Queens Day

A cold and rather empty Queens Day market

Today was Queens Day in the Netherlands. On Queens Day, we celebrate the Queen's birthday. Traditionally therefore, it is held on the Queen's birthday (tata!). Our current Queen Beatrix though, decided that she would like the 30th of April (her late mother's birthday), to still be Queensday under her rule. This leaves her to celebrate her own birth day (January 31st) with her family, instead of with the whole Dutch people. Beatrix also changed the ceremony on Queens Day. Instead of having a parade of people from all over the country passing by the balcony of the Palace, the royal family pays one or two towns a visit.
Janne and Emma enjoying a pony ride

Veldhoven was not one of these towns, so we had to make do with the regular Queen's Day festivities. These usually include a market on which kids can sell their old toys, a parade of (red-white-blue and orange) decorated bycicles, a balloon flying competition and some more games or rides for kids. As it was dissappointingly cold (yes, still ...) and a lot of people were on vacation (due to two weeks school holiday), there weren't very many people out. Still, we went to the market, ate some popcorn and Emma and Janne got to ride a pony. All in all it was a bit dissappointing. Maybe our 'own' side of Veldhoven makes more out of Queen's Day celebrations. We'll see next year.

Back of the house, with extension on the left and new sliding doors

The house is still making good progress. Most of the upstairs rooms are plastered and ready to be painted. All of the prep work for plastering the ground floor has been done. This Friday, the cement floor will be put in on the ground floor. They started building the kitchen (in the factory).
Final prep work in the kitchen

I'm getting to a point where I feel that I'm becoming knowledgable on much more topics than I would like to be. Topics like heating systems, door handles, ceilings, floors. But, in about 5 more weeks, all this knowledge should be translated in our own, beautiful, new house. If you look at the pics, that might be hard to believe, but we're still being told it'll all work out fine!

Master bedroom, with dressing room on the right

Family wedding

Today, we went to Venlo, to attend Pieter's youngest sister's wedding. It was a nice opportunity to see a lot of Pieter's relatives again. Last time we saw them was, very typical for large families, at the funeral of Pieter's mother. The Dekker family has not changesd over the years that I've known them. It's still a unique and crazy bunch of people, garanteed to make every party very interesting and lots of fun. Emma and Janne were entertained the whole time by their cousins, both the French and the Dutch ones. Pieter's youngest sister has lived in France for over 20 years and she became French several years ago. Her children speak Dutch, but with a strong French accent. That was probably part of their attraction for Emma and Janne. That, plus the fact that they were willing to play all kinds of games with them.
The real wedding party will be in France in August. Having heard very wild stories about French Dekker weddings, I'm looking forward to attending one!

Spring has finally arrived!

I will probably be punished for my optimism by another two weeks of freezing cold, but for now spring seems to be here. On Saturday and Sunday it was really nice and sunny and temperatures went over 15 degrees C. It's amazing how fast you adjust to Dutch temperatures; we actually thought it was warm! In Taiwan, we would still be complaining about the cold at 15 degrees ...
The very Dutch Pannekoekenbakker in Eersel

On Sunday, we took advantage of the spring weather by riding our bikes to Eersel, a little village about 11 km from Veldhoven. There, we had pancakes for lunch at one of the many 'Pannekoekenhuizen' (pancake restaurants) of this region. It must seem a bit strange to foreigners that we have pancakes for lunch or dinner, instead of for breakfast or as desert (we do have pancakes -flensjes- for desert as well though). But anyone visiting the south of Holland should try the pannekoeken at least once. They're kind of the Dutch version of pizza. The pancakes in Eersel were delicious and way to big. Good thing we rode our bikes there, so we could burn off at least some of the calories.

We're making good progess on the house. The two upper floors have been plastered, two build-in closets in Emma and Janne's room have been built, we decided on and ordered the floors for the two upper floors, as well as everything for both bathrooms, we decided which floor we want on the ground floor (maple), and which design for the kitchen.

Last week Friday, our Honda CRV from Taiwan passed the final inspection! As of next week, we will be driving our own car again. In the end, it was surprisingly easy to import the car and no changes had to be made for it to be allowed on European roads. It's nice to have something go better than expected, for a change :-)

My job at ASML is still in limbo. I didn't hear back from the person who offered me the position (yet). We'll see if it's gonna work out or not.

We are still waiting for the culture 'shock' to kick in. Of course, we do see differences between life in Taiwan and life here. But so far, there has not really been a shock. We were amazed at the efficiency of all the (local) government departments/agencies. As soon as your register in your town, all relevant government depts seem to be notified. Within four weeks after our arrival, we received notices from social services, health services, vaccination agencies and all kinds of other agencies. Without any effort from our side, we knew exactly what we had to do, where we had to register and what information was required. Truly amazing. Especially compared to what we were used to (as foreigners) in Taiwan. Maybe it's similar here for foreigners, but for Dutch, it's fully automated.

Another difference that we notice is how full everybody's agenda is. Every weekend is filled with activities and trips and we need to plan weeks ahead if we want to visit friends (or family for that matter). We, on the other hand, do not have overflowing weekends. People warned us that that would change soon and that we would be longing back to those quiet first months ... We'll see :-)

Surprise from ASML

Again, long time no post. We probably already lost some fans because of our lack of diligence. I'll try to do better in the future :-)

The title of this post refers to a surprise job-offer ASML has made me last week. I went to ASML to say goodbye to my Veldhoven colleagues, but got offered a job in the process. Now, before anyone gets overexcited, it's a temp job, for about 6-9 months. And it's part time. Which, from my perspective, is a good thing. It is kind of interesting (to say the least) that two months ago, they said they didn't have a job for me, where now they ask me to help them out, because they are understaffed ... Tomorrow, I have another meeting about if and how we can make this work. Will keep you posted.
Last week, I met with some ladies of the Moms and Toddlers group in Veldhoven. It's a bit like the Hsinchu coffee morning, only a little more formal; with membership fees, regular outings and activities etc. Maybe an idea for the Hsinchu Coffee Morning? On Friday, they went to the Papegaaienpark (Parrot Park), right here in Veldhoven. I had never been there, so was happy to join the ladies. The Papegaaienpark is quite nice, with lots of parrots, but also several other animals, play grounds and a restaurant/cafe. Kids can (safely) feed the parrots and most of the other animals, so a garanteed hit with them.
Also last week, we found two nice playgrounds. One is walking distance from our current house, the other one biking distance from our new house. Once the weather warms up (it's still freezing at night!), I think we are going to like it here :-) Emma and Janne had their first experience playing with one of the neighbourhood girls and our neighbour's son cut our grass (for only 1 EUR). Slowly but surely, we are integrating in the neighbourhood and the Dutch way of life.

Emma and Janne both have been sick; Emma last week, Janne this week. Janne is still recovering and we might need to take her to a doctor to check a few things out.

The house is progressing nicely. A lot of decisions have been made, still several need to be made. Looks like there will be a two week delay, but not more than that. We should be in the new house before the end of July and before the summer holiday.
With Pieter's piano still in the container and me unable to work on the website or any of the photo albums, we watch a lot more tv than we did in Taiwan. It also causes us to snack a lot more than we did in Taiwan. Fortunately, the scale is also still in the container ...

Long time no post :-)

It's been over a week, almost two weeks, since my last post. As you can imagine, we're quite busy. Bringing the girls to school and picking them up, going over to our house to look at the progress (and mistakes ... ), cooking and cleaning, but most of all deciding what kind of kitchen, bathrooms, floor and wall colour we want, are all things that are taking up a lot of time. We've come up with four different designs for the kitchen and three for the bathroom already. I think we now pretty much know what appliances we want in the kitchen and where we'd like them. The big thing still is the colour. Fortunately, that is one of the last things they need to know. For the bathroom, we've decided on the tiles, but not much else yet. For the living room floor, we need to decide which wood we want and in which style. Decisions, decisions ...

Sideview of the new house, with extension

Like with every project, there's surprises and set-backs. A big one this week was the info that it isn't possible to plaster the walls in a colour, only in white. So, if we want a colour on the walls, we need to have them painted after they are plastered.

Inside, starting to look good

Most things are going well though and a lot of work has been done. Now that the old walls in the living room are gone and the supporting beams are in, I'm better able to see through the mess and envision what it will be like when it's finished.

Brussels Market

Last weekend, we visited our Taiwan-friends Florence and Thomas (and their two boys). We met them in Hsinchu, where they lived for almost three years. Now they live in a fantastic old house in Brussels. We had a wonderful time visiting the Atomium, walking through the old centre of Brussels, looking at antique shops, seeing Manneke Pis and eating Brussels wafles. I think both Pieter and I gained a few pounds because of the delicious food Florence prepared for us. But, it was worth it :-)

Tired little legs get some rest

The Atomium, built in 1958

On one of the escalators inside the Atomium

As for the culture shock; I don't think we have one yet. It will happen, I'm sure. At this moment everything is still new and exciting, like the first few weeks/months in Hsinchu. Once the newness wears off, reality will sink in. Today, Emma mentioned her classmates in Taiwan for the first time. 'I think the children in my school in Taiwan will miss me', she said. When I asked her if she missed them, her answer was yes. I hope it will not get worse than that and that she'll able to enjoy all the positive things that her new school and Holland are bringing her. Like not having home work, being close to nieces and nephews and to Oma and Tante Elly.