Time to leave again

It's been 2,5 weeks now since we started our visit. Tomorrow we leave for our 'real' vacation. It has been a busy time, and we have seen many friends and family. Lots of food, conversations and cups of coffee too. We wouldn't have missed it for the world, but we feel it's time to go back and enjoy the Australian sun a bit more now. To see the country and meet more people. We are really looking forward to it.

In case you are wondering what we have been up to in the last week: well we visited more people of course! Our main challenge was a weekend away with Sanders family. We stayed in a nice old farmhouse. In the picture of it you can also see the Twingo that we used to drive from A to B while we were here (thanks P!).
It was a great time to catch up with everybody, meet the new niece a bit more, and play with the boys. And there was food... Lots and lots of it.
Today was the first day we had real rain. Autumn is truly starting now, as you can see in the picture. We were very fortunate to see this change, and it will make the transition to the Australian weather even more exciting!
We're off to Singapore tomorrow morning, and back in Sydney Sunday morning. We'll post again when we are back!

Sander & Marije

Still alive!

No, we haven't forgotten to post. We have just been very busy with visits, courses and (sometimes) sleeping. Our tour is almost over, with only one weekend away with family to go. So stay tuned for a longer update next week, before we head off to Singapore!

Sander and Marije

Lots of pictures...

As promised: pictures of Dutch things we miss (or don't miss at all).

4 days...

Our first 4 days were great! After a relatively quiet day on Monday, our busy schedule kicked in. Tuesday we visited Marijes grandmother, who was very happy to see us. She showed us her wedding album, which we had never seen before. She gave Marije one of the pictures, which I am sure she will use in her art sooner or later. Later that day we visited two of Sanders school friends.

On Wednesday we stayed at Sanders parents place. We stored some of our stuff in his granddads house before we left, and since he passed away a few months ago, we had to move it all again. It was great visiting the house one last time, and it gave us an opportunity to say goodbye. We also went to the cemetery to see where he was buried, together with his wife. It was sad, but good to close that chapter too.

Today we spent some more time with Marijes parents. We had real Dutch pancakes at a place where we also had our wedding banquet (pictures to follow). Good to be back there and enjoy the weather. Which is excellent by the way! Not quite the 30 degrees they forecast on the Central Coast, but hey, being in Holland without any rain is not bad...

Lots more visits to come, I promise we will show some more pictures next time.

Toedels,

Sander & Marije

Back in The Netherlands!

Hi!

Welcome to our weblog! Originally created to update everybody in Holland on all our adventures in Australia, we now decided to turn it upside down: for the coming 3 weeks we will update everybody in Australia on our adventures in Holland... Have a browse and feel free to post comments!

Our trip had a stressful start. The night before we left we checked the tickets, and found a very disturbing date on it: September 14. For some reason we thought we had booked the Saturday flight, and not the Sunday flight. We quickly called the airline, and fortunately they still had seats left on the Saturday flight. So we could leave as planned after all. Turns out they even had exit seats for the first leg, which was a big bonus.
After the 26 hour flight Marijes mother and sister picked us up from Amsterdam airport. Exhausted as we were, we had a few hours sleep, but then our first visitors arrived already. It was great seeing everybody again (mainly family for now). We even 'met' our new niece who was born a couple of months ago. You can see her in the picture (the guy next to Sander is his brother). We were surprised how 'normal' it all felt, as if we had only been away for a long vacation.
We are staying at Marijes parents place for now, but we will be traveling around Holland a lot as well. Stay tuned for more stories and pictures!

Sander & Marije

We zijn weer in Nederland!

We zijn weer veilig in Nederland aangekomen, alles is voorspoedig verlopen. Bregjes moeder en zus hebben ons van het vliegveld opgehaald. Even geslapen, en daarna de familie op bezoek. Heel leuk om iedereen weer te zien! Het voelt veel minder raar dan we verwacht hadden: alsof we na een lange vakantie weer thuiskwamen.

We zijn dit weblog ooit begonnen om iedereen in Nederland op de hoogte te houden van ons leventje in Australië. De komende weken draaien we het even om: we willen iedereen in Australië op de hoogte houden van ons leventje in Nederland! Vandaar dat ons weblog de komende tijd even in het Engels zal zijn, maar daarna gaan we gewoon weer over op Nederlands.

Tot ziens!

Sander en Bregje

Nog 6 nachtjes slapen, en dan...

...komen we naar Nederland! We zijn er de laatste weken erg druk mee geweest: plannen, kadootjes verzamelen, alle tickets opduiken, enz. We hebben er superveel zin in! De planning zit ramvol, dus we zullen wel moe zijn aan het eind van de rit. Maar daar hebben we dan die 4 dagen Singapore weer voor geboekt ;-) Voor de mensen die willen weten waar we zoal uithangen: onze ouders hebben een planning waar ze op kunnen zien waar we ieder dagdeel zijn. Dus geef hen een belletje als je meer wilt weten.

Deze week zijn we een weekendje weg geweest met de kerk. Niet heel ver weg, maar toch lekker om er nog even uit te zijn. Vrijdag en zaterdag vielen een beetje in het water vanwege de storm die over het land trok, maar zondag was het heerlijk warm en zonnig. De lente is hier echt begonnen!

Er waren vier lezingen over de brief aan Korinthiers. Daar hebben we de afgelopen weken in de diensten ook bij stil gestaan. Het thema van het weekend was: Reaching out without selling out. Het ging dus over hoe je als Christen in de wereld staat, en dan vooral gericht op de regio waar onze kerk in staat.

We leren er steeds meer mensen kennen, en zijn nog steeds verrast over hun gastvrijheid. Ook de Bijbelstudiegroep waar we iedere woensdagavond naartoe gaan wordt steeds leuker!

Tot ziens (?)
S&B

PS. Vandaag hebben we eindelijk ons rampzalige internet abonnement op kunnen zeggen (ik doe nooit meer iets via Virgin). We zijn nu dus niet meer op ons thuis-telefoonnummer te bereiken, en internet kan ik alleen op mijn werk gebruiken.