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)