The Hague

Get ready for many many many photos coming your way...

This weekend, 3 girlfriends from work and I went off to The Hague in The Netherlands.  We set off on Sunday morning, and it took us two and a half hours to get there (not too bad at all to get to a different country).  It was absolutely pouring with rain when we arrived, and there was a severe weather warning for wind (4 umbrellas ruined between us).  I had booked the hotel online for a really good deal, but when we arrived we couldn't get in.  We couldn't get through to them on the phone for 2 hours (spent in a bar, obviously), and when we did, they said we were booked into a different hotel in their chain, in a different city!  and that we should have had an email with the door code.  No email.  Anyway, Sian and Laura volunteered to take our bags to the room while Al and I stayed with the drinks.  Half an hour later I get a phone call saying that the front door now wouldn't open from the inside, and could I please rescue them!  They were being wimps, because I could open it every time!  Anyway, the room was nice - a studio apartment with bunk beds, a double, a kitchen and our own bathroom - clean and tidy.  We headed straight out again for Nachos and beer, and ended up in a bar where the live music didn't even start until 11pm (on a SUNDAY!).  The music was great, and it was a brilliant spontaneous evening - the best kind of evening in my opinion.

On Monday morning, we were up and out by 11, and on our was to the Keukenhof Gardens, which are enormous tulip gardens, only open for 7 weeks a year.  They get a million visitors per week!  It actually wasn't too busy when we were there, probably because it was so windy and cold, although no longer raining which was a bonus.  The gardens were wonderful, and I got seriously snap-happy, taking over 300 photos!  Sian is big on photos too, and the other two were content to wander and humour me with the many photo opportunities (It was after all, the day my article got published, so my friends were being very nice to me).

The park's outside areas are full of formal beds of flowers - tulips, crocuses and hyacinths mostly.  There were some lovely budgies (below) and a maze and a windmill...

On a side note, when we agreed to go to The Netherlands this is how the conversation went:

Me:  I want to see some Tulips

Al:  I want to see a windmill

Laura:  I want to see CLOGS!

We saw all of these at the gardens... 

The park has 4 indoor areas, the first one is full of cut flowers, and flower displays including competition flowers, and quirky arrangement ideas. This was where I got my 3 favorite photos, which I will point out...

 Below is favorite photo number one.  These flowers were just wonderful.  The colours were perfect.

Below is favorite photo number 2: 

Another indoor area was the Orchid house.  The theme of this house was LOVE.  and boy did they go to town on it.  I'm a huge fan of the mushy-mushy but even I thought it was a bit overwhelming!  The Orchids though were fabulous.  I'm even more interested in them now that I have my own - Matt bought me one a few weeks ago.

Another indoor area was full of Freesias all themed around Van Gogh.  There wan't much light in this hall, so the photos didn't come out as well, but I can still imagine the intense smell of the flowers when you walked in,  Wonderful.

My third favorite photo.  They smelled wonderful too.

 We went out for a lovely dinner (I had a cheese fondu - AMAZINGLY DELICIOUS - and a couple of glasses of wine, before having an early night.  Our train was at 10am today, and it was meant to take us 2 and a half hours again, but it actually took 5 hours, because of the below photo...

Yes that's right, a tree fell on our train!  We had been delayed by half an hour before then anyway, and told that we wouldn't be allowed to cross back into Germany because the wind weather warnings were so severe.  We had to swap trains after this, and then some more trees fell on the track, so we were stuck on the new train too.  Luckily our train was cancelled at Duisburg, which was our stop anyway, and the local trams were running, but I still didn't get home until 3!  One of the girls lives in Dusseldorf, but all trains had been cancelled, so she ended up going to one of the others houses, and getting a lift from her fiance after he finished work.  She didn't get home until 7pm, poor thing!

A really fantastic weekend was had by all, and it was much needed, after a bit of a crappy end to the working week, and the Spring term.  Positive thoughts looking forwards though.  Matt will be home tomorrow from Dublin and then we have a lovely relaxing week at home on our own.  How wonderful.

Duisburg Food Festival and Creativa Craft Fair

It's been a seriously busy weekend.  Matt went off to England at 4am on Saturday morning to watch England vs France at Twickenham Rugby Stadium (He had a wonderful time).  Later on Saturday, I went off to the industrial Landschaftspark Nord for the Duisburg Food Festival, with a couple of work friends.

The park is really cool, such a good venue for the Food Festival.  You can do night time tours of the park with head torches, while the park is lit up by multi-coloured lights.  Having been there during the day now, I really fancy doing the night tour.

The food was superb, and we were spoilt for choice.  I settled on a naan-wich (paneer cheese and tikka sauce all wrapped up snugly in a naan).  Scrum-diddly-umptuous.

For desert, Sean and I shared home made marshmallows with chocolate sauce, modeled by Sean below...  Yum Yum YUM!

On Sunday, I went to the Creativa Craft Fair in Dortmund, which was fantastic and exhausting.  You can read about in on my Creative-Faye blog here.

The week at school was a tiring one, with lots of work on painting scenery for the Year 3 and Year 5 plays next week.  I shall be thrilled when they are done and dusted, though I am still pretty nervous for the Year 5 one!  Fingers and toes crossed, for that one I think.  Other than that, I've been working on various displays, and I was in with the Little Dragons (2 and 3 year olds) for a day, which was it's usual torture.  At least they didn't even try to get me to change nappies this time.  I was helping with snack and lunch time, and then sitting reading with the kids on the carpet.  They all suddenly decided to act like cats, and started climbing all over me and tugging my earrings and necklace.  I scarpered pretty quickly after that, and used an awful lot of hand gel before having my own lunch. Eugh!

On Monday, I went to Asia Gourmet for dinner with a friend that I'm off on a mini holiday with next week.  We are going to The Hague in The Netherlands, and we're going to buy the train tickets (and probably have Asia Gourmet again) tomorrow.

Only 4 and a half days to go until 3 weeks off! Yay!

A Week of Sickness for the Harris's

This week has not been a great one for the Harris's who live in Germany!  I was off sick on Monday with a cold, then back in for the rest of the week.  Matt came home on Tuesday and managed to hurt his back while doing sit ups in the front room.  He has hurt his back before at the gym, but it is usually OK by the next morning.  This time it wasn't OK at all.  He was in so much pain that he had to go to the doctors on Wednesday morning.  The doctor signed him off work for the rest of the week, and next week if he needed it.  He has been prescribed with two lots of strong medication, and also prescribed 10 sessions of physio.  In a way I'm almost glad it happened, because I've been trying to get him to go to the doctors about his back for a long time, and now he has done it, and will hopefully get it sorted out once and for all!  Matt hates being off work, so he has been feeling a bit sorry for himself this week.  We had to miss a birthday meal on Wednesday because of it, and also a day out watching the rugby yesterday too, which was a shame,  But we did manage to go to a friends house on Friday evening for a couple of hours for cheese fondu.  The fondu was amazing, and the bread had come all the way from Hanover that morning with our friends girlfriend who is visiting for the weekend.  We played a very complicated German card/board game, and had a couple of rounds of Question of Sport before heading home.  

On Saturday, we went for a wander around Duisburg town, just to get Matt out of the house for a couple of hours, and today we're just relaxing.  Matt is going to have a busy time next weekend when he flies home for the rugby, so a weekend of not doing much was definitely needed.

My week at school was tiring because I was getting over the cold.  I had an observation on Wednesday by the head of admissions (who is very important and well respected in the school).  I got a brilliant review of the bottom set Year 3 Maths lesson that I was TA-ing in, and there were no negative or even constructive criticism comments at all.  I was very pleased!  I was also observed on Friday - ish.  The teacher was actually being observed, but the observation was on the teachers use of TAs, so I was sort of being observed.  That went fine too.

I managed to order stamps to England entirely in German, and also order pizza last night entirely in German too.  I was even told that my German was very good after only being here for 6 months!  I was pretty chuffed with that!  So all in all, it's not been a bad school week at all.  Only two more weeks until the Easter holidays, which I am really looking forward to.

The top photo is of the proofs of my article, which is due to be published online at the end of March.  This is my final chance to make any changes, which I have now done, and there is nothing left to do now, but wait for it to be published!