Almost Home Vrije

I finally found the cause of my morning headaches I’ve been having.  The coffee machine at the hotel is in dutch and it turns out that the word ‘Vrije’ means free.  As in – caffeine free coffee.

It’s really quite simple if I would have just taken the time to sound it out.  The ‘V’ is a hard F sound and phonetically it sounds exactly like free if I had paid any  attention.  I had started wondering if my caffeine addiction was so bad now that I needed two cups of coffee before it would go away.  Turns out the second cup was really the first one that had caffeine in it here at the office.

We are laughing quite a bit in the office.  The new girl has to use her electronic translator quite a bit to keep up with our conversations.  The funniest exchanges are between Liu and Corrie.  Corrie refers to everything as a Wee Bit of something…”it’s a wee bit of a problem”  or “the numbers are a wee bit off”  Liu asks her after every sentence “what’s a weebit number?”  or “what kind of a problem is a weebit problem?”  Francis and I spend a lot of time holding our laughs in.  They talk in circles constantly.

I’ve carried my camera to the office with me today so that I can get some pics of everyone I’m talking about.  I made an attempt at starting to pack this morning…it’s going to be quite the challenge.  Everyone cross your fingers that they are not working on the train tracks this Saturday so that I can ride a direct train to the airport.  I had a hard time with my bags on the way down here with all of the connections I had to make between trains and busses.

Here’s a list of things I’m tired of/miss:
Frizzy hair
No Cokes
Not Cooking – I really miss cooking!
No Shopping
No xmas cards being mailed to me
Not Driving
My ipod (I forgot it in New York – tragic)
My magazine subscriptions
Ice in my drinks

Here is a list of things I will miss when I’m gone:
Long, laid back dinners
“Go Go” the bird
The cheeses – yum!
Windmills
My new friends
Practicing Dutch words at lunchtime
Good beers
The architecture
The canals
Walking conveniently instead of driving (I know, I contradict myself)