Dutch life

I apologize for my lackluster effort in keeping my blog up to date.

So much has happened in the last month so I'll share just a few of the things.

Well the reason why I'm here is to play softball and we just played our final game before summer stop, their time for summer break from softball, this past Sunday. We finished the first part of the season in 1st place in our pool. Now we will go on to play a double header against the top four teams from our pool and the top four teams from the other pool. Whichever team finishes first in the final part of the season will be promoted to Overgangsklasse, which is the 2nd highest class here in the Netherlands. As far as playing goes; I'm so glad to be back playing again, softball has been such a big part of my life and I wasn't ready for it to be over yet. In addition to playing and practicing with my own team I am training the Storks 12 year old girls 1 time per week. It's amazing the progress that has already been made.


So besides softball I have also been busy...

-I saw the picturesque windmills at Kinderdijk, toured a windmill, and learned the history behind why Holland uses so many windmills.

-I visited Scheidam, a small town outside of Rotterdam and there visited the Jenever Museum. Jenever is a famous dutch liquor.

-Visited Amsterdam twice but there is so much to see there and I will go into more depth later.

-Went out for the night on bicycle with my teammates (very dutch)

- Gotten lost while riding my bike at least once in every trip over 10 minutes long. It can be very confusing when most streets are not straight.

-Made a return trip to Atlanta for a convention on my birthday and was upgraded on my plan ride back to Amsterdam.

-My friend Whitney from grade school and high school who has been teaching english this past year in Spain came to visit. So cool to have someone I know visit and go around Den Haag with me.

-Learned some dutch words, just enough so that I can understand about 1 of every 10 words, these being the most common words. It's very fortunate that almost everyone here can also speak english.

-Partied for the 4th of July with other American baseball and softball players playing in Holland.

-Gotten extremely excited whenever it gets over 70 degrees. I live 1 mile from the North Sea and the beach and that is when it gets warm enough to go in a swim suit. I don't know what I will do whenever I am finally somewhere where it is 90+ degrees daily.

-Been planning where I am travelling over summer stop.


I think that is enough to digest for 1 day, but I am getting ready to do some serious traveling in the next 3 weeks so there will be plenty to write about.

Tot ziens
see you again)

Delft and Keukenhof

So this is going back to May 12th and 13th...
We (Guus took me) went to Delft on the 12th. Delft is a small town between The Hague and Rotterdam which is famously known for the Delftware or Delft Blue Pottery as seen below


So we walked around the town square where there was a market going on and went into the Old Church where the Dutch Royalty are burried.

The next day we took a trip to Keukenhof, a flower park, which is only open during the springtime when the flowers are in bloom-namely Tulips. Although we came just after many of the tulips had been cut, including the tulip fields, I still don't think I've seen so many flowers in my lifetime. There were colors and varieties of Tulips that I wouldn't have dreamed. There was also the biggest Lilly show in the World going on while we were there. Keuekenhof is also where I saw my first dutch windmill, and would not be the last. Also of note in the pictures are pictures of me with large wooden shoes and at the beggining there is some Delft Blue tile.




You can see my pictures like the one above from Delft & Keukenhof as well as one's Guus took at this link:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1782599487290.2093177.1308540119&l=237f781a91

Begginning my Stay in Holland

So this post is a little late. I have been in Holland 2 1/2 weeks now and already I have so much to talk about, but I am not going to write all about it in one post, I will break it up into a few post today. For starters when I arrived at the Amsterdam airport I was greated by a teamate and my manger, Guus-who I am staying with, with a lovely rose. From there we traveled back to Den Haag (The Hague) and I unpacked a few things then went over to the beach that is nearby and had some snacks before my first practice with the team.




So a little bit about where I'm staying, as you can see from the picture above (sorry its a little hard to read) I'm staying in The Hague which is the orange dot in the Netherlands. Not intended but as you might know the colors of the Netherlands sports teams are orange, even though the flag is red/white/blue, and this is because the Dutch royalty come from the House of Orange. The Hague is the 3rd largest city in the Netherlands with 485,000 inhabitants and the Haagland, which it is the center of has slightly over 1,000,000. The Hague is also part of the Randstad (sorry for getting nerdy here) is a conurbation or an area that has many city centers and is well linked through transportation and labor markets. The Randstad includes the four largest cities-Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Utrecht- and has a population of 7,100,000 and covers an area of 3200 sq. miles. In comparison Missouri has 6,000,000 in an area of 69,704 sq. miles. So about the size of the Missouri portion of the Metro St. Louis area. The Hague is the seat of the Dutch Parliment and is the location for both the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court.

So I think thats enough for one post. I will add more later.