Five Months Later.

It has been five months since I wrote about our lives in Amsterdam. The neglect wasn't purposeful, more that I wasn't sure if what we were doing was actually worth blogging about. But I recently met a fellow ex-pat (from Frederick, MD no less!) who has been blogging about her life in Amsterdam since 2014. I found myself getting lost in her archives and realized that we really should be writing some of this stuff down. So -- here we are, nearly six months in Amsterdam.

Since I last wrote we have managed to settle down and get into a routine, just in time for everything to be thrown into chaos in a few weeks. In July we announced a little stowaway we brought along with us.

This little one will be making an appearance in the next couple weeks. So while I'm home on leave waiting for the big reveal, I'm going to try to play catch up on this blog.

So, five month check in. How goes it?

Good.

Jobs?
Awesome. Danny has already gotten a promotion (of course). He'll be running Booking.com in the next six months. Rachel won the co-worker lottery and despite taking maternity leave four short months after starting, has been welcomed by an amazing group who trust her, inspire her, and push her to take on big challenges, supporting her every step of the way. The commute is still long but the hours in the office (while sometimes frustrating) have left her feeling more energized than she ever though possible. The perks of being an American fish in a small pond.

Most favorite things?
Snacks. We've almost made our way through the entire cookie aisle of the local Jumbo supermarket with incredibly favorable results and now its Sinterklaas/Christmas season and we're in marzipan heaven. The Dutch know their way around a bag of sour candy, a jar of pickles, and tiny fried bites of yum. They have crouton balls for your soup and coconut slices for your pb & j sandwiches. The sprinkles on your breakfast toast thing isn't a joke either.

Bikes. In the rain, in the wind, uphill both ways. In a very Dutch move, Rachel bought a bike that lives in Rotterdam to get her to/from work and the train station. So she owns two bikes in two cities. That's some level 8 Dutch living. Danny has found no limit to what he can haul around on his bike. We love it. It is truly the fastest, best way to get anywhere.

Least favorite things?
Noisy neighbors. This isn't a Dutch specific thing, and we know we could have rolled the dice and ended up with crap neighbors in the US too (and we did, several times), but our apartment on Argyle spoiled us and now living with a cafe/bar that seems to overserve their patrons and then encourage them to sing in street the early hours of the morning has left us a little frustrated. We are optimistic that the winter months will put an end to this behavior.

The weather. It's not great. It rains a lot. BUT it makes us appreciate the sunny days that much more. And there are rainbows everywhere. All the time. You would think we would have gotten more chill about the rainbows in five months. Wrong. Zero chill. 100 photos on both phones of the rainbows.

Travel?
We went to Bordeaux.

And Malaga.

And London.

And Oslo.

And Copenhagen.

We even managed to sneak in a trip back to the US because back in because this nugget has four very excited, brand new grandparents (not to mention aunts, uncles, cousins, and besties for the resties) who couldn't wait until next summer to spoil him/her. So we had to fly back to the US with a couple empty suitcases. We came back with more blankets than one child could possibly need and confidence that we were making the right choice by having this adventure in Amsterdam.

More updates to come!