Guus Bosman

We're back! We just came home from a wonderful vacation in San Antonios, Texas.

It's a very nice place to spend a long weekend like this, and we had Tex-Mex food, tequilas, very warm weather and a beautiful river side.

Now quickly to bed, as normal life will continue tomorrow. We're greatly refreshed and ready for work again! Of course, later this week more, with stories and pictures.

Let me take the opportunity now -- I haven't been online in days, which hasn't happened in the last year -- to wish you all a very good 2005 from Sasha and me. Best wishes, good health, and, perhaps for some of you a visit to the States this year?

Yesterday we celebrated Christmas. It was a really nice experience to have a Christmas with a five year old child that wakes up in the knowledge that Santa Claus brought the presents that are under the tree. We put cookies for Santa Claus, and some food for the reindeers, and indeed, in the morning the food and cookies were gone!

After breakfast we gave each other presents under the Christmas tree. This was my first American-style Christmas. It was a lot of fun to give and receive the presents. The rest of the day we took it easy and we cooked a huge meal: turkey, mashed potatoes with gravy, salads. For desert we baked a chocolate cake.

This morning we had fresh bagels for breakfast. It is snowing outside; little snowflakes are whirling down. We're going out now, to downtown New York.

Today it was a very cold day.

The Sunday paper mentioned that it might snow today, and when we woke up I was a bit disappointed that the world wasn't covered in a nice white layer. I like to walk to my work, which takes between 20 and 30 minutes, and is usually nicely refreshing. I was looking forward to the walk, but the moment I stepped outside our apartment I changed my mind. It was extremely cold! The temperature was somewhere around -12 degrees Celcius, but most of all there was a very strong, icecold wind.

Even the short walk from the metro station to Starbucks, and then to my work, made me very cold. Tomorrow I'll bring my gloves and a hat.

Yesterday we had the Christmas party of my work.

The party was held in the Mariott hotel in Rosslyn, Virginia and we were on the top floor of the hotel. There we had a great view over the Potomac river and the city.

It was a fun evening and it was very nice to talk with colleagues in a non-work atmosphere and meet their partners. After the official party we went to a bar at Court House, near where we live. Steve, a colleague, gave us a ride (thanks!) so we had time to quickly go home before going to the bar. We had a great evening and talked with many people.

Today we had an easy day. In the late afternoon I made a short visit to the Museum of American History.

We just came back from the Christmas party of Sasha's work.

The party was in downtown D.C., where Sasha works.

We have internet at home!

This afternoon somebody from Comcast came and installed the TV decoder as well as the internet modem. The connection seems to be very good. I am currently listening to one of my favourite internet radio stations, and I watched a part of the Dutch newsbroadcast. The connection is has a theoretical maximum of 3Mbit/s, but as this is a cable connection it depends a lot on the usage of the people in this area. So far it's been very good.

It's great to be online from home; it's the same feeling as I had when DSL was installed in Haarlem, two years ago.

A nice things about Sunday mornings is that we have a lot of time for breakfast.

Important things on our table are the coffee, French or Dutch imported cheese, juice and fresh bread. American food is usually very good, but one thing that is hard to find is nice, fresh bread. In regular supermarkets they just don't have it! There is one special supermarket, called Whole Foods, that does have the right (European) bread close to us, so that's where we did shopping yesterday evening. American cheese is usually pretty good (I like the cheddar cheese), and next to that there's a large variety of European cheese to choose from. Including, of course, Dutch "Kaas Unie" cheese.

Today it is Sinterklaas in the Netherlands. This is probably the family celebration that I will miss the most of all the holidays. I have great memories of the Sinterklaas party: the presents, the poems etc, but most of all the great atmosphere with my closest family. Jaap and Mieke are now in Leeuwarden where they'll celebrate with Ettie and Gerben. Sinterklaas visited the United States yesterday, he was at the Dutch embassy in Washington D.C.

Here the preparations for Christmas are going on everywhere. Yesterday we went to a shopping mall where they had a huge Christmas tree with Santa Claus under it, for the children of course.

Today Prince Bernhard died at the age of 93. He was the father of our current Queen, Queen Beatrix.

Three people sent me a message over MSN to tell me that he died, almost at the same time. Internet is a good way to stay update on the daily news in the Netherlands; I read Nu.nl everyday for example, and sometimes background articles in Trouw or NRC, Dutch newspapers.

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.