Tot Ziens Rotterdam

What a crazy week! I finished up a couple projects at work--as best I could. We had a good bye dinner every night and tried to pack, sell, pawn, and throw out all our stuff. Moving is terrible! It makes you never want to buy anything ever again--and it makes you never want to move ever again. All in all, we came with 4 suitcases, about 100kg, and we just shipped 8 boxes at about 20kg each. Man oh man.

We are going to miss Rotterdam, and Holland, dearly. Even if we come back at some point, many things will obviously be different. The wonderful people we've met, some will stay and some will move on. Rotterdam Central Station will be finished. But many things will stay the same--and we have cherished those so much over the last 15 months...wonderful, timely trains, easy bicycling, the Blaak market that has everything you need. We'll miss living below sea level, and viewing the flat landscape speckled with windmills and sheep. I'll miss the three-kisses and gezelig (cozy) cafes. And fresh, warm stroopwafels. Indonesian and Surinamese food. And so much more.

Most of all, I'll miss our lovely Dutch life and the people we've shared it with. I know we won't be able to talk everyday, or have romantic dinners every week, but I know we've made friends for a lifetime. And that skype will help us keep in touch.

In a couple hours we leave for Mumbai. In this crazy world, it was half the price to go from Amsterdam to Mumbai then 3 weeks later, Mumbai to San Francisco, than it was to fly one-way from Amsterdam to SF! So we're off another adventure before we head to California.


So, tot ziens Rotterdam. Literally: till next time. Because we'll be back. At some point.

Feyenoord football fever!

On Friday, my colleagues took me out to a lovely dinner at a local Rotterdam hotspot. They gave Elliot and I Dutch jerseys--that we had to wear the next night...one of my managers took Elliot, me, and another colleague Inge to the Rotterdam Feyenoord football match against NAC Breda. What an experience! My first European football game! It was pretty awesome. It was also the 75th anniversary of the 42,000-fan stadium. The same guy who opened the stadium 75 years ago opened the game tonight too. 

The game was great! Lots of singing and cheering, jumping up and down. The whole stadium shook! We had such a great time. Feyenord scored a goal in the first three minutes and two more soon after. Made for a slow 2nd half, but the cheers and people watching made it worth the while.

The cheers were the best part of the game. You can't really understand anything they say, first because they're in Dutch and second because they're garbled pretty bad. But Jeroen translated some of them (he's a true Rotterdammer and knows ALL the cheers). My favorite roughly translated as such:

Number 10, number 10!

Your mom's a whore, your mom's a whore!

Classy! Check out the video at the end...second goal in the first 10 minutes of the game! 

Graduation!!!

Elliot is now a Master! Hoera! Such a great weekend reunion with all of Elliot's wonderful classmates and their partners...so glad we got to see them before we leave Holland--only 1 more day!