Lazy weekend
Things are back to normal now with our living arrangements, leaving us to have a very pleasant weekend. :) We woke up at 6:00am on Saturday to bake apple-cinnamon muffins, brew coffee, and make tea. As soon as all this was done, we put on a bazillion layers of clothes and loaded up all the food and drinks into Rick's dad's car, which we had borrowed for the occasion. Twenty minutes later, we arrived at the post office in Heerhugowaard, where an enormous crowd of people was milling around, waiting for....
U2 tickets! Including Rick's friend Martijn, who had been waiting there in the cold with three other friends since 4:00am. Rick and I distributed the muffins and warm drinks, then hung around with them for a few hours before heading home to try to get tickets online, in case they were sold out before Martijn got up to the front. In the end, it was impossible to access the internet site, but Martijn and friends were able to get 24 tickets, 2 of which belong to Rick and me!!! Hooray!!!
The rest of the day was spent lazing around on the couch reading (and napping, hehe), until around 8:00pm, when we headed to a friend's in St. Maartensvlotbrug to watch movies and eat junk food. :) We wound up watching the Japanese version of "The Ring", which scared the crud out of me-- I shrieked so loud at one point that I actually scared the others, who weren't all that impressed by the movie itself. :-P I'm a terrible wimp when it comes to scary movies!
On Sunday, Rick and I drove up through the Wieringermeer polder to the Dijkgatbos, a small "fake forest" which was planted (in nice straight rows) in the 1930's. The whole area was actually underwater before being dried out and turned into farmland in the 30's... I found it pretty amazing to think that there must be people out there who can remember when the land we were driving around on was part of the sea! After being reclaimed the first time, it was then flooded again at the end of WW II, when the Germans blew up part of the dike which held back the IJsselmeer. The nature park that Rick and I went to was planted around the area where this happened, which is why it is called the "Dijkgatbos": dijk=dike, gat=hole, bos=forest. Very creative name. ;-)
We wandered all around the forest area and eventually made our way out of the trees and up to the top of the dike so that we could look out over the water. Off to the left, we could vaguely make out the Afsluitdijk, a dike which connects the province of Noord-Holland to Friesland and separates the saltwater North Sea from the now-freshwater IJsselmeer. Rick claims that on a clear day, you can even see Friesland from where we were standing, but I'm not sure if I believe him. :) We wandered all along the dike, with the water on one side and the forest on the other, and the sun shining down on us (for once!). The top of the dike was only about a meter across, with the sides sloping down steeply, and the whole thing was covered in soft, lush green grass and dotted with grazing sheep, none of whom seemed the slightest bit interested in us. :)
On the way home we stopped off in the town of Middenmeer, where Rick's mom grew up. Rick showed me their old house, and the place where his grandfather's shop had been (he'd been a blacksmith and a wagon-maker). The town looked much like the others in the area-- all the houses are square, made of bricks, and have steeply-pitched red tile roofs. Everything is relatively new compared to where Rick and I live-- many of the houses in the center of Schagen are hundreds of years old, whereas everything in Middenmeer was built in the 20th century. But it still had a very Dutch feel to it, and it was great to see places that have a lot of significance for Rick. :)
And now I need to go to the post office to mail off my application for studiefinanciering-- I finally got my own bank account and got added to Rick's insurance yesterday, so hopefully I have everything I need for my application to be processed... *crosses fingers*
U2 tickets! Including Rick's friend Martijn, who had been waiting there in the cold with three other friends since 4:00am. Rick and I distributed the muffins and warm drinks, then hung around with them for a few hours before heading home to try to get tickets online, in case they were sold out before Martijn got up to the front. In the end, it was impossible to access the internet site, but Martijn and friends were able to get 24 tickets, 2 of which belong to Rick and me!!! Hooray!!!
The rest of the day was spent lazing around on the couch reading (and napping, hehe), until around 8:00pm, when we headed to a friend's in St. Maartensvlotbrug to watch movies and eat junk food. :) We wound up watching the Japanese version of "The Ring", which scared the crud out of me-- I shrieked so loud at one point that I actually scared the others, who weren't all that impressed by the movie itself. :-P I'm a terrible wimp when it comes to scary movies!
On Sunday, Rick and I drove up through the Wieringermeer polder to the Dijkgatbos, a small "fake forest" which was planted (in nice straight rows) in the 1930's. The whole area was actually underwater before being dried out and turned into farmland in the 30's... I found it pretty amazing to think that there must be people out there who can remember when the land we were driving around on was part of the sea! After being reclaimed the first time, it was then flooded again at the end of WW II, when the Germans blew up part of the dike which held back the IJsselmeer. The nature park that Rick and I went to was planted around the area where this happened, which is why it is called the "Dijkgatbos": dijk=dike, gat=hole, bos=forest. Very creative name. ;-)
We wandered all around the forest area and eventually made our way out of the trees and up to the top of the dike so that we could look out over the water. Off to the left, we could vaguely make out the Afsluitdijk, a dike which connects the province of Noord-Holland to Friesland and separates the saltwater North Sea from the now-freshwater IJsselmeer. Rick claims that on a clear day, you can even see Friesland from where we were standing, but I'm not sure if I believe him. :) We wandered all along the dike, with the water on one side and the forest on the other, and the sun shining down on us (for once!). The top of the dike was only about a meter across, with the sides sloping down steeply, and the whole thing was covered in soft, lush green grass and dotted with grazing sheep, none of whom seemed the slightest bit interested in us. :)
On the way home we stopped off in the town of Middenmeer, where Rick's mom grew up. Rick showed me their old house, and the place where his grandfather's shop had been (he'd been a blacksmith and a wagon-maker). The town looked much like the others in the area-- all the houses are square, made of bricks, and have steeply-pitched red tile roofs. Everything is relatively new compared to where Rick and I live-- many of the houses in the center of Schagen are hundreds of years old, whereas everything in Middenmeer was built in the 20th century. But it still had a very Dutch feel to it, and it was great to see places that have a lot of significance for Rick. :)
And now I need to go to the post office to mail off my application for studiefinanciering-- I finally got my own bank account and got added to Rick's insurance yesterday, so hopefully I have everything I need for my application to be processed... *crosses fingers*