Hello….I know I haven’t written in a while so here is what I have been doing. I finally started my Dutch course which consisted of the class going to a pub for drinks because we where locked out of the building. The individuals that are in my class seem to be quite interesting. There are two who have been here for a year. One of them is from the Philippines and the other from Sweden. The other two have been living in Holland for two years. Luck for them they know each other prior to this course. One is from Canada and the other Germany. I was astonished by the amount of time they had been in the Netherlands and still had no interest in learning Dutch. This just shows how easy it is to get around this country when you are able to speak English…because everyone is able to.
I got my figure skates!!!! Thanks to my parents and a friend of theirs coming to Holland for a little vacation. So I will be skating my way through the Netherlands very soon! The one problem is that the arena that is near my house had a fire and is just now opening to the public. So I hope that maybe tomorrow I can finally get on the ice.
I got to meet Shayna ( Colin’s fiancé)! She had a layover in Amsterdam so I had the opportunity to meet her! The night before I stayed with my friend Dhoya and we played “Guess Who” till like 2 am and then I had to be up by 5 am to make it in time! It was great. I was so excited that I could hardly sleep. And she is sooo cute! I am soo happy for Colin to have found such a cool girl. She seems to be everything that I could wish for. And I got to see her wedding dress! It is soo cool and now I cant wait for the wedding!
And now the Hallo-Birthday party! I know you are all very excited to hear about this little extravaganza…but first my real birthday. Well it was a typical day. A few happy birthday phone calls and a happy birthday cup cake for breakfast. But is was the surprise of two of Marks friend that made the day. They came with a very nice present (tall vase) and a very scary movie!!! We watched The Grudge (scary) and then a part of Cabin Fever (funny) and then a part of The Shinning (classic)! It was a very good bday. And now for the party! I spent most of this past week preparing for it. I think I cut out about 100 bats for a little decoration. I carved 4 pumpkins and had Nele and Mark do two more. Then I got some food together (special thanks to Tom and Team Togo and Jillian for sending candy). We had only candles for lighting to make it extra creepy. Mark and I dressed as Super-pumpkins! We where there to fight crimes against Halloween and pumpkins. It was a funny custom. There where mostly scary costumes but some funny ones as well. You can check out photos of the event at
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/bellaveraksc/album?.dir=c12ere2&.src=ph
I will leave you to the photo’s! Enjoy and thanks for all the bday emails, cards, packages, and calls! I love you all!

Here is what we have done so far. We are still working in all the rooms. Trying to figure out where everything should go and rearranging furniture. I will send more photos when everything is complete!

The bedroom. It is still a mess. Mark is having some troubles with putting his stuff away...so. But we painted it a very light blue. It is our bedroom/office. I quite like it...it is much bigger then our last bedroom with was the bedroom/office/living room/dinning room.


The Living room. Some things where glued to the wall making it hard for us to keep the same texture all around. Once we ripped half the wall off we decided to paint it a apple/yellow green. it looks lovely.

The kitchen...well it needs alot of work. The paint job was horrible with bloches all over the place. When we painted it...it was hell. There was red where no one could posible reach...but we managed to cover most of it and it looks much better now...you will have to wait till the after photos to see!!!

The garden needs alot of work....and we have been to busy to spend any time in it. Hopfuly this weekend we will have time to pull some weeds!