summer is magic

(my brother with mom)

I think I've just about convinced my parents to let my 10 year old brother come spend his summer vacation with Vito and I! I'm so excited! Well, I'm excited but at the same time I've also started panicking when after days of searching I'm still scrambling to find day time activities for him. I basically will have to provide my Dad a play-by-play of every single day in order for Danilo to be able to stay here for an extended time.

Do you know any 10 year olds? Especially 10 year old boys?? They need to be engaged (read: entertained) every single moment. They're something out of this world! Literally they have a lot more in common with the aliens they spend days chasing and blowing up on their playstations then with regular earth walking people... They even TALK differently, but that's probably something we can discuss in a whole post on it's own.

So basically I'm now researching all kinds of day camp options and it seems to be difficult since Dutch kids only have 6 week vacations, 3 weeks of which their parents usually go on trips with them, and the remaining 3 weeks are spent playing with neighborhood kids, going to the pool with grandma and other close to home activities. I used to go to sleep away camp for TWO entire months and still have a couple of weeks left over. But in the words of my longest standing personal hero Phileas Fogg "There is no problem that doesn't have a solution".

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manhattan memoirs

Once upon a time for a year I lived in a place called Manhattan. It was a strange, strange land full of funny, mystical creatures...

They went about their days buzzing with an air of importance by day and with an air of complete wild abandon by night.

Now here I go, about to fall of another proverbial cliff of a triad. All I really wanted to do was show you something typically manhattan, and that is a lox bagel!
There is something magical about bagels in NYC, some say its the water. A bagel baker I knew used to freeze and sand on a plane a weekly package to a cafe owner in Tokyo. Imagine that, little bagels baked in Brooklyn all the way in Tokyo.

This was my breakfast of choice along with some cart coffee. Well, it was when I wasn't running late for work, on some kind of a starvation diet, in love, or just having a freak-out about nothing in particular just life in general. So basically, such breakfast was a rare and wonderful treat. Yum, got to have it again last week.
Verzonden vanaf mijn draadloze BlackBerry®-toestel

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So jet lagged!!!

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new york, city of dreams?

I'm now in New York at my parents' house. It's funny how I don't say "I'm home" anymore because home now really is my Little Town, Netherlands. It's pretty refreshing. Mostly for my parents I think. I mean they really had a bit of a scare when I bomeranged back to this house after living in Manhattan on my own for a year.

I moved back in and 'crashed' on the couch in the living room temporarily (for two years) so that they lost all hope of EVER getting me out. Hehehe, when Vito came and whisked me away I was convinced my parents were secretly paying him... They weren't. At least Vito did not store it in any visible bank account.

Now being in NY is reminding me of the things I want to accomplish still, like start a business, write a book... Having BIG ambitious goals is always something that makes me feel warm and cozy inside. I'm like that. I can't sit still.

But to make myself feel better I do like to recount the BIG ambitious goals I have accomplished so far:

learn Italian
visit Patagonia
find a job that sends me places on a jet plane
get married

Yep, I like this excersize! Makes me feel all self satisfied. Makes me also hope that I can start tackling other goals on my list.

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a blast from the past

I can't believe I'm doing this. Before I even met Vito and before I moved to the Netherlands, I had another blog... I made it private before moving here because it had a lot of silly things in it like me dreaming up what kind of cupcakes I want at my wedding and I did not think Vito would be quiet amused to read about such things after DATE 3! Now however, I think it can be amusing since we are married and DID have cupcakes at the wedding. Now I just hope there is nothing super scandalous in that blog of mine...

Oh yeah, Vito was called Nico.

And the blog was: Sempre Primavera

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I'm just amazed at the quality of night time photos taken by my blackberry! Love it!
Verzonden vanaf mijn draadloze BlackBerry®-toestel

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