Sunday, April 25, 2010

Two Weeks Notice

To everyone who is dedicated enough to check my blog more often than every two weeks it will be a while before you get another post from me.
Tomorrow at 2:45 a.m. I'm leaving Akersloot for two weeks of training in: Portugal.
Hopefully I'll be able to catch up on everything that happens when I get back...
Wish me luck!

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Texel

5:30 p.m. with the bus to Alkmaar. 6:20 p.m. with the train from track number 3 to Den Helder. 7:12 p.m. with the bus from Den Helder central station to the boat. 7:30 p.m. with the boat to Texel. 8:00 p.m. with the boat from Den Hoorn to De Cocksdorp. 8:58 p.m. by Antea's house (the Swiss girl, remember?).
I'd planned everything out so perfectly, written it down, bought a bus card, and packed everything Friday morning so that I would have time to go to school, run, and then go right to the bus. The bus riding went well. Then I got to the train station in Alkmaar. It turned out that the earlier train to Den Helder was delayed, so it was still standing on the track when I got there. I figured I could just as well take that train as the later one so I got on. Oddly enough there weren't that many people on the train- actually, there weren't any people on the train, but I figured that I was just early. When the doors closed and there still weren't any people on the train I started to get the feeling that something wasn't right, but the doors wouldn't open when I pressed the "door open" buttons. All of a sudden the train started moving, but in the opposite direction that it was supposed to, and not very fast at all. When it stopped completely again after about thirty seconds I started to panic a little, especially since there definitely wasn't anyone else on the train. It became obvious that I wasn't on a train heading for Den Helder, but on a train with locked doors that had just parked.
Whenever I'm in a scary situation I always make a list off the worst possible things that can happen. Number one: I wasn't going to die. Whew. Number two: I probably also was not going to get seriously injured or actually hurt at all. Number three: I might have to stay on the train until the next time it rode, and who knew how long that was going to be. Usually when I go through all of the worst possible scenarios I end up realizing that the situation I'm in isn't all that bad. This time it still felt pretty bad.
Since I couldn't think of anything else to do I pressed the "door open" button about a million more times. Then I considered pulling the emergency stop break but figured that probably wouldn't work either. I also seriously considered calling Milja, but thought that I should probably first check and see if I could find someone who would let me off of the train. Plus, I do have a little bit of pride, and I wasn't really looking forward to making a phone call telling her that I'd gotten myself stuck in a parked train. Once it was extremely obvious that I wasn't going to be able to get the doors open, I started walking super fast through the train. I was so relieved when I ran into another guy who seemed to have the same problem as me. He didn't seem all that relieved to see me though. I'm guessing he was thinking that not only was he stupid enough to get himself stuck on a parked train, but he also had to be stuck on the parked train with a foreigner. At that point it didn't really matter to me that the other guy was less then friendly because I was just happy not to be stuck on the train alone.
Together we speed walked through the train and after a few minutes were lucky enough to run into the conductor. This whole time I'd been completely wound up and scared: my heart was pounding a million miles a minute in my chest, and my face had gotten all hot and red. I was so happy to see the conductor: he was my knight in shining armour. We followed him to the cab of the train where we had to climb this ladder to get down on the train tracks and then run across the rest of the tracks to the other side and walk back to the train station. I was so happy to be out of the train that it didn't even bother me that the other guy who had been stuck in the train wouldn't talk to me for the entire walk back to the train station.
It felt like the whole being stuck on the train thing had lasted for hours, but in reality it had only been fifteen minutes or so, so I still made it back to the train station in time to get on the train from 6:20 that I was supposed to have in the first place. I was still a little bit shaken up, so the entire way I was completely stressed out and couldn't relax. Then it turned out that our train was delayed too, so once we got to the train station everyone had to sprint to the bus that was going to take us to the boat. Luckily we made it.
Almost right after I'd gotten on the boat I recognized Antea's host sister and her boyfriend who I'd met one other time before. I went over to them all happy that I'd found someone I knew and told them that I was going to visit Antea for the weekend.
"Oh, really?" says her sister. "Fun. How are you getting to our house though?"
"Oh, with the bus," I said. "Aren't you guys taking the bus?"
"Um..." says her boyfriend. "There is no bus from Den Hoorn to De Cocksdorp on Friday night."
"What?"
It turns out that the bus only drives durning the summer and over the weekends. Obviously Antea didn't know that when she wrote out the directions for me. Normally I just would have been able to ride with Antea's host sister and her boyfriend, but they were staying in Den Hoorn at her boyfriend's grandma's house (I know, this is getting a little bit complicated- just try to stay with me) and De Cocksdorp is on the complete opposite end of the island. In the end we met Antea's neighbor on the boat too, and it turned out she was going home so I rode with her back to Antea's house.
It wasn't until I had made it all the way to Antea's house in De Cocksdorp that I could actually breathe calmly again. Ugh, traveling is so stressful. When I got there Antea was still at the restaurant where she works, but I had known that ahead of time. I sat with her host brother for a little while and watched t.v. and when her host dad came home a little bit later he showed me some of the yard and the Friesian horses that they have for buggy pulling. They were these huge black horses (not as huge as the Budweiser horses, but they're kind of the same build) with perfect shiny coats and this proud walk.
Once Antea came back from work we spent some time sitting and drinking tea with her host family. Then we went and laid in bed upstairs and talked. Talking to her is so nice because we can talk about everything good and bad and we understand completely where the other person's coming from. We spent the whole weekend talking about everything that we love about the Netherlands and everything that we're going to miss so much. The only things we could think of that we wouldn't miss were the wind and the rain.
We set the alarm for 9:00 Saturday morning because I had to leave again on Saturday afternoon and we didn't want to spend the entire day sleeping. Spring is finally starting to kick in here so when we woke up there was sun shining through the curtains and birds singing. We ate breakfast in their dining room which was half surrounded by windows and then found a bike for me to use from the garage.

Texel is one of the five "Waddeneilanden" from the Netherlands. The Waddeneilanden are north of the Netherlands and Texel is the biggest of the five. It's the biggest, but it's definitely not big. It's 20km long and about 8km wide with only 14,000 or so people that live there. Apparently it's a huge tourist destination for people from the Netherlands, Germany, and lots of other places in Europe. Since it's and island, it's not as cloudy there as it usually is in the rest of the country and everything is surrounded by the sea.
Whenever anyone hears that Antea lives in Texel they always say how sorry they feel for her being an exchange student and being "stuck" in Texel. But Antea absolutely loves it and I understand why. Living there maybe makes it harder to see the rest of the Netherlands but she's happy with it.

Since I'm going back to Texel over two weeks with a group from AFS, Antea didn't want to show me everything that we're going to see then. Instead we spent all of Saturday near De Cocksdorp. First, in the morning, we biked to the lighthouse which is on the end of the island, and climbed to the top of it. We spent some time walking on the beach there, taking pictures, and sitting in the sun. Then we biked a little bit further down the beach until we got to the restuarant where she works and ate lunch and sat in the sun for a long time. After we had eaten we biked back to De Cocksdorp, walked through the street, ate ice cream, and sat in the sun some more. In the afternoon we spent some time with her host family and at 4:00 I had to take the bus back to the other side of the island again. While we were biking around, walking on the beach, and sitting in the sun on Saturday, we talked some more about everything. Our list of things we're going to miss here kept getting longer and longer.
Everything was so beautiful on the island, and biking there with the lighthouse and the sea all around with the sun shining and the wind on our backs I had another one of those Europy moments. Sometimes I still can't believe the things I get to do here. I never could have begun to imagine them before I came and even now some moments don't feel real. It's like I'm watching a movie with someone who keeps experiencing these incredible things, but I'm lucky enough that it's my life.
The trip back to Akersloot went more smoothly than the trip to Texel. There was a little bit of an inconvenience because something was wrong with the trains and everyone ended up having to take buses back to Alkmaar, which took way longer than it would have otherwise. Still, I didn't have any terrified moments and Peter came and picked me up in a city before Alkmaar saving me half an hour or so on the train.

Sunday was another day for running practice, and even though the sun was still shining and the birds were still chirping it turned out not to be a very successful training.
I watched the Rotterdam marathon for a while in the afternoon because TDR had three guys and a girl competing to qualify for the European Championships in Barcelona this summer. Of course the stupid t.v. station only showed the very first runners come in and then they switched to soccer so I didn't get to see TDR's runners finish. They did qualify though.
In the afternoon we went to the beach with Misha (the puppy) and to Egmond to buy Joakim a birthday present. The first thing we saw when we stepped onto the beach was this huge lady wearing a swimsuit and standing in the sea. I know I said that it's starting to be spring weather here, but it's not that warm yet. I would say it was about 50 degrees outside on Sunday with a strong wind. Everyone was already staring at her because she was absolutely crazy to be swimming, but then she got even crazier. She came out of the water and completely stripped off her swimsuit. Everything, completely exposed. All of the families with their kids and their dogs were all staring. As far as Sunday goes this was probably the most exciting event that happened. Of course I reacted completely innappropriately and started laughing so hard I couldn't stand up straight.

That's the latest update from the Netherlands. From beautiful island to naked ladie, I guess we have it all here.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Goodbye

I hate saying goodbye. It's not really harder to guess where I get that from, since anyone who has ever had to say goodbye to my dad can clearly see that he's not a big fan of goodbye's either. I think I've gotten a little bit better here, because the goodbyes are always extremely long and drawn out. You say goodbye to someone and kiss them three times, then you talk for a while longer, say goodbye again, hug, and after this has been repeated a few times it's finally over. Still, I'm no pro.

Luckily I didn't have to say goodbye to Johanna right away on Monday. Her flight didn't leave until 1:20 in the afternoon, and first I had a 5 kilometer race. Milja, Johanna, Anita, Isabel, and Peter all came to watch. On Sunday night I had a hyper hour or so where I got really nervous to race on Monday. It wasn't a big important race or anything, but I hadn't done a race for a while, and I wanted to see an improvement in my times. Monday morning I was a little bit calmer than I had been on Sunday night and once I had all my clothes together and I'd jogged around a little bit I was pretty much ready to go.
In the end the race went fairly well. I'd wanted to run the 5 kilometers in 21 minutes, and I ended up running it in 21:31 or so, but I wasn't too disappointed. When you race sometimes you have the feeling that it didn't go very well, and sometimes you have the feeling that it did go well. On Monday I had the feeling that I'd raced well, so I was happy. Before I came here I would never have been able to run 5 kilometers that fast. At that same pace I would have had a 4kilometer personal record, so that is definitely something to be happy about. Portugal, here I come! Only two weeks to go.

After I got done racing Milja and Peter's taxi services both got to work. Milja went with Johanna to Schipol right away while I changed my clothes, cooled down, and stretched. Then Peter and I came afterwards. We still had enough time to drink something at the airport, but we all had that kind of melancholy-there's-a-goodbye-coming feeling, so we didn't sit for too long. We brought Johanna to the security gate, and then waited until we couldn't see her anymore to go.

Then she was gone...
I'm so happy that Johanna got to come. I'm happy that I got to show her everything here, that she ate Easter brunch with us and got meet my family here, and that she was there to watch me run on Sunday. Hopefully it won't be so long before I get to see her again.

Monday, April 5, 2010

Showing Off

After seven (almost eight) months of living here, I finally got to show my life off to someone. I can blog about everything I do, write e-mails to my family, and tell my friends about it on skype, but it's not the same. Until you've been here you don't really understand what it's like. Eating stroopwaffels while you're soaking in the sun in Amsterdam, sitting around the table with the family, watching fields full of windmills and lambs going by, being blown away by the super strong wind- these are only things that you can actually feel if you're here.
This weekend was show off weekend: I showed off my Dutch, I showed of the Netherlands, and I showed off my host family to Johanna. The more important thing is that I got to spend time with her, which I don't get to do very often. We always manage to jump right in where we left off when we see each other again- I guess that's what happens when you've known someone so long. Plus, over the weekend I got to cross a few things off of my "To Do in Holland" list.
On Thursday I woke up incredibly nauseous, with a horrible cold and a splitting headache. Obviously I couldn't go to school feeling like that. Instead I went for a run, cleaned my room and got ready for Johanna to come in the afternoon. After I ran I spent a lot of time sitting around and waiting. When her plane landed we had to stand for a long time and watch her on the other side of the glass while she waited for her suitcase. She did finally get to come out with it and we ran into each others arms (queu heart wrenching music). Johanna had plenty of time to study the Dutch landscape on our way to Akersloot because we got stuck in the last-day-of-work-before-Easter traffic jam. When we got back we brought Johanna with us to the grocery store (I have this weird love of going to the grocery store here, so why wouldn't she?) and then home for dinner. The weather was nice so we thought that it would be a good experience to bring Misha (the new puppy) to the beach with us for an evening walk. We made it about ten steps along the beach before we decided that it was way too windy and cold to walk on the beach. Instead we went and sat in the restaurant for a while, then braved the wind again on our way to the car.
Friday morning I woke up bright and early and went for a run. For breakfast I got to show off one of the finest Dutch delicacies- hagelslag. Hagelslag is amazing. You know the sprinkles in America that are these dried up pieces of sugar with color on them? Hagelslag looks like sprinkles, but it's complete chocolate. And you're allowed to eat it on your bread. Whenever you want. So we ate hagelslag on our bread, and then we walked to the bus station that would take us to the train station that would take us to Amsterdam. On our way to the bus stop we walked behind what we thought was a sweet old lady. She stayed sweet for a while, but then all of a sudden she turned angry. The whole time Johanna and I were speaking Swedish to each other in the bus stop and Johanna was leaning against the side of that glass wall that is always around a bus stop. All of a sudden she turned to us all angrily and said, "Kijkuit! (watch out). That was a little strange, but we didn't really think that much of it. Then, once we got on the bus she sat in front with one of her friends and the two of us sat in the back. The "sweet old lady" kept turning around and yelling at us in Dutch to be quiet, and talking super loudly to her other old lady friend about how we were talking way too loud. I'm not sure what it was about our Swedish speaking that made the old lady so upset, but we were using completely normal inside voices to talk to each other. Luckily we got away from the angry lady as soon as we got on the train and the rest of the trip to Amsterdam was fairly uneventful.
On Thursday night we had made all sorts of plans for what we wanted to do in Amsterdam and we had finally decided on going to the Madame Tusseaud or the Anne Frank house. But on Friday morning when we looked online, it turned out that tickets for the Anne Frank house were completely sold out and the Madame Tusseaud website wouldn't work at all so we couldn't order tickets. Of course without tickets we would have had to wait in line all day. Instead, when we got to Amsterdam we took a scenic route to the Anne Frank house so that Johanna could at least say she'd seen the outside of it. Then we walked back to the centrum of Amsterdam and I decided we should try to find the Red Light District so Johanna could see what it was like. The problem with finding the Red Light District is that it's a little awkward to go up to someone and ask where it is, so after wondering around for an hour or so I gave up on trying to find it. We did find lots of coffee shops, and sex stores that gave a small impression of one of Amsterdam's claims to fame.

Since we couldn't get into the Anne Frank house and we couldn't find the Red Light District, we decided to give up on being tourists, find something to eat, and shop. We ate sandwiches on ciabatta bread and then had enough energy back to shop for the entire rest of the afternoon. Around 5:00 or so we started to drag again, but we still wanted to shop a little more before we went back. Neither of us was really hungry, but we figured that we could buy something really little in a cafe and then sit there for a while. Our first mistake was that we picked a cafe in the middle of the main shopping street with a menu in English. This is never a good sign when it comes to prices. When we walked in we had to wait forever before someone finally came to take our order and then the girl behind the counter was not a nice person. Johanna and I had decided that we were going to get a tiny bowl of cheap vanilla ice cream and share it, and then just drink water. When I tried to tell this to the waitress she got all crabby and told me that they didn't have vanilla ice cream. She also didn't seem able to explain why they didn't have any vanilla ice cream when it said that they had vanilla ice cream on the menu. Usually I'm a pretty assertive person, but my Dutch wasn't doing very well since I'd spent the entire day speaking Swedish with Johanna. I was so intimidated by the angry girl that I gave up and order the super expensive and super tiny container of Ben and Jerry's for 3,50 euros. Since we were going to eat it with the two of us I asked for two spoons to go with it. Those tiny containers of Ben and Jerry's all have that wooden stick in there that your supposed to use to eat it. The cashier pointed this out to me, but then I pointed out that there were two of us. "Fine," she said. "But you can only have one spoon and you have to bring it back." Really we should have walked out of the cafe at this point, but both of us were exhausted and just wanted to sit down. Plus we were thirsty and we wanted water. I ordered two glasses of water. What was our total? Nine euros. The ice cream was 3,50. Two glasses of water was 5,50. We didn't even have ice in our water!
Once I had stopped fuming about how incredibly horrible the service was and how much we had paid for our water, we ate the ice cream (or I tried to eat my ice cream with that stupid stick that came with it) and had a little bit more energy to shop for a few more hours.
With the train and Taxi Milja we were back in Akersloot by 8:00. We ate, changed clothes, put on make-up, and at 10:00 left for one of my friends houses in another town. We went to the usual bar with four of my friends from school. It's hard enough being in a group wtih people who have three different native languages, but being in a dark crowded bar makes it much harder to. My friends did a good job speaking mostly English though and I think Johanna felt welcome. She did have the same look on her face that I probably had the first time I went out to a bar. It's the "Am I Really Standing in a Bar With a Drink in My Hand" look. We didn't stay out that late though, because we both wanted to be able to get up the next morning and have another full day.

We got up at 8:30 or so on Saturday, both took showers, ate a quick breakfast, and then left with Milja for the Keukenhof. The Keukenhof is a famous tulip garden in the Netherlands. People come from all over the world to see the tulips there in the spring. Picture all of these beautiuful green gardens with tons of tourists swarming everywhere and taking a million pictures. My dad would have had a panic attack after about two minutes. Unfortunately, Johanna came a little bit early for the tulips, so there were hardly any tulips outside. There was an inside nursery that was full of tulips though, and walking outside was still pretty because everything was so green and fresh. Milja and I decided that we have to go back, but we couldn't figure out a time when we'd be able to go before it closes. In the end we figured that it would have to be on another day when I was as sick as I was on Thursday. Apparently the Keukenhof has a theme for the whole park every year. This year the theme is Russia, so there were displays with "Russian" things all over the place. Right when you walked in there was a motorcycle with a side wagon, in one of the greenhouses there were planets hanging up (which a British tourist managed to knock down), and another greenhouse was the ballet house. We spent the whole morning at the Keukenhof fighting all of the other tourists for a good place to take a picture, and smelling the flowers.

I'd been feeling guilty about Saturday afternoon because I knew I had to go to running practice and leave Johanna. On our way back from the Keukenhof I realized it was probably okay that I had to leave, because Johanna could keep her eyes open for about thirty seconds at a time before they would shut again and she'd nod off. This reminded me of how exhausting it really is to travel and to constantly be surrounded by a language you don't understand. When I went to the training I left Johanna in bed with a book and orders to take a nap. In the end she didn't sleep very long, because instead her and Milja went to the Akersloot mill and to a farm with lambs. The mill was in the plans the whole time and I had been there a few weeks ago with Oma and Opa, so I wasn't missing anything new. The lambs are a sore subject though- petting lambs is on my list of things to do and now, while I still haven't done it, Johanna has. I'll be a good friend though and be happy for her that she got to experience something new.

While Milja and Johanna were frolicking with the lambs I spent two hours training (one hour of which was in the pouring rain, and another hour of which was in the shining sun). After the training the whole team listened to a presentation on eating right. I'd been looking forward to this presentation since I first got here, because it seems like with how much my training has changed since I've come here that my eating habits should change a little bit too. Of course, they have changed since I'm in a new country with new food, but I've felt a little bit lost when it comes to what I really should be eating; what times, how much, etc. The bottom line turned out to be fairly obvious- don't eat too much fat; eat lots of grains, different fruits and vegetables, egg whites, and lean meat. We'll see what we can do with that...
After the presentation I was whisked away without even taking a shower (I did my best with the bathroom sink and some perfume) and we drove to the train station. We took the train to Amsterdam and then the metro to the Theater Carre. Before Johanna came, we were planning what we were going to do with her and I kept saying that I wanted to go to a performance of some sort in Amsterdam- a singer, or a band, or something. We couldn't find anything good while Johanna was here, so eventually I gave up on that idea. On the Friday after Johanna got here Milja found a street dance group called Blaze in the newspaper. Blaze is an international street dance group that was began in England and just happened to be on tour in Amsterdam while Johanna was here. How perfect is that? So Milja brought Johanna, Taiana, one of Taiana's friends, and me to see Blaze. The performance was an hour and a half and it felt like only thirty minutes. Watching them dance was completely absorbing. Some of the things they did seemed physically impossible and the choreography was flawless. If it wasn't for the fact that all the girls in the group had to wear these really ugly pants with long crotches (and the fact that I can't dance at all), I would start trying to be a professional street dancer right now.

Instead of taking the metro back to the central station after the performance we walked; and we decided to walk through the Red Light District since Johanna and I hadn't been able to find it while we were in Amsterdam. It wasn't all that late, 10:00 or so, which isn't late enough for it to be unsafe yet. Still, I think we were all a little bit shocked when we got there. The street was incredibly crowded not only with tourists, but also with groups of men standing outside of the windows trying to decide which girl they wanted to go in to. The girls themselves were all wearing white lingerie and standing under blue lights which made them seem way more promiscous and exposed. To give it a little bit more of a "real" feel, the smell of pot was everywhere. Milja turned to Johanna right away and tried to convince her that not all of Amsterdam is like the Red Light District. We made it completely unscathed and a little less naive back to the train station.

On Easter Sunday we finally had time to sleep in. Once we were dressed and ready we helped a little with getting the table ready for everyone who was coming over for Easter Brunch. We were in charge of bread, hagelslag, meat, orange juice, and coffee. Inge brought tulband, which is white bunt cake. Anita made scrambled eggs with potatoes and feta cheese. Eric and Marja brought salmon and tuna salads, plus dessert which was fruit with a sort of sweet yogurt. Peter brought chocolate Easter eggs which- like any chocolate- have turned out to be a huge weakness for me. We introduced Johanna to everyone and tried to keep her a little updated on the conversation. It was hard though, because the conversation switched to something else about every two minutes, someone was always talking about something different, and people are always laughing about something that isn't funny when you explain it all over again.
We sat by the Easter brunch for three hours. I did my very best not to eat too much because I knew I had to race the next day, but it was hard. I'm one of those people who isn't very good at not eating after I'm full. If there's food sitting in front of my nose it takes a huge amount of will power and concentration not to eat it. And there was a lot of food sitting in front of my nose. As usual though, it was nice to sit with the entire family and have a big meal.

Everyone left in the middle of the afternoon and then Peter, Milja, Johanna, and I got in the car again and drove to Vollendam- a typical touristic Dutch town. Vollendam is on the sea and has a huge fishing industry plus a huge tourist industry. There's a ton of stores with Dutch souveniers, restaurants selling fish, ice cream shops, and a few stores where you can dress up in typical Dutch clothing and have your picture taking.
I promised Milja I wouldn't complain about this in my blog, so I'm going to be objective and tell this story just the way it happened:

We walk by one of these stores where you can dress up and have your picture taken and Milja says, "Come on, you and Johanna have to do this." I protest a little bit but figure it can't be that bad, so we go in the store with her. Once I walk into the store I start protesting a lot. This is because the clothes that you have to put on and have your picture taken in are absolutely hideous. They aren't okay, they aren't just a little bit ugly: they're absolutely hideous. (That doesn't count as complaining either, that's just stating the facts) Anyway, once we were inside I start protesting big time. After about five minutes of arguing with Milja I realize I could probably ask Johanna what she wants to do, or at least fill her in on what Milja wants us to do. Once she realizes that what she wants is for us to put the horrible clothes on and have our picture taken she shakes her head too and says no way. I'm finally getting to the point where I think I've won the argument and we can go back outside in the fresh air when Milja comes with her winning argument. "I'm only asking this one thing from you," she says. "You've been living in my house for seventh months, and I've taken such good care of you. Do this for me."
The people who work in the store got us dressed in layers and layers of wool clothes. The finishing touch was a white lacy cap and a huge pair of wooden clogs. Then we stood in front of painted backdrop of a green house with a bouquet each of fake tulips. The people who worked at the store took pictures and Milja took pictures. Now it's done; I've worn traditional Dutch clothing and I have a picture to remember it by. Plus it does feel good that I'm not indebted to Milja anymore for taking such good care of me. Who knew you could repay seven months in fifteen minutes and some wooden clogs?

We took a long way back from Vollendam and drove past the sea and through some more tiny Dutch towns. Johanna and I decided that at some point in our lives we're going to buy a huge Dutch house that looks out over the sea with a canal in the backyard. Then we're going to eat chocolate, cookies, and ice cream all day and get gloriously fat. We're still working out a few kinks in our plan, but in the meantime could we have a better dream?

On Sunday evening we took care of some last minute things for Johanna's flight home the next day and my coming race. We watched a movie and ate soup with left over bread from the Easter brunch. Her last night with us was a quiet one.
The blog from Monday is coming soon, I promise. First though I have another running practice to bike too, and a few more days of school- we'll see when I can fit the rest of the blog in. I'm a busy girl, you know...