the last few days

Sunday evening I was supposed to finish packing the last minor details of things we needed to take with, but that didn't happen.  We instead spent the evening visiting with friends, and then with Ryan & Amber.  It was good to just sit around and talk, hopefully helping them to relax and get comfortable in our home.  It was close to 1:30 before we got to bed.  Not good considering I had set the alarm for 7:30am to finish up the packing!

We did good and were actually out the door to go get Matt (who brought us to the airport) by 10:15, our intended time! :)  All went well at the airport, since I had checked us in already online, we only had to drop our bags off for weighing and tagging, and YES! they were both ok, well one was over by 2lbs, but he didn't say anything! :)  Security was empty and went quickly which was nice.  Now for the long wait at the gate ... its frustrating to have to be there 2-1/2 hours early for international flights, when they make you sit around for that time, not doing anything!  Our boarding passes that I had printed, for some reason didn't give us seat numbers, so when the gang finally arrived to start the boarding procedure we went up to the desk to find out what was going on.  We were told to sit patiently and they would call out our names, along with a long list of others, and give us our seats.  We did get seats together, but not a window one, which was kinda sad.

The young lady sitting beside me was on her way, with a group of fellow college students, to Kenya and Tanzania for four months.  So we chatted about that, between movies and naps and food and going stir crazy!

When we got into Amsterdam, it was very very easy and simple, more so then I had thought it would be!  No questions at customs really, no hassles about Aaron being there for work, which was nice!  And our luggage was just going past when we got up to the belt.  We had to wait a bit for Janice to show up, since we actually arrived about 30 minutes earlier then we had been told, but soon we were on our way. The key wasn't available yet for our apartment, so Janice took us into the office and we got to meet the people working there.

We were in the apartment by about 11am, and in bed sleeping by about 12:30pm ... napping was good, other then the fact that we realized it was SUPER HARD.  That was compounded when we actually went to bed to sleep last night too ... we were both awake many times during the night, and got out of bed at 5:30 this morning because we couldn't sleep anymore ...

The stairs into our apartment, are more like a ladder then a staircase, and will take some getting used to, as well as muscles will be built and weight will be lost!

Other then going to the corner grocery store for food for dinner and breakfast, we haven't gone out anywhere yet.

I'll leave you with a few pictures of the stairs.

Stairs leading from the street up to
our first floor... steep and narrow

Stairs leading to the roof top terrace

Stairs leading up to the bedrooms

Tomorrow I'll give you the grand tour!

Bren