Thursday, June 23, 2011

Work.

Sara and I have been working hard this week! I have (or will after tomorrow) been in court three days this week. I had protected witness measures "training" today in the courtroom and continue to work on written assignments as they come in. Sara's seem to be never-ending. She has three letters due out in the morning, given to her late today and very important, and has to go in early to get them finished.

On another note, we are still enjoying our time as much as ever. The US Cadets (from Westpoint and the Air Force Academy) are here visiting the Tribunal for the same program that we were involved in last year. Also, today is some sort of shopping holiday, almost as bad as Christmas shopping after Thanksgiving. All the stores are open until midnight and the discounts get bigger as the night goes on. It was a party in the streets essentially, and I started to think people were only choosing stores by the music they were playing. It was pretty fun, but as I said, I will have to be on the ball tomorrow morning in the Karadzic trial and Sara has to get her letters out.

Today we opened our first international bank accounts! Tomorrow our friend and neighbor Nenad is having his going away/birthday party, and Saturday I have some "football" to play. Hope everyone out there has a great weekend!

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Family Visit




What a crazy and eventful week. Amy and Lloyd visited and stayed in Amsterdam, where we went to eat dinner with them twice. They came for a day in The Hague (Den Haag), and we also went for an evening in Rotterdam. The first night was interesting when we took a turn into the red light district after dinner, in search of chocolate dipped waffles. The hague was a fairly normal day in the life, we went out for lunch on the canal and then rode bikes and walked around town. We also showed them the farm (next to our house) and went for a walk down the beach after a picnic in our apartment.

Thursday was the interesting one. Lloyd, Sara's step-father, is 6-8 and played professional basketball in the Netherlands in 1973-74, when their team won the championship. They organized a little reunion at the former center's house (Jan Loorbach). Mr. Loorbach was VERY tall, for one, and is currently the president of the Netherlands bar association, was the head of the Netherlands olympic committee, and has been an incredibly successful attorney here. He was great to meet, and all of the team was incredibly fun. They all spoke english for our benefit, and we had a great night of food, wine and deserts while perusing old news clippings of the teams sucess and picking Mr. Loorbach's brain. After a half hour train ride and a half hour bike ride to get home, we got to sleep around 1 and I had to be in court the next morning at 8:30. We woke up, worked all day, and hurried back to the train station at 5:30 to get back to Amsterdam. We got there just in time for dinner before the wine and cheese "candle light" canal cruise Amy and Lloyd had planned for their last night in Holland. It was beautiful, a two hour cruise through the canals at dusk, listening to the musings of the entertaining tour guide. It was a great night and we were sad to see them go, but we were exhausted by the time we got home at 1 am.

































Monkey Park



We have been pretty busy, but are getting to relax for a day or two, so I am going to do a couple updates now. A week ago today we went to Apenhuel in Apeldoorn, Netherlands. Apenhuel literally translates to ape haven. About fifty years ago in this part of the world it was apparently pretty common for people to have pet monkeys of all sorts. A group of people decided to create a place to take their monkeys to play, which eventually turned in to a permanent place for them all to live. This is in the middle of a national park and is now the only ape "zoo" in the world with free-roaming monkeys that interact with the visiting humans. There are now hundreds of kinds of apes, not all of which are free-roaming of course, as well as lots of birds. We actually walked by several peacocks, ducks, parrots, and an emu. So, there were bonobos, gorillas, lemurs, and about 50 others which I cannot remember, including one of the smallest monkeys in the world.

We went with our neighbors, Besart (from Albania), Nenad (Serbia) and Diana (Canada), as well as Taulant (Kosovo) and Josephine (China), who we have been hanging out a lot with and are always a good time. We had a great time, snacked all day, and made it home late Sunday evening, in time to rest up for our day off on Monday. Monday we, maybe a little homesick, went to see a good ole American movie, The Tree of Life. Both us us were notably disappointed afterwards. Back to work on Tuesday and on to a new post about Sara's mom and Lloyd's visit.


Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Sunday Date Day

Saturday we went to the beach with some fellow interns before our four hour long "class component" for school. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and the beach was as filled up as Daytona Beach during the Harley convention/Nascar weekends. Sunday it rained. Arthur planned a day-long date for me.

First we had breakfast at the restaurant at the very end of the pier that overlooked the stormy raging sea. Then we rode our bikes across town to the antiques and books flea market near Den Haag Centrum. We spent all day perusing the different booths. Then we ran a few errands downtown. Afterwards, Arthur had researched this amazing place that is hidden but right in our backyard! It is this adorable restaurant with no path leading to it at the edge of a park and canal. By then it had cleared up outside so we had soup and drinks and sat by the water. He topped it all off with wine (my favorite!) a rose (very sweet) and a row boat trip on the water. It was a lovely evening and we were both ready to get back to work the next morning.