Visiting a School on an Island, Biking Up and Down (!) in Holland

So! It's been an interesting last few weeks. I apologize for the delay in posts - I am finding myself extremely busy, with scanning, interviewing later in the day, going to the gym for a least an hour four times a week...

But, I have some lovely new photos, etc., to share with all of you.

The first come from a school visit I made to a wonderful little village called Ijmuiden. The school itself was houses in these stone buildings that looked really old, very classic and pre-Victorian era. I loved it. The students were lovely, and their teacher, Dalal, was very kind. They even gave me this beautiful bunch of tulips (appropriately white and pink as the school visit was on Valentine's Day).

 In the last class, I had two very interesting things happen - one was that a very sweet kid asked me if I would be his Valentine, which I sadly had to decline, seeing as I am a happily partnered woman, and already have a Valentine, and the second was that when the class found out I could sing, they immediately started begging me to sing. Now, mind you, this is after hours of talking. So, I sang a really short intro to a song from Phantom of the Opera, after which, to my delight, as well as the teacher's, another student asked if she could sing too.

After the school visit (which was on an island-type thing), I took a unique mode of transportation to get home:

This is the "Fast Flying Ferry," appropriately named, because it does go quite fast across the water. I took it from Ijmuiden back to Amsterdam.

Between that school visit and now, I have really just been working - nothing too exciting, but then, yesterday, I did something really, really cool. I went with the ING (International Student Group) to a Dutch National Park. Now, in and of itself, going to a park may seem, I don't know, blah. But a National park is a different story. This National Park was called the Veluwezoom, and it was very big, and very, very beautiful. It looked just like Southeast Ohio. I LOVED IT. I mean, I miss many things here, but really high on the list is hiking, and exploring the woods, kayaking, etc. This was such a jolt of awesome-goodness for that feeling. I took a bike tour, along with a new friend, Hannah, who is from London (she's lovely), and 17 other ING folks. It. Was. Crazy. Up and down hills, winding, looping, huge vistas, close, dense forests, dunes, trees, and fresh, fresh air everywhere. Now, you have to realize, most of the Netherlands is completely flat. Going somewhere where there were hills - well, it was very exciting. The whole day was thrilling. Like being reminded of how alive you are, how good it feels to be active.

Here are some pictures of the day, and some videos, too!

A graveyard for Dutch soldiers in WWII (there was a huge battle near the park we were going to)

Dis muh fwend.

A snuggle/story-reading circle. This is genius.

The sheep field.

All the baby lambs!!!

I am so proud that I biked to the top of this hill!

This is the area where people can bring their dogs to run about freely - all the tan ground is sand! This place used to be under glaciers, which left huge sand deposits when they left. Crazy!

Aforementioned doggeh.

A forest-fire viewing tower

Two roads diverged in a wood..

Great Scott! What's that?!

Close.

Closer

Even closer...

Yep. Really close to this cow (it's a Scottish cow) on muh bike. His name was William. Hello there, chap. Nice horns.

Warning: Wild rooster. I have no idea what this actually is. Wild rooster? Are they so fierce?

 So, that was my very exciting Saturday. Today was a scan day, which basically means I spent all day in the lab (yes, on a Sunday), doing practice scans, and sitting in on real scans, back and forth, etc, etc. Tomorrow I'll look at the data. Hopefully it's good! It's always hard to sit there and watch the scans happening for hours and know that even if you scan all day, if the kids don't lie still, your data will be mostly useless...

Now, on to next week! I am taking off Wednesday to have a nice vacation day, where I can cook and laze about, paint my fingernails, maybe give myself a haircut...

I wish all of you the best! I miss everyone, as usual. Looking forward to seeing my good friend Rachel in a few weeks here - when we will be taking a totally awesome, exciting trip to London! And Wales! Doctor Who! VERY cool. Till then, my lovely family and friends.