A little piece of my mind

Almost 25

2006-02-23T13:00:00.000+01:00

Today it's february the 23rd in the year 2006, that means that tomorrow, february the 24th, I'll be turning 25 years old. A quarter of a century, if you look at it like that it sounds quite old. 25 is the age that you think about when you are a little girl 'when I'm 25 years old I will be.....' I wish I wrote down the things as a little girl when I thought about 25, because I don't remember what my dreams were as a little girl, I guess I've always been someone who lived by the day and didn't look forward too much. For me 25 is the age when you stop for a second with the things that you do and look back on the things you have done. And I'm very happy to say that I can look back at these 25 years without any regrets. I had an amazing childhood, I'm very grateful for everything my parents have done for me. I went through high school, after a few years I figured out that I might wanted to be a teacher (just like my mum). I went to teacher collage and finished that with succes as well. During this time I crossed some borders (literaly) and I lived in Finland for half a year to study. And all of the things that I have experienced made me the girl I am today, one day before my 25th birthday. I'm enjoying life, I have amazing parents, a great brother, loving friends, I'm teaching in a school I love, I'm trying to laugh as much as possible and right now I'm planning to go on my dream trip to Canada.
And what will I be doing after that? We'll see in the next 25 years to come....

Should I or shouldn't I...... I SHOULD!!!

2006-02-08T13:47:00.000+01:00

I'm finally starting to plan a trip to Canada. I want to go to Canada for such a long time now. I would love to travel around and work in the meantime. I only have to sent travel active (a travel organisation) an e-mail and let them know that I want to go and they will arrange everything for me (ticket, visum, help me to find a job, etc) Now I have to dicide if I can and want to go because they only have 50 visa and already the have not many left. There is now doubt about the wanting part but somewhere it scares the crap out of me!!! I still haven't sent that letter. There are so many things I need to think of. I need to rent my room to someone else, I need money ofcourse, do I want to go by myself or am I to scared to do that? (I always said I wanted to go alone though) I don't know why I just can't sent the application and go for it! It's making me crazy! Now is the chance..... otherwise it will always ends in shoulda, coulda, woulda....

2006-01-29T19:19:00.000+01:00

It really is the BIG apple!

Has been a while... :-S

2006-01-29T14:23:00.000+01:00

Wow, writing a blog is not really my thing. I hoped it would be an easier way to keep you all updated about my life, but if I would like to do that I do have to write someting down once in a while. So here I am trying again....
I'm doing pretty good. I have been quite busy these last view months. I'm working as a teacher on the same primaryschool where I did my final practice. It's a great school, I have my own group for 1 and a half day in the week. These children are around 10 years of age and it's a nice group to work with. Next to that one and a half day I fill in for teacher whom are not able to go to there work. This way I'm getting the chance to really learn more about children of all kind of ages that I can out of the school books. It's a lot of fun because a lot of the children in the school now know who I am. In the beginning I didn't know if I really wanted to be a teacher because of the experiences I had in other primary schools but now I really enjoy being a teacher. For three more weeks I will fill in for a teacher so I will have my own group full time. These children are in the 2nd grade so they are around 7 years old.
Next to teaching I'm also busy with other things ofcourse. I still play volleyball three times a week, so that hasn't changed. And in the fallbreak I went to New York with my mother. I kinda had a deal with my mother, if I graduated befor the beginning of may she would take me to New York. I didn't make that, I graduated a month later, I still really really wanted to go so we went. Ofcourse I would pay for my own trip ;-) My mother had a friend living in New York so we could stay at her place. And her place was amazing!! She lives at broadway next to the dancing school Juliard. We had a nice view over Central Park and the Upper West Side and the Hudson river.... AmAZing!!!! We had a really great time and ofcourse we did all the touristic things you could do in a week, so we took a boat trip to liberty Island and Ellis Iland, another boat trip around Manhatten Island. We went up the Empire State Building, walked the 5th av. Went to see the Met (that is one BIG museum!!!) Walked around in Central park, ofcourse see the sign of John Lennon: Imagine and all kinds of other things. And now I can really say... I LOVE NEW YORK!!!!!
A few weeks later it was christmas time!! I had a nice christmas break, I celebrated both days with my parents, the first day we went to my brothers place. He and his girlfried made a great dinner for us to enjoy. The second day we just stayed at home, nice and quiet... With newyears I went skiing with my brother and some friends. We had an amazing time!! We went to Chatel, a cute little village in France very near to the Swiss border. Lots, and lots of snow and very many slobes!! And amazing place, it's called Portes du Soleil but the time we were there you could call it Portes (ne pas de) Soleil.. because we haven't had a lot of sun.... but no matter, we had a great time!
The last week of my christmas break I moved to another room within Utrecht. Now I have a bigger room at a great location!! I really love living there. I'm very near to the city centre and I still have a nice view, not the same view I had from 18 stories up but nice enough. I can see the city centre with it's churches and old houses from the kitchen window. The only thing is that I don't have internet in my room just yet.... but I'm working on that!!
Now it's almost the end of january already, so back to work, back to reality and enjoy live!

I hope you all do the same!! Enjoy and I hope to write in my blog quite soon again....

Graduated!!!

2005-07-07T09:43:00.000+02:00

I finally graduated!! Last friday I recieved my diploma. The last months has been quite busy. I have been working on my thesis a lot and it all worked out great! I recieved a 9 for my thesis (grades are from 1 to 10 and 10 is the best) so I was very happy with that result! In the pictures you can see me presentating my thesis and sighning my diploma!

2005-07-06T11:03:00.000+02:00

presentation of my thesis

2005-07-06T11:02:00.000+02:00

Signing my diploma

Loving orange

2005-05-16T22:43:00.000+02:00

I know it has been quite a while since the last time I wrote someting in this log. But I'm back :-) Most of my time i'm really busy with working on my thesis, I hope to be finished with that quite soon. But next to writing my thesis there have been some fun days here in Holland, like april the 29th and 30th. These are the days we celebrate the birthday of our queen, the celebration starts at night on the 29th (queensnight). It was a big party in Utrecht, live bands playing everywhere and everybody just having a great time! The next morning it's queensday, this is the day when a lot of people dress up in orange clothes and just party. You even have the chance to sell your old stuff on the streets which is great fun and if you do it right you can even make some money :-) There was music everywhere, people were getting a long really good and the weather was amazing, so it was a great party!!! (I thought it was even better then vappu... sorry ;-) ) Here you see some pictures a friend of me took of the canals (oude gracht) in Utrecht.

2005-05-16T22:38:00.000+02:00

queensday 2005

2005-05-16T22:37:00.000+02:00

queensday 2005

50 things to do

2005-03-18T10:35:00.000+01:00

Now that I'm almost graduated it's time for me to figure out what I want in life. And sometimes it feels like a writers block when it comes to making decisions about the things that I want and the things that I need to do. So I made a list with 50 things to do in my life (thank you Zharina) :-) It's not completed yet at all so I will be making more and more goals for myself during this week. You can find my list here :-) Or if you want to make your own list you can do that at: My 50 . Have fun!!!

Last movie seen: The Butterfly Effect

2005-03-17T12:12:00.000+01:00

The Butterfly Effect

An amazing movie, a bit spooky but it doesn't have one boring moment in it at all!!! It's a psychological thriller about a guy who has black outs since he was a little boy. When he grows up he's trying to find out what happend during his black outs. He uses his diary for this which he wrote from around the age of 7. Then he finds out that he can change the events during the time outs with all kind of consequences for his live.

Spring is in the air

2005-03-17T09:30:00.000+01:00

The sun is shining, birds are singing, flowers are popping up everywhere SPRING IS IN THE AIR!!! Winter wonderland was nice as long as it lasted (on week... followed by rain :-S) but I love the first day of spring!
The first day just puts a smile on your face, makes you forget all your worries and gives you the urge to go outside, so I did :-) and where to spent the first day of spring better than at the beach?? I gave myself the day of and I went to visit a friend of mine in Noordwijk and we had a great day, talking, walking and drinking tea :-) !!
Too bad it only lasted one day... the first day of spring was followed by rain as well... I guess that's Holland ...:-S
I'm sure the spring days will be coming back and ofcourse follwed by summer days... I can't wait for the summer, to go to the park, eat icecream, go to the beach (play beachvolleybal) and not to forget SAILING!!!
On the other side, it's good that the weather isn't that nice just yet, so now I can focus a bit more on my schoolwork so I will be finished before the summer begins :-)

Winter wonderland

2005-03-02T22:59:00.000+01:00

Finally we have some snow here in Holland!! It's absolutely beautifull!!! It's white everywhere, today on the news they said it hasn't been snowing this much since 1985. I hope it will stay white just a little bit longer, I just love snow...
It has been a while since I wrote something new on the weblog and a lot of things happend in between. I became a year older, now I'm an old fart (but still younger then old fart Katie :-P) of 24 years old. I had a great party!! A lot of my friends were there to celebrate it with me. I celbrated it at an Irish pub called Mick o'Connels because my room is too small to have some friends over :-) I really had a great time it was so nice to see a lot of my friends together again and just talk and laugh together. After the pub I went with some friends who where left (the others went home) to another place, we went to this bar called the Grass at the neighbors (het gras bij de buren) and we were able to do some dancing there!! I had an amazing time!!
The next day I went home to see my parents and they had prepared a great dinner for me! So you see have been really spoiled again this year. I had a great birthday!!!

Up north

2005-02-14T11:34:00.000+01:00

After the most boring week ever, I had a pretty nice weekend! I went with my volleyball team to Leeuwarden to visit a friend of us who used to play in our team. Leeuwarden is the capital city of Friesland (a province in the north of the Netherlands). We had a really good time, we started in a Tappas bar which was very nice, and the food was great. We've had 130 euro's of our sponsor that we could use for this weekend :-) Just a friend who promised us, before the competition, 5 euro's for every set we would win. I guess he didn't think we would be any good this year.
We stayed in the Tappas bar for a while, at the end we even smoked a water pipe (no worries there was no drugs!!! only aple tabak). I had never done that before.. a bit weird but the taste was nice. After this great diner we went to a bar to have some drinks and talk to some Friesian people, this could have been a lot of fun because they have there own weird little language, but I didn't find any.... only students from other places of Holland who study in Leeuwarden. But we had a good time anyway! After the bar we went to this club called NOA where we had a chance to do some dancing. So I think it was around 4 that we dicided that going to sleep was a pretty good idea.... I needed the sunday to come around a bit and be very lazy.
And today it's Valentine's, Happy Valentine's everyone!!

What to write???

2005-02-10T22:48:00.000+01:00

To write or not to write... or maybe the question should be what to write??
With a lot of help from a friend (thank you Zharina!!) I finally figured out how this weblog works. A place to write down my do's and don'ts for others to read.... I just hope I will have something to tell you. I'm not really good in keeping up a diary but I will try this, it looks like fun. So here's a start.
Today has been one of those slow days, you know those days when you look out of the window and you just know it's not gonna be your day. It was grey and raining the whole day so I just stayed in and did some schoolwork and worked on this weblog. So I had the most boring day ever, not the best way to begin a weblog is it??.
Well we'll see what tomorrow brings...

Beach, sun and volleyball!!!

2005-02-10T13:04:00.000+01:00

Playing beachvolleyball in Marbella, may 2004

First time for everything

2005-02-09T12:30:00.000+01:00

So this is my first own weblog! I don't really have anything to say yet, I'm still trying to find out how this works..... So if everything goes right this will be my first post on my first weblog....