Just a few quick looks in on life here
The 12 and a half year Wedding anniversary is a big deal in the Netherlands. This was fitting, as on the 29th of January, two days after arriving, it was in-fact Eliane and my 12.5 y Wedding anniversary! So we got an Indonesian meal to celebrate. (Indonesian is quite a big deal here, which is probably for a similarly dark reason as Indian cuisine is popular in the UK. Those small countries with big, historic Empires.. they all did business the same way really.)
This dutch delicacy is called Tompouce. It’s a wafery thing on the bottom, with custardy stuff in the middle and another pink-icing coloured wafery thing on top. There is no graceful way to eat it. It tastes very good. Best with Coffee in my opinion, which is always served in small quantities here (and in most of mainland Europe as far as I have experienced). Despite drinking a lot a lot of coffee, I quite like the small-cup approach. I still drink the same amount of coffee mind you… just across more servings.
Reuben got a ‘family-present’ for Christmas which was a Nintendo Switch. It’s been the best thing we could have bought for him because he has had to spend more time than usual entertaining himself whilst Eliane and I get our feet on the ground and our head in the game. He’s very good at the two Mario games we have. I’m amazed how fast he works things out. Ariana and him play together occasionally and she does silly things as player 2 because she doesn’t really understand it, but it makes them both giggle which is sweet.
This is the plaza outside of one of ~30 of the company I work for’s buildings which I happened to be working in today. As of about March it’s warm enough outside for people to hold meetings, exercise classes, lunches and such out here.
This is inside one of the office spaces. The greenery is real life plants. It’s everywhere throughout the communal areas of the campus. Pretty amazing.
Boy being boy
Other boy being boy
Quick background : Ever since Eliane came to Scotland at age 8, she has had people mispronounce and misspell her name. She is often called Elaine, and sometimes people will actually correct her own spelling, switching the a and the i around to ‘correct’ the name back to Elaine. I’ve seen it happen (Be honest – you didn’t even see the misspelling the first time you read the sentence, did you?) Eliane is spelt with an e and the end because in Dutch pronounciation it’s sounded as an [aah]. However in English pronounciation however it’s often / commonly a silent letter. When we decided to call our little girl Ariana we chose to be merciful and spell it phonetically per English language usage. This would save her from the frustrations El has faced…. But now we live in the Netherlands.
So with this context, the above is an invite we received today for Eliane to go into the school to talk with one of Ariana’s teachers 😭😭😭 we briefly considered actually changing her name to spell it with an e but decided it wasn’t worth the bother.
Many thanks for sharing! Lovely photos and videos. Hartstikke goed!
The kids keep it silly
Thank you for sharing; great you’re settling in gradually. Super duper counting in Dutch, Reuben. Love your Elsa outfit, Ariana.
All the best with sorting out essential things for living in NL.
Thinking of and praying for you all. ❤️
Thanks Marjan. Feels like a lot all at once but we find a lot of time for fun somehow