Happy 2024!

Lobster instead of Oliebollen

New Years Eve with Ryans Filipino family was a new experience;) Everyone is supposed to bring a dish and there has to be too much. If there wouldn't be any leftovers, that would be kind of embarrassing. Ryan brought a really huge lobster, caught by himself! Lotte and I came home from shopping this afternoon and o my goodness, that scary thing was hanging in the sink, Eww. Lotte calmly picked it up, put it away so we could use the kitchen to prepare our special Dutch recipe: "hagelslagtaart"!  

Hagelslagtaart ("sprinkles cake")

My mom used to make this cake for our birthdays and I've continued the tradition. We love it. Recently, Lotte asked grandma for the recipe, my mom bought her the ingredients as a present, using my suitcase to get them here. On top of that, Lotte passed me a grocery list from AH, including hamka's, duo penotti, anijshagel, eierkoeken and a bunch of other Dutch goodies so now I find myself wearing the same outfit every day:) Just kidding. Well, we enjoyed working on the cake and finally, we brought it to the New Years Eve party. (But I believe we were the only ones who ate it, haha.)

More Dutch food

Tante Willy was looking forward to have me over again, she welcomed me with home made "kroketten" and real Dutch "erwtensoep"! I always love to stay with her; we're talking for hours, go for shopping in Burlington (big fashion store) -also for hours, I'm enjoying the beautiful mountain view and we are working on a jigsaw puzzle of Santa Claus;)

New Years Eve party experience

These key words come to my mind: very hospitable, many warm hugs, bustling with noise, numerous kids running around, dogs as well, laid-back atmosphere, lot of food and drinks. And to me, these Filipino people all appear identical, haha. They've known Lotte for a decade now and I can see she's part of the family just as I am as her mom.

Communicating between Thailand, California and the Netherlands

Sanne and Peter are having fun in Bangkok, friends and family are in the Netherlands; I'm counting hours all the time. We are 15 hours behind on Thailand and 9 hours behind on the Netherlands. I had a call scheduled with Noah in the Netherlands and told him to call me in the morning, his time, expecting that would be at afternoon, my time. So he did, ringing me in the middle of the night:)) I had counted forwards instead of backwards. 

What's next

Lotte will pick me up tomorrow after work and 'll drop me off at my next airbnb, that's close to her home and the beach. (She 's my personal driver, driving me back and forth all the time, she's such a sweetie). I'll be staying there for the next 12 days, just relaxing and hanging out with Lotte and other people. Actually, I'm still tired and don't need a full schedule;)

To get a bigger picture of what I 've been doing last week see my photo's!

To be continued! Love, Marieke