Dirty Dancing

Contrary to what you all might think due to my lack of updates, loads of things actually happened in June (thanks Gerwin for reminding me!). So as usual this will be an elaborate post.

The first weekend of June Annemarie (Annemarie and me at the restaurant in Utrecht) was here to check out Haarlem and as we went along we came up with the plan to go to Terschelling (a Frisian Island) the last weekend of September with a group of friends from highschool (the same we were going to Dirty Dancing with the 7th of June). A load of browsing on the internet and making everybody enthousiastic for the plan we booked it last week, so another fun thing to look forward to in the long run!

First ofcourse, it was time to go to Dirty Dancing the musical in Utrecht! It was a bit weird since the text was in Dutch, but fortunately the songs were in English and ofcourse the most famous line ever: 'Nobody puts Baby in the corner'.

Absolutely lovely and funny to see that some guys were dragged along by their girlfriends (there were about 10 guys and over a thousand women I think). Rina and Judith enjoying a lovely desert. Ofcourse we had to catch up over dinner and drinks, which ended in some funny pictures (just to give you an impression). Corien enjoying a nice wine and girly (raspberry) beer!

The weekend after that I went to Friesland to see how my parents and brother were doing and celibrating Gerrit's birthday. My parents are doing a bit better everythime, which is very good news. They gave my dad very heavy doses of prednison (a very creepy drug, couldn't find a page in English, which is used when you have some kind of auto imune systeme disease) and it seems to work :) He does have a lot of bad side effects, but they are reducing his dose bit by bit, so hopefully they go away soon.

Then a very sad and eventually happy weekend started. I was supposed to go to Groningen on the 20th and stay at Karlijn's place, but got a short textmessage on Fridaymorning that her little dog, Woodan, was really sick and it wasn't sure if he was going to make it (he at snailpoison the night before). Fortunately the vet helped him really well and he looked a lot better at the end of the afternoon. Since I wanted to be there for her and give her as much support/distraction as she wanted I decided to go to Groningen anyway. Woodan was doing so well by the end of the afternoon that he was allowed to go home, so Marieke, Karlijn and I went to get him from the vet. He looked really pitiful, shivering all over and with a bloody paw from the I.V. bag they gave him. We all ate together at Karlijns place and saw him getting better by the hour, such a relief! Saturday morning I met with Stefan and his girlfriend to have a few drinks at the terrace (it was a lovely, sunny day) and did some shopping afterwards with Karlijn. That evening we went to a pub to see the Dutch loose from Russia (well I left after the first half since I don't like soccer at all and seeing us play that badly was too much) so I could keep Woodan company. Sundaymorning we left to go to Walibi World while Karlijns dad was so great to pick Woodan up along the way! It was a beautiful day with lots of fun, cool rides in the rollercoasters and just strolling along the park.

Now for something completely different: I saw an amazing job ad on the internet for the city council in Groningen, so I decided to give it a go. Unfortunately I wasn't experienced enough (in there eyes), so that was the end of that happy plan. Happily for me though I had a back up: my former boss had suggested me for a professional management programme at the university and after writing an extensive self assessment and having a selection interview they decided to enroll me in the programme! So for the next year I'll be very busy doing all kinds of study related things besides my normal job and will be meeting lots of different people from inside and outside the university. Last Wednesday was our first meeting and it started with a long day (9-20 o'clock) of getting to know eachother and doing some first exercises. Have to read a whole book before Monday, so busy doing that in the evenings (except for now ofcourse). Last Thursday I went out to dinner with Monique to Ponteneur in Amsterdam. Never eat there people! The food wasn't too bad (although they served melted icecream), but the service sucked: they were rude, didn't pay any attention at all to people who wanted to order, walked away in the middle of us ordering, didn't bring the food at the same time so we had to eat apart etc. TSSS. A well we had a lot of fun being amazed by the rudeness and disinterest of the people working there and it was lovely to catch up again.

Finally last Saturday we went out in Haarlem with all the members of our house! It was a lot of fun, chatting away while enjoying some fine white beers, what more can a person want... I think that was enough catching up for now, off to study again!