The Shwits

We’ve been here a year !?

It’s hard to believe but we have officially been in the Netherlands for a year!

To say time has gone quickly would be an understatement. It seems like just the other day we were packing up to leave….

It’s crazy. You all always hear about this kind of thing on TV or in the movies, but we are actually doing it!

….now, a year later, here we are:

In honor of one year, I think it’s necessary to do the typical “reflection” post. However, instead of just simply re-posting a bunch of pictures, I thought I’d take a different approach. So allow me to present:

YEAR ONE: the numbers (in dutch!)

vierentwintig (24) – the number of hours we spent traveling here on our initial move. No, it does not take that long to get here. We decided to be cheap and have multiple long layovers. You always convince yourself it won’t be that bad…but it is.

nul (0) – the number of full-size kitchen appliances in our kitchen. In fact, our kitchen does not have an oven or dishwasher and the refrigerator is what we would typically refer to as “dorm-room” sized. While this was a huge shock in the beginning, it is oddly normal now. We have since upgraded to a toaster oven.

vier (4) – the number of bikes we have owned in a year. If you are keeping count, that’s 3 for Whitney and 1 for me. They all have names but I’ve lost track at this point.

tweeduizend (2,000) – since we are on the topic of bikes, the estimated number of kilometers I have biked in the past year. It is 4km to work, so that’s 8km a day, 5 days a week, for roughly 40 weeks, plus any additional biking we do on the weekends. Even though Whitney is able to walk to work, it is still safe to say we have both biked a lot in the past year.

acht (8) – the number of combined bike ‘incidents’ we have had. I have had 2 fairly rough encounters with fellow bikers and 1 small meeting with a car. Whitney has had incidents with bikes, cars, and scooters. It happens to everyone. You just dust yourself off and go on.

tien (10) – the number of times we have gone to Ikea and I have subsequently refused to ever go back. Think the crowds are the worst part? Try lugging all those over-sized boxes of furniture home on your bike. Somehow, Whitney always manages to get by with carrying only a pillow or picture frame.*

*she’ll read this, concede that it is true, and then somehow convince me to go again next week

vijf (5) – the number of ‘new’ countries I have visited in the past year – the Netherlands (duh), Germany, Switzerland, Egypt, Tanzania. Whitney hasn’t been to Switzerland or Tanzania yet but we are hoping to change that soon. Not too shabby for one year.

Germany
Egypt

twee (2) – a number strongly associated with Meatball. It is the number of weeks we had to wait to be able to ship her here, the number of weeks she lived comfortably in our new apartment, and the number of weeks she was lost outside after falling from our window. It is also the number of seconds we will currently leave an open window unattended.

drie (3) – the number of months it took Whitney to find a job. This is exceptional considering she spoke no Dutch at the time and everyone assured us it would take her at least 6 months. To make things even better, this is a job she still enjoys and we’re hopeful she can continue it for the duration of our living here.

zeven (7) – the number of cafe’s we’ve visited for Saturday morning coffee (“coffee shop” means something completely different in the Netherlands). This number is probably higher but you get the idea. Coffee is a huge part of Dutch culture and we are doing our best to experience as much of it as we can.

De Kostery
Doppio
Black & Bloom

twee (2) – a repeat but non-Meatball related number. The number of fish that Whitney has named in my aquarium at work. I work with hundreds of fish and for whatever reason, she choose and named two of them. Seriously, she keeps close tabs on these fish (sadly, only Mrs. Buttersworth remains as Francis has moved on to a better place).

zes (6) – the number of new holidays we have experienced since moving. In no particular order: Liberation Day, King’s Day, Sinterklaas, Pentecost, Boxing Day, Ascension Day. There are probably many more that I am forgetting at the moment.

zesentachtig (86) – the number of times people have mistakenly assumed I speak Dutch while speaking only English to Whitney. Ok, obviously this is a completely made up number but it does happen all the time. It seems the harder she tries, the more they switch to English. Meanwhile, I say nothing and get only Dutch. On the plus, we are slowly but surely improving our language skills.

achttien (18) – the number of meters we are now able to dive under water (we’ll up this with advanced certifications soon). We are super excited about our new scuba hobby and future trips will certainly be centered around this activity.

één (1) – the number of visitors we have had in the last year (hint hint).

ok ok, I guess we have technically had two visitors…

And last by certainly not least…

tweehonderdtien (210) – the number of days before we are home to visit! That’s right, we are finally coming home in December! By that point, it will have been 18 months since we were last home. I speak for the both of us when I say we are VERY excited about it. In the meantime, stay tuned. We have a few more adventures planned in the coming months.

Until next time,

Shane

Look What We Found !

A carnival!

No idea why. Did a little googling and still couldn’t come up with a reason, but who cares right?!

So, before we did our weekly grocery shopping at the market this week we took a little ride on the ferris wheel! I was thrilled! Shane…. well. He was a good sport, but I wouldn’t used ‘thrilled’ to describe him.

Here are a few pictures from the top. It’s too bad it wasn’t sunny today.

Happy Saturday!

Tot ziens!

Whitney

Fijne Koningsdag !

or in english, Happy King’s Day!

Today is King Willem-Alexander’s birthday and the whole country celebrates! This is actually only the 2nd King’s Day. Until last year ‘Koninginnedag’, or Queen’s Day, was celebrated on April 30th to celebrate Queen Beatrix’s birthday. As you can see, I think Meatball is the most excited about it.

The celebration takes place throughout The Netherlands and consists of Koningsnacht (King’s night) and Koningsdag (King’s Day).Koningsnacht is essentially an all night party the night before. So, last night we resisted the urge to be lame and went to city center to see what it was all about. Starting about 7pm a string of bands and DJ’s play on 3 or 4 different stages spread throughout the Grote markt and the Vis markt. The music went until about 2am and then the party continues at the bars until the sun comes up. Let’s be real, we didn’t make it that long but we stayed until the music was over!

Needless to say, city center was packed! There was definitely no shortage of beer though. You were never more than a few steps away from a beer tent…

After Koningsnacht, comes Koningsdag!

Festivities start bright and early with the ‘Vrijmarkt’, or Free Market. This is essentially one giant yard sale. The true bargain hunters are out first thing in the morning for the best deals and to beat the crowds.

The Vrijmarkt continues all day and is set up along the main canals, and the concerts continue in city center. Today we stumbled upon a band called Dis Nie Okay who, despite the fact that their singing wasn’t exactly the best, were super entertaining! Their set included the Backstreet Boys, Hakuna Matata, and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air theme song. How could you not like them?!

We also figured out (not surprisingly) we’re more of a Koningsdag kind of people. There were people out today who knew how to do it right. They were out early enough to get a good spot for one of the main stages, brought a cooler with snacks and drinks, and made a day of it. Now we know for next year…

On a completely unrelated note. I felt the need to share my my mad biking skills. Look ma! No hands!

We don’t have much going on the next couple of months, so I’ll pre-apologize for the lack of posts. We’re saving up for our next big trip…

The Sufrinko’s are coming to visit!

(little #tbt action with this one…)

Tot ziens!

Whitney

The Shwits Go to Egypt: Part 2

That’s right! As Whitney alluded to in Part 1, we are officially scuba certified! This is basically the whole reason we went to Egypt in the first place. And to make it even better, this was technically for the sake of my work and future career. A slight deviation to explain: As I have mentioned in a number of previous posts, I study fish. In fact, I have now worked in fish-related research for about 6 years. For those of you not so familiar with fish – they live in water. We as humans are not so good in water, especially when trying to stay under it for long periods of time. Therefore, not being scuba certified has always been a bit of a hold up in my research (especially when working on Lake Victoria). So, following my field work last year, I decided that it was time for me to certify. Of course when I informed Whitney, she decided that she would not be left out and would join in the fun. Thus, we went to Egypt! Now I know what most of you are probably thinking: why go all the way to Egypt to do the open water certification course? Isn’t it much easier/safer/cheaper to do it locally? To this I simply say: Yes, you are right. But where is the fun in that? Practicing diving in a swimming pool is useful, but it’s nothing like this:

Or this:

So I think it’s safe to see why we went all the way to Egypt.

For those of you not so familiar with the PADI Open Water course, allow me to briefly explain. The course consists of both knowledge and skill based instruction that takes you from (in our case) having never dove before to competent and able to dive freely without the aid of an instructor. This comes in the way of video and text study, combined with quizzes and a final written exam, while also completing a series of confined and open water dives with your instructor. We completed this over the course of 4 days (would have been 3 had Whitney not gotten a little too carried away with the “all-you-can-eat” portion of the stay). Day one was pretty laid back with some videos, text study, and swim tests. Day two, however, had us literally in over our heads: we quickly went from trying out breathing with the regulator underwater to diving at depths of 8-10m (sorry, we are officially on the metric system. I’ll try to convert for those of you not as versed in metric: ~30 feet). While in hindsight, it makes sense that the course should move this quickly, it was definitely a surprise for us at the time. Nonetheless, we survived!

From here, things progressed in both complexity and duration. I had heard about all the various skills and tests of the open water course before the trip, but I don’t think it ever really occurred to me that I would actually be doing them. The idea of removing my mask (I wear contact lens and am blind without them) or taking off my entire scuba kit at depth seems ridiculous, but there we were doing them. While there were certainly some moments of hilarity for both of us, we passed all them with relative ease. So, that was it. We had officially passed. And with that, we were set free to dive alone. Before moving on to our diving adventures, I have to first mention our instructor: Mahdi. He was fantastic! We couldn’t have asked for a better instructor. Not only was he extremely patient in letting us figure things out, but his overall excitement and enthusiasm was unbelievable. And he was extremely smart. From talking with him, we learned that he is actually a lawyer and spent time as a professor of law at an Egyptian university (in his early 20’s!). He had been diving since he was a teenager and worked as an instructor for the past eight years. You could tell he just really loved what he did. I’m sure a majority of the instructors are just a good but Mahdi definitely made it an enjoyable experience. Thanks again Mahdi! So that was it, we were free to dive. And dive we did! Aside from the guided dives that we did as part of the course, we were able to do 3 dives on our last day (we had to stop diving on Monday since we flew on Tuesday – pressure differences between diving and flying are not kind to the body, you have to give it time).

The resort that we were at was not like your typical tropical vacation spots. It wasn’t a place you go to lounge on the beach with a drink in your hand or party the night away at a local club or bar. It was a diving resort and that is what everyone was there to do. Of course you were free to drink as much as you would like or sleep the day away in the sun, but no one did that. Everyone was there for the diving and the desert sun is really hot….

The picture above is from the ‘diving shade’ – essentially the staging area for all diving activity. From this point, everyone prepared for their upcoming dives. Diving options consisted of the North or South Reef and you could choose whether you entered/returned from shore or by boat (as can be see below). You would simply write your name on a whiteboard, check where you wanted to go, and then go. If you chose to go by boat, there was always one available at anytime of day. It was an extremely simple, yet extremely efficient system.

Being that Whitney and I were very new to diving, we stuck to shore entry and exit. To give you a bit of an idea of what this looked like, the following series of pictures tracks one of our dives from beginning to end. You will see that we began at a rope that leads out past the dock for boat loading. From here, you chose either the North or South side of the reef (this dive is the North), swam out until you hit your desired time/air usage, and then swam back to same rope leading back to shore. The scenery along the way requires no explanation, the pictures speak for themselves.

I wish I could say that this was one of our better dives, that it wasn’t always this breathtakingly beautiful but I can’t. Whether we went North or South on the reef, this is what we got. As Whitney says: “it was real-life National Geographic; real life Finding Nemo”. As she’s right. It was truly amazing. I think it’s safe to say that we have found ourselves a new hobby. Future trips and adventures will most certainly be planned as diving excursions. Why did we wait so long to try this?! By the way, for those of you interested: all of these pictures, both above and below water, were taken with a Nikon Coolpix AW120. I highly recommended this camera if you are in the market for an easy to use, durable camera. We took this camera down to 18m (60ft) and it worked perfectly!

Until next time,

Shane

The Shwits Go to Egypt: Part 1

I know… its a shock. It’s been months since we’ve posted anything, but for good reason! We’ve been laying low and patiently waiting.

…for this

We went on our first vacation! To Marsa Shagra, Egypt to learn how dive to be exact. It’s beautiful right? It’s still kind of hard to believe we just spent a week there.

Marsa Shagra is a small village in the south of Egypt. It’s about four hours south of Luxor, and sits right on the coast of the Red Sea. We flew into Marsa Alam airport, and then it was about a 30 min car ride to the resort. Egypt is literally a desert. Hah, I know that sounds so ridiculous because of course its a desert, but it’s really made apparent when you’re driving on the only road through a sea of dirt and sand.

We stayed in the Marsa Shagra Village which is one of three owned by Red Sea Diving Safari. They aren’t your typical resort as they advertise themselves as “The Eco-diving Adventure”, and this ended up being exactly what we were looking for. For starters, most people stay in “tents”.

There are two types, regular and royal. We opted for the royal tent, and completely lucked out because ours was front row on the Red Sea! They did have electricity so we had 2 small lamps and a mini-fridge. Most importantly, the royal tent came with bean bag chairs.

The view through our tent door.

You could also opt to stay in a one room hut, or a two room chalet. The tents and huts used communal bathrooms around the property, but the chalets had their own. The communal bathrooms really weren’t an issue. Each one had 3 toilets and 3 showers, and were cleaned multiple times per day. The only downfall is having to pee in the middle of the night…

We spent a lot of our down time sitting on our “porch” reading and watching. The great part about this place was if you were at your tent then you really felt like you were away from it all. And at night (when the moon wasn’t too bright) you could just stare at the stars. I was pretty excited by this since we don’t see many stars in the city. In my opinion, it was beach camping at it’s finest.

If you compare the two pictures below, the one on the right is the view of our resort, and the one on the left is the neighboring. We walked down the beach and through it one day. Everything becomes artificially green, and the music is going, and people are drinking and dancing. None of this is a bad thing, it just wasn’t the experience we wanted.

If we wanted to have a little social interaction then we spent time either hanging out at the Cafeteria, or at the Bawadi Bedouin Lounge. The cafeteria made for some excellent people watching. This was situated right by the diving area so and was scattered with chairs, tables, and beanbags. It was great, because you could get a little sun, sip on your beer (or all inclusive coffee/Fanta/Sprite/Coke), and watch divers come and go.

The Bawadi Bedouin Lounge was on the property but not run by the resort itself. It was run by people from the local Bedouin tribe in the area. They had beer, coffee, hookas and you could have dinner there on request. Mostly we just stopped by for a beer on our way ‘home’ for the night after a day in the sun.

As I mentioned before, your basic drinks were all inclusive as were meals. Breakfast, lunch and dinner were included and served in the Restaurant which had an outdoor seating area overlooking the sea and the diving area. The panoramic picture in the beginning was our view from breakfast. I think one of my favorite parts of the whole trip was waking up with the sun, going to breakfast, and having coffee with that view!

The food was incredible! Breakfast was usually the same, but lunch and dinner were always changing. Each night supposedly had a nation theme, but we were never entirely sure what nation. Hah. The only one we were ever sure of was Egyptian night because they labeled the traditional Egyptian dishes as such. And the dessert table! Oh sweet glorious dessert table. So much cake! and little cookies! and one night these chocolate cookie dough type balls! We were living the desert dessert dream!

Note to self with all inclusive… you can, and I did, eat myself sick. Literally. Not sure if it was dehydration, food I wasn’t used to, or the diving, but we lost half a day about mid-week to stomach issues. You know you’ve found a keeper when he cleans up your puke in the middle of the desert. #truelove

Other than the one incident, the trip was absolutely fantastic! Shane’s boss recommended this place to us, and it certainly did not disappoint! Everyone should go to the Red Sea!

The main dock where divers would come and go by boat.

Had to have the feet pictures. Just for you, Mom. 🙂

Well, I think that’s all! Now, on to the best part and the purpose of the whole trip…

SCUBA!

Ok, so we’re snorkeling here but that’s not the point.

Check out Part 2!

Tot ziens!

Whitney

Geen fiets voor Whitney

So… remember that time someone stole my bike?

Can you tell where this is going?

…Last Monday I’m walking home from work, minding my own business, thinking about how excited I was to go to the gym. I get to the fence in front of our apartment and something is off…

THE BIKE THIEF STRUCK AGAIN!

They cleared the whole damn fence.

When I left for work that morning there were 10-15 bikes on the fence. About half of those bikes leave every day as people go to work (including Shane’s) but a good 5-6 bikes are always on the fence. Not a single one was still there. What’s even more impressive still is that it all happened during the middle of the day. Broad daylight. We are by the hospital and the fence is across from the flower shop so there is a constant string of people. Either no one noticed, or no one bothered to question what they were doing. Poor Theo, ripped from his home and resold to another shady bike shop. Sigh…

What do you do when your bike gets stolen? You buy a new bike and I paint that sh*t pink. BOOM!

Meet Helen.

Helen and I met on my lunch break on Tuesday. I tried out a few normal style women’s bikes, but I just really love the ‘omafiets’ style (aka: grandma bike. Literally, that’s the translation.) So Helen and I go back to work and all is well with the world again. Until 5pm when it’s time to go home.

Flat tire. Are we serious?!

Turns out the back inner tube had “more than 5 holes”. It’s really a wonder that I was able to bike from the shop to work without any problems. Back to the bike shop we go. New inner tube and life is good again.

Until today…

Shane and I were biking home from the grocery store just chit chatting it up when my back tire starts to feel funny as I’m riding…

I start to say “Pookieeeeee…..my tire feels” and BOOOOM!

Shane swerves. Poor guy thought he had just been shot. The back tire blew.

Needless to say, we spent today getting my bike fixed, again! Plus side. The bike shop guy totally knows me know. I walked up and I said ‘Hey! Do you remember me?’ and he replied with ‘Yeah, the American girl!’. Another plus side, he has fixed everything for free. Outside of it being inconvenient I really can’t complain.

Talk about bad bike luck though. When it rains it pours right?

I just keep telling myself it’s cheaper to fix a bike than a car.

Other than that life is normal here! Shane is coming up on week three of his Dutch class and is definitely getting more comfortable with it. He even ordered at the market this morning!

Oh, and we figured out that Meatball’s Dutch name is “Gehaktbol” (pronounced hey-haakt-bowl).

Gehaktbol says hi.

Tot Ziens!

Whitney

Can You Spot the Difference?

Yuuuppp. Someone stole my bike. Luckily, I took the cat inside first.

2 weeks. It took 2 weeks for me to be one of the 450,000 bikes stolen each year. Pretty impressive if I do say so myself. They were kind enough to take 2 sets of bungee cords and my lock as well. I mean if I’m going to have to replace a bike I might as well throw in new accessories too, right? The only thing we can figure is that my bike was a little too flashy. White with a pink lock, hand breaks (which aren’t as common), and brand new lights made it stick out compared to the others.

So Shane and I went out today and bought our third bike in three weeks, and I think I like this one better. Elenore (my old bike) was just too big. Even though the seat was as low as it would go I could barely touch the ground, and Shane always said I looked “determined” when I was riding. aka: like a loser who can’t ride a bike. Theodore (Theo for short) seems to be a much better fit. So while I’m not crazy about having to shell out for a new one, I’m happy with the purchase. And yes, I did make Shane stand on the side of the road so I could ride by for an action shot. I know what you all are thinking…. I’m pretty impressed with my one-handed riding too!

What a handsome fellow. You’ll notice I now have two locks. One on the tire, and a chain for the fence.

On an unrelated note, cat is doing just fine. She’s back to sleeping on all of Shane’s hoodies, people watching, and begging for canned food (Thanks Mom & Marsha!). 🙂

Tot Ziens!

Whitney

Super Bowl Sun…..Monday?

So it’s officially Super Bowl Sunday!

That means most of you back home are gearing up to watch the game, preparing various goodies and treats for the night ahead. To be honest, I’m jealous. Because of the time difference, the Super Bowl doesn’t start here until 12:30. That means if we were to stay up and watch the whole thing, we wouldn’t be going to bed until 4:00 or 5:00. Despite the fact that work on the Monday following the Super Bowl is always a bit rough, it would be especially tough for us only getting a few hours of sleep. Add to that the fact that we would be one of the only ones who actually watched the game and it equals out to a bad idea. For such reasons, we will be watching a replay of the game on Monday night. Talk about feeling Un-American….

At least I have “BBQ-Curry Style American Fries” to get by

On a related note, this has been my one complaint about moving to The Netherlands, my lack of ability to watch sports! Just about all American television channels and networks are blocked in Europe. Therefore, it makes watching anything, particularly sports, very difficult. When I am able to watch a game (I’ve found ways around the whole blocking issue), then the time difference almost always works against me. Noon and early afternoon games are ideal, but if it’s after 6:00, then its just too late here, especially when we have to work the next day. Of course, this was all to be expected but that doesn’t make it any easier. Sometimes you just want to watch an episode of Sportscenter!

Not much has been going on since Whitney’s last post, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. For the most part, it’s been normal life, with work and school going well. I had my first taste of Dutch coursework, as I was required to take an 80-hour course on Laboratory Animal Science. This meant I spent two weeks, sitting in class from 9-5 everyday, listening to lectures on the ethics and principles of studying animals in science, while also having to complete two presentations, write a four page ethics paper, and then take a three hour long exam. Fun times. Next week, I start my next course, which is a Dutch language course. The hope is that after completing this course, I’ll be close to Whitney’s level of Dutch speaking (she’s way ahead of me) so that we can continue and take higher level courses. We are going to live here four years; we are going to learn this language!

Aside from work and school, we had a bit of excitement in the city in the form of Eurosonic 2015. In short (and to quote from Wikipedia):

“Eurosonic is Europe’s largest showcase festival and takes place on a yearly basis on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday previous to Noorderslag festival in the Dutch city Groningen. Eurosonic is part of The European Music Conference and Showcase Festival Eurosonice Noorderslag. During the festival 300 bands and acts perform on 36 stages in the city center of Groningen.”

Basically what this means is that there are bands playing in every available space throughout the city for four days. They even build a large number of temporary stages and venues to host everyone. Because of it size and popularity, tickets for the festival sell out in a number of hours so we missed out this year. However, there were some free, open-air concerts, which we were able to check out. One band of interest; Kensington. I’m not sure if they are popular in the US yet (we are so out of touch with current movies and music back home), but if not, I suggest checking them out. They are a very popular Dutch band, but all of their songs are in English. Definitely worth a listen.

In other exciting news, we had our first real snow fall last weekend! In total, we got about 5-6 cm (yep, metric system, you have to convert), which is a big deal here. It certainly made our ‘commuting’ to the grocery store interesting. Whereas this time last year, we had an all-wheel drive SUV to deal with snowy conditions, presently we have only our bicycles. Ironically, biking in the snow is a lot like driving in the snow: slow down, increase following distance, pump the brakes, and don’t fight against a skid on ice. This is something I’ve been dealing with a fair amount on my ride to work each morning. We may not get much snow, but we do get a fair amount of ice. Scraping ice off my bike and dealing with frozen roads is becoming fairly routine. So far, I’ve managed to avoid any major wrecks or mishaps, but I’m sure it’s just a matter of time (knock on wood).

Well that about sums things up for us here lately. As I said previously, not much is going on at the moment. As it begins to warm up and the time/darkness works more in our favor (for a few months, it was only daylight from 9:00-4:30), we will hopefully have more news and adventures to share. For now, it’s just peddling ever so slowly on ice-covered roads.

Until next time,