So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, good night

Final update, I'll be leaving tomorrow morning :(

Monday

Monday I went to Santa Fe again, as Robert had a meeting in Espa~nola. I went inside the New Mexico State Capitol Building and used a 'self tour' brochure to have a look around.
Also visited the Basilica again. Last time I went to Santa Fe I didn't bring my phone and thereby my camera, so some more pictures to make up for that.



After comming back from Santa Fe, I had another hour of driving which went really well. After that went to Cloud Dancers where I groomed some horses and scooped poop while watching a lesson :)

Tuesday

Didn't do much other than two hours of driving with my driving school. I got a 95 on my written exam by the way :)

Wednesday

Didn't domuch in the morning and early afternoon. Around two Robert, Bohdi and I picked up Nancy from work and after that I went driving again :) My dad picked me up from driving in the RV he had rented for the past weeks and we went out for dinner together and stayed at a KOA "kampground", as KOA spells it. The next morning (Thursday) we spent cleaning the RV and mailing some boxes of chile and other stuff.
Then took a cab back to Nancy and Robert's house and in the afternoon I went driving again. It was my last hour of driving with an instructor and therefore my final test. I got to drive on the freeway! Wooooow! :) I past with a score of 88, so I'm quite happy about the way my drivers ed went.

Had a great time here. Hope to come back soon!

What a wonderful day

Remember what I wrote in my last blog about Nancy and Robert going to the concert and I'd be house sitting?
Fifteen minutes before they left, Nancy told me to bring a jacket. Turns out I was coming along as well, oops hahaha
Had fifteen minutes to get ready to go, but that was more than enough.
We went to see Patti Labelle with guests Ashford & Simpson at the Sandia Resort & Casino. These people are from way before I was even born, so I probably was the youngest person there. The audience consisted mostly of middle aged women, who got up and danced wildly during the concert. Hadn't seen anything like that before. Not writing about it to make fun of these women. Seeing them having a good time gives me hope for the future, when I'm wrinkly and over 40 ;)

Today we went to Las Vegas to visit Nancy's mother for Mother's Day and Nancy and her family visited Nancy's sister's stone in the Jewish cemetery I wrote about a few messages ago. I watched over the house while they were gone and after that we had a big lunch with many family members. There was lots and lots of good food and very friendly people.
People kept comming up to me to tell me they knew my dad from high school (I even met his former music teacher) and the less younger women kept telling me that my grand mother was such a beautiful lady.
Lewis, a friend of my dad and Nancy's brother, told me he had seen my uncle Frank a few days ago and Frank had told him where he lives. I haven't seen my uncle in about 13 years, so we decided to drive up there. I got to drive and I set a personal record of 60 miles per hour! Which is about 100 km/h, I guess. First we drove along the high way and then we went up this dirt road and I still got to drive. Personally I thought it went really well, I didn't hit anything :)
After driving for a few miles up the dirt road, we came across my dad's property where I used to live with my parents. Didn't get the opportunity to take pictures, as I had to keep my eyes on the road and we we're on a mission (finding my uncle that is).
After more miles of dirt, we decided we couldn't find it and went back. I did about two hours of driving total.

I had a great day. The people I met and the people I spent time with today are wonderful. I especially like Mrs Terr, she's so kind. She told me I could come and stay with her anytime I want, which I'd certainly like to do when I have the opportunity to.

That's it for now. I'm not looking forward to leaving next week. I feel at home here.

can't come up with a title

Hadn't realized my last message was posted Tuesday. That's quite a while ago..

I'll give you guys another update :)

Wednesday

I went to school with Nancy again. The school is an elementary school called "Adobe Acres" and the kids are so cute!

In the morning I joined the first graders in taking care of their garden. Together with some teachers, the students planted all kinds of vegetables & trees, as well as some sun flowers. They have to keep a log on what they see in the garden every time they visit it with their class.

In the afternoon I helped them make Mother's Day cards, by helping them cut out things, showing them how to spell certain words, keeping them from cutting their lips off with sicors (there are some goofy kids out there) and by making them pick up scraps from the floor, hihi. The cards for their mothers consisted of a self made pop-up flower on the front with a picture of the kids in the heart of the flower. On the inside of the card was a "love letter" to their mothers. It was a fill in the blank letter and had the title "A story about my mom".

The kids had to fill in things such as "My mom has ___ eyes and _____, _______ hair. I love my mom because____. She is so beautiful, she looks like a _____"

Many kids filled in "angel" in the beautiful _____ part, but one kid decided to fill in "puppy"

...

:)

After school Nancy and I went for a swim. We couldn't figure out how to get to the pool comming out of the locker room, but we soon found a door that led to the outdoor pool. We opened the door and an alarm went off! Hadn't seen the tiny sticker that stated the door was only to be used in emergencies and that an alarm would sound if it were to be opened.

Oh well, nothing bad happened. The life guard that came to check out the alarm didn't seem to mind.

Thursday

Thursday morning I went over to Cloud Dancers and planted some flowers, scooped poop and groomed horses together with a lady and her daughter.

After that I bicycled up to the International Balloon Museum.

I faked that I was a resident by showing my learner's permit, which gave me a 3 dollar discount on the entrance price, woohoo

some pictures of the museum:

After I was finished in the museum, I tried to call Robert to pick me up, but I was out of minutes on my American simcard and so I decided to ride the bike up to Sandia Heights where Nancy and Robert live. I didn't make it, hahaha.

All of it was uphill and so steep! Don't know how long it took me to get where I got.

I was quite close to home, but I couldn't cope with the lack of oxygen (still haven't gotten used to the altitude) and so I pulled out my Dutch simcard and called Robert to pick me up anyway :)

Friday

Friday I stayed home and studied for my drivers ed theoretical test that evening. Didn't do much that day except for driving around with Nancy (she let me drive! :) ) and in the evening I took the drivers test!

Over the past two weeks, I had had driver's ed every work day for three hours in the evening. Friday evening we spent the first hour going over a parking chapter and the second hour we did a review game.

The class was devided into 4 teams of four people and there were numbers on the white board from 1-50. One team at a time would roll the dice to see for how many points they would play and then they would pick a number. The numbers corrosponded to the question number on our actual test and so the teams had to answer the actual test questions. Because of this, we discussed the whole test before doing it. We got all the questions and the answers before doing the test! So weird! I'll be surprised if anyone fails this test.

Saturday

This morning I had another hour of driving with an instructor and after that I went to Cloud Dancers to help out with the lessons. I side walked the first hour and lead the second hour I was there. The rider that was on the horse I lead in the second hour was really talkative and we had a lot of fun together. He kept telling me that he really likes girls and that the horse was such a pretty girl!

We had lots of laughs :)

After that Nancy, Robert and I had lunch together at Richard's and we went shopping at a store where they sold special products such as very old fashioned candy and foreign things, such as Nutella....

Now I'm back at the house doing nothing, maybe I should call it resting, and tonight Robert and Nancy will be going to a concert while I house sit :)

Ouch!

Ouch! I went for a bike ride yesterday and used a sunscreen of "only" factor 30 and got badly sunburned. One leg is really red and the skin is swollen and my arms hurt as well.
Wearing pants is hell and showering is even worse!
Bought a sunscreen factor 50 today, hope that works better.

I'll tell you what I've been up to for the past few days :)

Sunday
Nancy, Robert, Bodhi and I went to Las Vegas to help with the annual cleaning of the Jewish cemetery. It was a day full of religion. I learned some things about Jewish traditions and rituals, such as the placing of rocks or pebbles on a grave when visiting, in stead of placing flowers.
We also visited Nancy's mother, Mrs. Terr. She is such a kind lady :) After changing into our bathing suits at Mrs. Terr's, we went to the natural hot springs. Had a lovely view while sitting in the hot water, but I didn't take any pictures. Completely forgot about it!
After that we went up to a neighborhood and I got to drive around in the car a bit :)
Picture of what we encountered during my "spin":

Monday
Stayed at the house and did some homework (what, homework?!), after that I went for a bike ride with Robert and Bohdi. (= the bike ride I wrote about in the beginning of this blog message, ouch..)
In the state of New Mexico, everyone younger than 18 has to wear a helmet while riding a bike, so I actually wore a helmet while riding a bike! Guess there's a first time for everything.
I really enjoyed the bike ride and so I decided to bike down to my drivers ed that evening. Everything went well until I had to cross an intersection. I spent ten minutes waiting for the pedestrian light to change and then I came onto a street where the speed limit was at least 45mph! I decided to ride on the sidewalk...

Tuesday (today)

Today I went to Santa Fe with Robert and Bodhi. Robert had a meeting in Espa~nola for his job, which isn't that far from Santa Fe, so he dropped me off at the plaza in Santa Fe and I got to spend some time walking around the plaza. Some of the things I saw were the New Mexico History Museum, the Palace of the Governors, La Fonda hotel and the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Francis of Aissisi. In the center of the plaza, there was a group of musicians playing Cuban music to raise money for chronically ill children. The music was good and people were singing and dancing :)
Around 12.30 Robert picked me up again and we had lunch at Tomasita's. The food was incredible. After lunch we went to Canyon Road to see some art galleries and the first gallery we visited turned out to be owned by a Jewish man from Baghdad, who had lived in Nieuwegein for several years and then moved to Santa Fe. We spoke some Dutch and had a laugh :) Saw some more galleries and then drove back to Albuquerque, straight to drivers ed.

Driving a car

Today I drove a car for the first time in my life, it was awesome! I had so much fun! I was really nervous when I got to the driving school, but my instructor Mr. Martinez was very relaxed and nice so I managed to calm down :) driving went really well and I'm looking forward to driving some more.

Am now home alone with Bohdi/Bodhi, forgot how it's spelled :( she's such a cute dog! very energetic and crazy, but also very sweet, playful and cuddly. See picture.

After my driving lesson, Robert drove me to Cloud Dancers ( http://clouddancersofthesouthwest.org/ ) and I got to help along with side walking a horse. It was quite difficult at first, because I had to pay close attention to where the driver wanted to go and I had to make sure that the other side walkers, holding the rider on the horse, didn't get stuck between the rail and the horse.
I had a lot of fun helping out, it was a good experience and I also loved grooming the horse afterwards.

After Cloud Dancers, Robert and I drove around town and eventually decided that I would go to the Nuclear museum and he would walk the dog and see if he could visit a friend of his.
Had a great time at the museum! There was so much old stuff to see and everything was really interesting.
Pictures!! :) The woman in the picture was the last Miss Atomic Bomb.

Weekend

It is now Friday evening, 9.34 PM and I had a great day. After visiting Old Town and the museum yesterday, I stayed up late to watch Sherlock Holmes with Robert and I got up early this morning to go to school again with Nancy.

I met some new classes, 3rd grade and 5th grade, and talked to them about The Netherlands. Started out with a message I had written out in Dutch about Koninginnedag and translated it for them. After that they got to ask questions about Holland, about the language, schools, history, anything they could think of.

Something I found funny, was that both classes translated Nederland to Neverland (Peter Pan) and one boy asked me whether lepricons/leprechauns were real.... Everyone also wanted to know what their names would be in Dutch.

Around noon, Nancy helped one of her classes to organize a surprise party for their teacher and they played several games, such as 'Loteria' = sort of Mexican bingo.
See picture of Loteria card.


In the evening went to Drivers ed again, which is every night Monday-Friday. Tomorrow morning 9AM I'll have my first lesson in a car. I'm really nervous! Hope all goes well.

Sunday I'll be going to Las Vegas, NM with Nancy and Robert.

Grrr dinosaurs

http://www.nmnaturalhistory.org/
Before I went to Old Town, I went to the museum of natural history which is a five minute walk from Old Town.
I had a lot of fun. There was so much to see! They had casts of fossils as well as actual ones and they had rebuilt several dinosaurs and other extinct animals.
Many pictures, unfortunately not all of them turned out the way I had hoped them to

Old Town

Yesterday I went to "Old Town". I would describe it as the start of the city of Albuquerque, it was built in 1706 and has this old western look. It's a great place to visit :)
some pictures:

Cactus!

Busy busy busy

Haven't posted in a while. Here's what I've done over the past three days.

Sunday

Sunday seems so long ago.. trying to remember what I did. Oooooooh right!
I was sound asleep, when my dad woke me up at a quarter to six in the morning, asking whether I wanted to go with him for another Garcia breakfast and a ride.
Had breakfast at Garcia, lots of chile ofcourse!
After that drove all over town, saw the Rio Grande and drove out to Los Lunas. We spent pretty much all day driving around, looking at all the interesting buildings and things there were to see.
We actually drove into an indian reservation which sounds much more exciting than it actually is. No tipi's, no American buffalo, although there is a field of them a few miles down the road here. The only difference I noticed while driving along, was that the houses were built even further apart than in the none indian reservation.
Had a great road trip with my dad, just like the old days =)

Monday

Monday is when it all begun. Got up early in the morning and my dad drove me to Cloud Dancers. Met Leigh, who showed me around and set me to work right away, after I finished filling in a bunch of papers about all kinds of things.. and signing a paper that practically said I wouldn't sue them if anything happened to me while working there. They had some signs up about how to take responsibility around the horses and that everything was at your own risk. In the US, people will sue others over anything.

We scooped manure (horse poop) and groomed two horses named Speedy and Joe. After that we went to the store to buy some flowers to plant around the "barn", which I was supposed to plant tomorrow but this week I won't be able to do volunteer work for them because there's no one around at the times I'm able to work.
Had a great time, really nice people and I got to work out in the sun! loved it.

After Cloud Dancers, my dad and I took a tram up to the top of the Sandia Mountains and enjoyed the view while having some great chile burritos.
The mountains are called 'Sandia', which is Spanish for watermelon, because of the red color they get when the sun sets.

It's so beautiful around here =)
Some pictures of the house....






























In the evening I had my first class of Drivers Education (Drivers ed). It started out really good. nice and funny teacher, watched some movies on safety and then the teacher showed a movie that contained real footage that was made by police officers of victims of car accidents. Dead victims. And by dead, I mean skulls crushed to not being recognizable and brains, actual brains.. yellowish with a gray tint, dripping out on to the asphalt. There was footage of a girl around our age, 17 years old, who had not been wearing her seatbelt and was involved in a head on collision. She somehow got stuck between the door, the wheel and her seat and had the top of her skull squashed with the brains coming out at the top, her eyes were both looking a different way, her tongue was hanging out and a huge bone was sticking out of her knee.
Horrible.
During the movie I didn't really mind, but after my dad picked me up and we were on our way to dinner, I actually cried a bit, I was so upset. Made me wonder whether I still wanted to drive a car.
Had a good night sleep and got over it, today's (Tuesday) lesson was awesome.
Two truckers came over to talk to us about the blind spots on a truck, the so called no-zones. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9m1-FIAhcSA
Watch it, it's what I had to go through this evening. There were more horrible songs, but this one especially stuck in my mind.
I can't stand the word "no-zone" now.
Got to sit in a semi, =vrachtwagen, and it was great. Got to experience the blind spots myself and I really understand the dangers of trucks now. Learned something today!
And.............................................
I got my learners permit! which means I get to drive around in a car as long as Nancy or Robert is in the car with me (or another adult aged 21 or older and who has been in possession of a drivers license for at least three years)

Before drivers ed, I went to school with Nancy and helped out in 1st grade (6-7 year olds). The kids were really cute and they were so bright! They asked all sort of questions about NL and near the end of the day, the teacher had them take notes on the parts of a flower. Some words that were used..

Photosynthesis
Sprouts
Chloroplasts
Nutrients
and some weird word with 'germ' in it, forgot the word, it was difficult =(
First time I heard of chloroplasts was when I was 11 years old, in the first year of this school...

Dad left this afternoon, so I'm all alone with Nancy and Robert. They are such great people

Tomorrow I have the day off and am babysitting the dog!

POWWOW!

Today Nancy and Robert took my dad and me to the gathering of nations, world's biggest powwow.

It's an event in which different native american tribes are represented by drums, singing and dancing contests (see pictures) and many other things. Ofcourse there were also many stands with native american jewls, artwork and things such as animal pelts. There actually was a black bear pelt. Is that even legal?

Not only was I surprised by the traditional clothing (looooooooooooots of feathers and colors), I was also stunned by the hair these people have. I've never seen such long hair.
There were many people of which their braids touched the back of their knees.

A clip, quality is bad as it was filmed with a phone. Still fun to watch though :)

so cute :))))

Have some clips from the dance contest, but my phone doesn't feel like uploading them. Maybe I'll be able to put them in the next blog.

I'm here!

Hi everyone
Short update. Arrived yesterday evening, plane landed 7.30 pm and we arrived at Nancy's around 10.45pm after having chili cheeseburgers with humongous malts at the Owl cafe. This morning went out for breakfast at Garcia's kitchen, lots of chili, lots of sopapillas.
Will be going to The Gathering of Nations Native American Powwow around noon and perhaps I'll have time this evening to post another update with some pictures of the house :)

That's what you get for youtubing Albuquerque?

Watch 'em in the right order. First the bottom one, then the top one.
Very, very, very weird song.

Tomorrow

Hooray! The flight hasn't been cancelled and Dad gets to come along. What fun we'll have during our flight :) After our flight, Dad will go on some kind of road trip and I'll be staying with some wonderful people.




Marshall and Sheriff of Purdytown will "hit the road" tomorrow

Travel waiver

My flight has been covered by a travel waiver. Don't know what that means, can't find it anywhere on the united airlines website, but I'm guessing they are not sure yet whether I get to go or not. Great, awesome, nice etc..........
and to make things better, broken kneed marshall* fell down the stairs and is going to have some pictures taken of his back in a few hours. fingers crossed he gets to come along.
I don't really care for spending my 6 and 7 hour lay overs in Houston ("howdy y'all") all by myself without my dad.

Oh well, I'm sure I'll survive :) am really looking forward to the trip!


*Marshall: code name for my dad

Friday

Friday I'll be on a plane to Albuquerque. Hope the ash cloud doesn't mess it all up.