{"id":280,"date":"2008-02-24T21:15:44","date_gmt":"2008-02-25T03:15:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wobben.org\/general\/detailed-report-1-last-days-in-nl"},"modified":"2020-02-03T15:55:51","modified_gmt":"2020-02-03T21:55:51","slug":"detailed-report-1-last-days-in-nl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wobben.org\/blog\/our-home-life\/at-home\/detailed-report-1-last-days-in-nl\/","title":{"rendered":"detailed report 1: last days in NL"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00bb photo album<\/strong> 2008\/0202 ~ Last Days In The Netherlands<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hello guys!<\/p>\n

<\/a>We’ve been doing really well here in our first week as Canadian residents. We applied for our SIN number and health card and did a lot of shopping (so much to get, so many stores, so much to discover). The weather has been awesome, sunny and freezing up until -25 or so, but the dry frost feels great to me (but we haven’t been outside for long periods of time). Right now it’s getting warmer, only mild frost and the snow is melting a bit in the sun. We’re settling in nicely in the basement suite, but didn’t have much time for the computer stuff yet. I’ve started to type up a detailed report, but I never seem to be able to finish it and stuff gets added all the time, so I better start with a part I, the part about the last days in the Netherlands.<\/p>\n

Last days in the Netherlands:<\/strong><\/p>\n

After weeks of packing<\/strong> we were finally done on the 11th. We are going to use World Baggage Services to get the 3 cubic metres of boxes shipped, it was picked up on the 15th and will be shipped on the 25th (to arrive here about a month later if all goes well). Then we had to go through the house, either keeping things that we wanted to take along in our suitcases or tossing stuff out.<\/p>\n

On the 14th<\/strong> Nico had his last day at work and it was pretty heavy to say goodbye to his co-workers. As he doesn’t work with all his co-workers every day like I do, a lot of them are going to come over on our walk-in afternoon on Sunday. In the meantime I had my last Cesar gym class, and afterwards we went for an early dinner at one of the members, Milly. She’s partly from Suriname and would cook for us. We had a killer meal and they gave me a Dutch calendar and a Dutch cookbook as farewell presents \ud83d\ude42 At night we had another dinner appointment, with Dave and Liz in Aachen.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Friday the 15th<\/strong> was my last day at work, and luckily it wasn’t so heavy, it was mostly just heartwarming. Best present was from my co-workers: I got an awesome hoodie saying “bye bye my love, your old team” \ud83d\ude42 It was definitely weird to leave the place I knew so well for the last time, after 6 years…
\nBack home, our rental furnace had been removed, so we’d be spending the last days in a cold house (it was freezing at night and we only had a small heater in the living room). Later that day the boxes were taken away to be shipped (don’t get me started on the annoying driver that complained about everything and esp. WBS).<\/p>\n

On Saturday we drove to the garbage disposal park with a borrowed van, three times!, to get rid of the last furniture and other stuff. After hours of hard work, we spent some time at Rob and Vera’s to get a shower and we tried to pack the suitcases for a bit.
\nAt 5.30 Els and Maurice came over, they were going to pick us up to have dinner somewhere, they didn’t tell where. That was arranged months ago. We went to Danas, a Mexican restaurant in Geleen and had a good time (and food) there. Afterwards Els wanted to have a drink at Ed & Rocco’s, a hardrock bar in Geleen, so we went there next. When we entered, I vaguely saw Rob’s face, I thought, that can’t be Rob, must just look like him. Then I saw the next familiar face and the next and the next… and then I realized this was for US! Geez, I don’t know how people managed to keep it a secret, but we really had NO clue whatsoever!!!!! Almost all our neighbours were there, some friends and a lot of my family incl. my dad, Amalia, my brother and nephews!! We had said that we hated goodbye parties, but this one was so cool! Not nearly as much drama as I thought it would be and it was so heartwarming!! We really didn’t need any presents and all, but of course we’re grateful after all for everything we did get anyway, like tons of licorice, cards and a lot of money. And not to forget the many awesome words and good wishes you had for us. THANK YOU everybody and most of all the best girl in the world for making this surprise party<\/strong> the best present ever, ELS YOU RULE!!<\/p>\n

When we got home at 1am, we couldn’t go to bed right away, we were too overwhelmed by all the impressions of the surprise party. The only goodbyes that I really dreaded (my dad and brother) went very well luckily. My dad’s 89, but I just had a very strong feeling that I would see him again, so it was OK.<\/p>\n

In the morning I woke up with the throbbing migraine I had been able to keep on a distance for all these weeks. Oh well.. I knew I’d get through it somehow and Canada was getting real close \ud83d\ude42 That Sunday we had our own sort-of goodbye party, a walk-in afternoon<\/strong> in our almost-empty house with garden furniture, no heat (brrrrrr) and disposable cups. That was a great success too, so many people came by! Again we were very impressed by it all! The biggest surprise was probably Marco and Diana stopping by for a moment earlier that morning, on their way home from the hospital, with their newborn daughter Caitlin!! I was very surprised and honoured that they stopped by to show us their little bundle of joy before we left!<\/p>\n

After that we reeeeaaaally had to pack our suitcases and clear out the last few things in the house! We had a few kilo’s too much and it took us forever to divide them over the bags. We slept for 2 hours before we got up again at 3am. The shuttle taxi came to get us at 4am and a whole bunch of neighbours got up in the middle of the night to see us off<\/strong>!! We have the best ex-neighbours in the world (or were they just so happy to get rid of us \ud83d\ude09 ?)!! We hugged them all several times before finally getting into that taxi, some goodbyes weren’t easy, but funny enough no goodbyes had been as difficult or emotional as I had been afraid of (not even leaving the house), I guess we were just totally ready for it.<\/p>\n

Updates on our new Canadian life coming up soon!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00bb photo album 2008\/0202 ~ Last Days In The Netherlands Hello guys! We’ve been doing really well here in our first week as Canadian residents. We applied for our SIN number and health card and did a lot of shopping (so much to get, so many stores, so much to discover). The weather has been awesome, sunny and freezing up … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1013,1005],"tags":[1065],"class_list":["post-280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-life","category-at-home","tag-emigration","no-post-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wobben.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wobben.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wobben.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wobben.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wobben.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/wobben.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7851,"href":"https:\/\/wobben.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions\/7851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wobben.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wobben.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wobben.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}