a easy weekend together now.

Yesterday evening we went out for dinner in Chapel Hill, at the Top of the Hill restaurant. It's a place on top of a 3 story building, and we had a nice view over the main road. We were looking at the different cars to see which ones we liked.

Sad news: my grand aunt Rineke, my mother's aunt, passed away last Friday.

Today we brought our coins to the bank.

For two years we have been storing our spare coins in a drawer in the kitchen. The last months it's been harder to open and close the drawer because it was so heavily loaded.

We carried two bags of coins to my local bank where they used an automatic counting machine to determine how much is was.

The final count was just over $200 -- quite a bit more than two years ago when I changed my remaining euro coins. We had over 1350 1-cent coins, but the biggest value obviously came from the quarters.

It's a very busy weekend, with a lot of preparations and packing but we are well prepared and making good progress.

Today Ettie is graduating from the Van Hall Larenstein institute in Environmental Science (Milieukunde). Congralutions from both of us!

After graduating in Delft three years ago, and now completed a study in Leeuwarden. She has found a job and started last Monday with her new employer.

Ettie has a website with her final thesis.

So, as I noticed a week ago, one of the most frequently used search terms that brings new visitors to my site is "How do you pronounce Guus?"

The problem with my first name is that it has 2 sounds that are difficult to pronounce for most American speakers. First of all, the first letter G is the [x] in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). This is a velar continuant similar to the ch in Swiss German that doesn't exist in most languages, and American English doesn't have an equivalent for it.

My experience is that after some practice most Americans are able to pronounce this sound in a fairly authentic manner. A short-cut I usually recommend is to use the IPA [g], which is the first sound of the word goal.

It's surprising to most Dutch speakers, including myself, that the second sound (the uu) is usually harder than the g. The Dutch uu is the [y] in the IPA, and is similar to the French u as in vu or the German ü sound. There is nothing close in American English, nor in Spanish which many people speak here. Often, the sound [ʏ] or [u] is used instead, neither of which really comes close to the long [y] sound.

Want to hear an example? Here is a native Dutch speaker pronouncing the name Guus.

We are with Jonathan and Irena to celebrate Ilana's birthday (congratulations!). She turned 7 last Thursday and today she has a party for her friends and their parents.

There will be two very surprising guests at the party: David and Milena! They are in New York for a vacation, and we're looking forward to see each other again... it's been more than two years.

Last night, when we were traveling from Washington to New York we made a stop at the Woodrow Wilson truck stop, and I saw a very familiar name on a sign... Gus Busman! My name is of course Guus Bosman, an amazing coincidence. The pronunciation of Guss is different than my name's, but the difference Bosman and Busman isn't very large.

"Hop on the bus with Gus and sign up today!"

Monday morning I saw Karen and Annemieke in downtown D.C. They are on vacation in the U.S. and are staying with Karen's brother Ruud in Maryland.

We had coffee together in Starbucks near the Mall, where Annemieke and Karen had just seen the Memorial Day Parade. We had a nice chat and then we went to the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, where we saw a collection of Asian Art.

I went to the supermarket this afternoon and I was surprised by how warm is was outside. Not super sunny, but it's at least 85 degrees, very nice.

Because of the nice weather Wholefoods put a barbecue outside to let people try sausage. A very popular snack.