Home sweet home

Aaah what a wonderful times... Wednesday morning extremely early (5 o'clock in the morning) I went to Schiphol to greet Katie and Ben on their stopover on their way to Edinburgh. I've bought some traditional Dutch food for them (drop, stroopwafels, kruidkoek etc) the day before to give them something to munch on in the plane ;) It was so great to see them! I never met Ben before, so it was nice to meet him and it was wonderful to see Katie again after such a long time (I left Darwin beginning of May this year). A bit weird as well, to see her here, and it made me realise how much I miss Oz. Really miss Oz... If my job doesn't work out, I'll try and move over there for a few years. Lovely people, great weather, relaxing atmosphere, beautiful nature and loads of great things to do when you're off work.
The rest of the week was quiet. I couldn't do much at work because the server my account is on crashed Wednesday morning and the IT people couldn't get it fixed (they finally did get it going in the weekend...). I couldn't do anything on Wednesday computerwise, but there were loads of things that were on the "to do" pile that I otherwise wouldn't have had time to do, so no worries there. Thursday and Friday got a bit annoying, but at least my email worked again, so a little 'regular' work could be done and ofcourse lots of filing, sorting and cleaning up. I left work early on Friday to go home, shower, pack my bag and leave for Groningen!!!!
I took a train too early (the weekend reduction ticket is valid from 7 o'clock onwards and I got on at 5 before 7) and got kicked off the train....(or pay a fine of 35 euro's) sad sad people. Not a very good start of my weekend, also because the next train was delayed so I eventually also missed my bus in Groningen to go to Karlijn... GRRRRR. So I decided to walk. Which was lovely, it was dry and it felt great to be back in my old hometown. If Oz doesn't work out, I'd love to go back to Groningen. I've had a great time there as a student, made some wonderful friends and memories.
To celibrate my arrivel we had a beer and some wine and Karlijn showed me some awesome pictures of her trip to Canada. Love to go there once as well, especially after seeing that! Finally at 2 o'clock I was exhausted and slept instantly... a good nightrest later I got up and had breakfast, after which I headed into town for some serious shopping. I've bought lots of ski stuff (pants, underwear, socks, hat etc) and lots of generic stuff. Around noon Marieke joined me and I bought some shoes, a blouse, lights for on my bike etc. I ended up with 3 big bags. Yes it was wonderful to be back haha.
After a wonderful cup of tea at Karlijn's I went towards Marieke's house to drop my stuff. We got food, ate and dyed our hair (which didn't work very well, but it was worth a try) and got ready for our big night out in town! Karlijn joined us at 10 and we had a bit of wine to get into the mood hehe. Off to a bar with loads of 80's music! We danced, sang and had loads of fun :D
Also a quick stop at another bar before going to 'het feest'. That was the end of our evening because Karlijn got really really sick. Poor girl! Completely out of this world and she had to be sick... we got her home, and tried to take care of her. She was soo sick, it couldn't have been just the wine, she drank just as much as we did... very weird. We went off towards Marieke and had a good night's sleep after which we got up feeling not too great (but that's a sign of a great night out haha). After brunch I went for a cuppa at Stephan's who redecorated his flat and it had been way too long since we had a good chat. Lovely to see him again and after that off to Diemen again. On the way Dorry texted if I wanted to have dinner at her place that evening, so I did (with all the shopping stuff with me haha).
All in all: a very busy but fantastic weekend! Fortunately my account has been restored at work, so I can actually do my normal things again whoehoe! Not much planned for this week. Just work and relax in the evening, paint my chair and clean up in the weekend and then... it's only one week until Christmas :D