Met Vuur In Je Ogen

Everyone has a birthday, and when you have a family that lives close by each other, everyone gets together to celebrate everyone's birthday. There's a lot of birthday parties.
Last Saturday, Inge (Milja's older sister) had her birthday. Remember that first birthday party I went to right away when I got here? Yep, the one where I was absolutely terrified to walk up to everyone in the room and try to say "gefeliciteerd." Well, I've come far since then. At Inge's birthday party "gefeliciteerd" rolled off of my tongue and kissing everyone three times wasn't awkward at all. I guess you can get used to anything...
Standard birthday procedure is to eat cake right away when you get there, and then you basically keep getting appetizers until you eat dinner, then dessert, and then tea with a cookie or chocolate on the side. It's a lot of food. Peter, Milja, Taiana, and I got there a little bit later than everyone else, so they were all done with cake, but we jumped right in. Birthday cake from the bakery in Spooner is NOTHING like birthday cake from the bakeries here. Actually, as far as I know Inge didn't have a real birthday cake- she had all different kinds of "cakejes"- little cakes- that everyone could pick from. Anyway, at Inge's party (and the rest of them) we spent the afternoon sitting with everyone eating cake, nuts, appetizers, drinking tea, and talking. For dinner she had turkish bread, three kinds of salads, and chili. Inge makes such good food- by all of the family dinners she's always the one who brings the fresh vegetables and salads.
That was another birthday party gone by- luckily there's a few more to go before the year is over.

On Sunday we went on another day trip with TDR. We drove to Papendal which is sort of like the olympic city of the Netherlands. I'm making that sound really glamorous, but as far as I know the town itself isn't all that exciting. The place we were at is a hotel but it's sort of a "sport hotel." All sorts of sports meetings are held there and lots of athletes come there to train. The reason we went to Papendal was to listen to Ellen van Lange talk. She was the 1992 Olympic champion in the 800 meter dash. She started running when she was about 18, and she was 22 when she won in 1992. That race was so neat to watch because she ran at the back of the pack for the entire first 500 meters or so, and at the end she just starts to fly- she's running so beautifully- and passes everyone. (Here's the link for the youtube video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eis7ZxbHjU ) Besides telling us about herself and her training she talked about runners in general. She said that as runners we all know what it's like to be standing at the starting line of a race and ask ourselves why we would ever want to run- that we've all wished to be the person who's walking their dog on the street so that we wouldn't have to race. This is true, there's times before I race where I envy everyone around me who doesn't have to. But she also pointed out that we all love running enough to keep doing it even when we have those doubting moments, and that we always realize how worth it it is. She also told a story about how Paula Radcliffe was picked to be on a relay team not because she was a good runner but because of the "fire in her eyes."
I don't believe that having "fire in your eyes" can get you everywhere- or even very far- but somehow I still got stuck thinking about what she said. The thing is that when you see the best runners, skiiers, bikers, soccer players, dancers- they all have something about them that's a little bit different. When you're around someone with so much drive and dedication you feel it all the time, even if they're not running or skiing or doing whatever it is that they do. Maybe it's charisma, an aura, or just a vibe- or maybe it's fire in their eyes.

While the athletes with fire in their eyes are off winning olympic races and breaking records I'm making small strides too. You won't see mine in the news anytime soon, or even at the top of any results list, but I can feel it a little. Running is fun. Maybe it's because spring is coming, or because I can finally train as hard as I've been wanting too. For sure it's that I'm starting to get a little bit used to training hard and once in a while I can run laps in the amount of time I'm supposed too.

Right now it's proefwerkweek, but it's almost over. On Saturday there's a new puppy coming: Misha, a black flatcoat retriever. Over a week Johanna's coming to visit from Sweden, and on Easter Monday I'm racing 5km for the first time in a long time.
There's lambs in the fields, ducks crossing the street, and crocuses everywhere.

Happy Spring.