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.