a spoonful of sugar

is it horrible that i haven't really been homesick at all yet? i'm rather glad, truthfully. i know without a doubt that i will be eventually, but it would have been so intense to have to deal with it all at once.

i learned more about the beautiful city of almere. it is divided into "wijks" which are groups of streets, and all of the wijks are themed. so, for example, the dance wijk has streets like "samba straat" which pretty much rocks. and the rainbow wijk has houses actually painted colors. pretty much fantastic. and playgrounds, little mini ones, are hidden throughout.

s. and i went to the movies today. he gets off early on wednesdays, at 11.30 instead of 3.15 so we went to the simpsons. yeah, i know. i hate the simpsons. but really, it was much less horrible and over-the-top and wierd than i thought it would be. i didn't hate it, which is about the highest praise that show will ever recieve from me.

(did i just spell recieve wrong? recieve, receive... crap, i don't remember.)

i have discovered s.'s favourite things. essentially, anything on a screen that moves, has an action figure, and fights stuff. this includes, however, star wars, so we have some common ground. kind of. i have also learned that he is v. v. good at not listening, but we're working on that. he's a good kid, even if sometimes he doesn't act quite the part. ;)

my first day of "official" work, t. was home and he drove me around almere some more, and it was really neat because the city of almere doesn't just... peter out. it has a really clear deliniated border -- it's this row of houses, and offices, etc. also, there are no above-ground power lines (except for one main branch, generally) in the netherlands. they're all underground. ask me how i feel about that. yeah, i pretty much love it. so much prettier than having the lines hanging everywhere.

so, i'm heading out. much love, and if i haven't emailed you in a while, i'm sorry and i love you, and when i'm more settled in i'll make sure to make it up to you.

don't know when i'll be back again...

i have officially been in holland for... i dunno, a day or so.

you know what? all the worry, all the omigoodness-i'm-freaking-out-on-the-airplane, all that? i'm pretty sure it was all for nothing.

t. and n. are lovely. absolutely lovely. i went grocery shopping this morning with t. and he bought me all sorts of yummy things. food is a big deal to them, i think. they were explaining it... n. was in a horrible accident several years ago, so now they live life as it is meant to be lived. dinner last night was absolutely lovely - t. likes to bbq, so we enjoyed barbequed pork and chicken.

my room is lovely, and i'm now oficially hooked up to wireless internet, and i have t.v. and everything i need.

almere is beautiful... it's new, only existed in the past 20 years or so, and so clean and well planned. they have seperate "bike roads" alongside the regular ones, and a seperate "bus road" as well. their garbage bins are all linked by a pipe, and at regular intervals during the day the contents are sucked into the main pipe. it's so cool. there are lots of trees and parks and water, and it's just gorgeous.

today we visited a kind of petting zoo, which doubles as a monkey rescue center, and then we hung out downtown. it was really quite cool. after that, we went to this really famous ice cream place, and i had this strawberry thing, and it was practically a meal and it was fabulous.

henry fondastraat is a part of a section in almere called the hollywood area. the houses there were all designed by modern architects, and there are slanting houses, houses with glass walls, houses with rounded ceilings, so many awesome ones.

anyways, that's it for now.
muwah!