Breaking radio silence

It has been a while, but that is no excuse. We have had some stress in our first few weeks here. Thankfully enough we have a wonderful family here, where not just ourselves, but also Kwek could crash and in between all that needed to be arranged, we had good food, nice wine and great company. The weather has been excellent and it's good to be in Holland in the summer.

Moving always brings turmoil and moving to Holland is no different. While we have been enjoying a semi-holiday feeling, we have been standing in even more lines than we did in Curacao, bizar but true. It seems that Kranshi is really good at what they do. No, seriously. But here, in gemeente St. Michielsgestel, which by the way is the safest in Holland, they still have some trouble with a couple trying to register from the Netherlands Antilles. We have been going back twice a week for a while now and the amount of misinformation given to us is staggering.

The first time, on the Monday morning after we arrived, we were full of good expectations and smiled all the way to the counter, thinking: this is Holland, we will be in and out in no time. Little did we know that the ladies behind the counter all work partime or not in this department and every single question we had was answered with a blank stare, a few blinks and: eeuh...I'll have to ask my collegue. Why that collegue did not come help us, we did not understand. Maybe there is a correlation between the size of the bum and the amount of information a public officer can retain....
When we left that first day, we were still 'landenloos', we had no id's except for our passports (don't want to lose that!), no driving licenses and even more: it was impossible to register our marriage.
Let's just keep the story short and say that after the fourth time, I was still ms. Eman, and I'm pretty sure that all official documents we receive will state the same. And I am so proud of my married name....

What we surely did not expect was that the day we arrived in Holland, de KPN (telecom company) made a mistake and shut down the wrong line at home and we were without internetconnection until the 8th of Aug. Which makes it pretty much impossible to keep contact like you would want to with all that you left behind on the other side of the world. Or work remotely like Joris was aiming for. You only realize how much you depend on internet when you don't have it anymore. We had to make arrangement everytime we needed internet, that kinda sucked.

In the second week that we were here, we went to pick up Kwek's keys. She had found the room through internet and had rented it starting in July, without any of us seeing it. The room was great, the roommates not so much! She would have been the only female person and the only person under 30 in the house. So we had to start looking for new housing like crazy. Our stuff that was shipped on June 21th is still on its way, even though it would take max. 6 weeks. The new date we got now is Sept 1st.

We miss our family and friends in Curacao, we miss having our own home and the pickup, but things are looking up. We will keep you all updated!