Monday, June 3, 2013

Bye Tim!

today i had to say bye yet again. this time to tim... i shipped him off to amsterdam this evening while i will stay here for another 3 weeks. i have some work to finish. also, the weather is probably better here than in the netherlands, and there is a outdoor pool just downstairs, so..... 
oh, and the apartment complex did not want to let us break the lease one month, or even a half month earlier. it ends july 1st. we first inquired about a 1 month extension which was perfectly fine, but when we asked whether we could leave 1 month or half a month earlier they said no. they literally said that "it was of no benefit to them". tim calculated how much rent we paid over the past 3 years (a very painful number), and asked whether that wouldnt warrant a little leniency, but the answer remained no. (we saw many people moving out the past week, i dont think they are doing very well currently). so.... the best option for me was to stay. in a week my sister will arrive, so we can say goodbye to boston together!
tim in the meantime will start his new job this thursday. while we were sorting everything out in our apartment, we found many, many pens. it could be that we have well over 50 of them. they seemed to appear from everywhere, which is weird because i never could find a pen when i needed one. while walking to the subway station tim realized he did not even take one pen with him. then he found one from his new job, so i think thats a sign! it has the name of the hospital on it (bovenij; "ziekenhuis" means hospital). he had a huge amount of luggage. luckily i could convince him to check an additional suitcase. 2 suitcases of 23 kgs each (max weight), a backpack and a large carry-on.... while he now is somewhere above the ocean with 3 pairs of my shoes (the additional suitcase was of benefit to me... ;) ), i really need togoto sleep... good night!

Bye car!!

today we said goodbye to the car we were happily driving the past 3 years. or rather, that tim was driving since i dont have a license... (since a few months i have a learners permit, but... well... i will not be able to obtain an american license anytime soon... buuhhhh.. :( ). it belongs to tims parents and it made our life quite a bit easier... we had absolutely no trouble obtaining furniture, as it all was just thrown in the back of this huge car! we had no trouble getting groceries either... (theres no supermarket in walking distance of our apartment. and we got used to doing shopping only once a week, or less. very undutch! there i used to go whenever i was cooking dinner, just a little walk from my apartment). i got used to climbing in this huge thing, and very much enjoyed the royal view above everyone else.... and of course, it made me feel like a real american, sitting in a real american truck!!
thats why yesterday was so stressful; we HAD to get rid of the couch, even if it meant secretly throwing it in a dumpster somewhere, anywhere.... (i found out normally the dump we brought it to is not open on saturday, and we were there not that long before closing time. pfew..). today we got up early and drove the car to its storage, an hour away. when we had it storage ready (tim did most of the work, lucky me, it was so very hot again), we got a cab to the nearest train station, and had our very first train ride in the usa.... :) as it is sunday, the train was going only 3 times, over the entire day!! if we had missed it, we would have had to wait some 4 hours!! (thats also rather different from the netherlands!). it took forever to get back into boston, but it was actually quite relaxing to sit in the very slowly moving train for 1.5 hours....
bye bye car, we will certainly miss you!