Oct 4th, a day of firsts!

On Monday the 4th of October, Joris had his first day at his new job. A bit nervous, but happy to get back to work, I waved him off at Amsterdam Zuid, as he continued in the train to Schiphol.

It was also my first day of fieldwork with the faculty. As it was made clear from the beginning, that day we would be travelling by bike, so I had been practising. As I was still a danger on the road (read: still inexplicably drawn to mysteriously magnetic trees, ditches and car mirrors, unable to let go of the steering wheel (how's that thing called on a bike?) to signal or blow my constantly runny nose and deadly afraid of all approaching cars), I chose to rent a tandem. I picked the sturdiest guy in class to be my frontman, and Sjoerd did a wonderful job of not letting me fall down the whole day. And we weren't even the only ones on a tandem, as apparently we have a kid in class that is visually impaired to a degree that he can not ride a bike either. Not being able to ride a bike is a disability in Holland.
(In my world, not being able to dance is a disability. In a land where 'the women dance like they are having a epileptic shock while mopping and while listening to different music than we are' [not my words!] it's just as hard for them to understand that not riding a bike has never been a problem for me as it is for me to understand them not being able to dance.)

As Joris went through the first new-hire sessions at his work, we rode along the Amstel. We stopped at a farm to do some manual drilling in the field. I'm going to make a kick-ass scientist. As the teacher is explaining about the lay of the land, this is what I am doing:

For lunch, I had flattened hagelslag sandwiches with still some mud, manure and clay on them, while Joris was served several rounds of excellent cuisine, starting with scallops and caviar. (Verschil moet er zijn)
In the afternoon, we did some measuring of the salinity (saltiness) of the water around a mill-system (very salty). This is Sjoerd and Floris doing the measuring as I am logging the results on my clipboard.

After some more biking and then some, we went back to school, where Joris and I met up to go back home. I had mud up to my knees, had hugged several cows, and logged a lot of things on a clipboard and Joris had introductions in several of the areas he will be working in in the future. He had his new blackberry, his new laptop and a welcome basket and many, many stories to tell.
We were both really happy with our days.