Still Touring!!! 10 July Monday

Today Charlotte, Danny and I hopped the train down to Rotterdam. Our first stop was the Natural History Museum, Natuurhistorich Museum, in the museum park area. This museum is housed in an old villa, so the setting is quite unique. The first thing you notice on approach to the building is the sperm whale skeleton suspended from the ceiling. This fella was stranded out at Scheveningen, and now is big "OOOO! Cool! " here. The best part was a temporary exhibit called

The whale they found was the Leviathan,  a predatory sperm whale, the largest on record. It was discovered in the Peruvian desert along with the bones of a seal, which it had probably eaten. Its teeth were about the size of a humans lower leg! Scientists believe that its huge size may have had an effect on the size the fin whales today. When the predators were that big, the prey had to evolve bigger, almost an evolutionary "arms race" I loved the juxtaposition of the jaw of the Leviathon with the skull of the pygmy shrew-largest and smallest right next to each other. Cool. The museum also had loads of taxidermy animals, eggs,shells,rocks, all the usual suspects!

in the main exhibit space. pile of gray rocks? no, vertebrae!

pygmy shrew skull

Leviathon jaw

the natural world

giraffe and icthyasaur skeletons

this fella used to roam the Blijdorp zoo, now he educates the kids forever

carbon fossil

We then headed across museum park to the NAI, Nederland Architecture Institute, for some more fun and learning. Danny, Jerry and I visited her in January and enjoyed it. We wanted to take Charlotte to the awesome cafe and show her the exhibits. It was as nice as I remembered(and almost as cold outside!) to sink onto the couch for a cappuccino! Danny and Charlotte decided on the sweet special for lunch, Aunt Susan would be proud! We then toured the institute and it was cool to see now how much we have seen of the country. Many of the buildings and places in the displays we have been to in the past few months. There was also a temporary exhibit on Urban Planning for the future, how it is imperative, a calling, the very crux of the future of democracy...very fervent and interesting. That would be a great job of my nephew Jamie and other smart outside the box thinking young people. As always the Lego and CAD drawing stations were FUN! I love Rotterdam!



The Hincka Family Singers?!

After mass a couple of weeks ago, one of the ladies from the Choir came over to us,we were in the front pew as usual,  and said, "Now who is the soprano I hear over here?" It was beautiful Charlotte of course, and Lily immediately recruited her for the choir. Then she suggested we all join, and by the way, did we have a few moments because rehearsal for next week was right now! We said, sure,why not, but we only have a few more weeks at the Parish. No problem, especially as numbers go down in the summer holiday months. So we are in the choir, and sang in our second mass Sunday 8 July. It was a special mass because Father Sjacq had a group of about 30 young kids from his home parish up in Freesland visiting. They had been practicing three songs in English for a couple of months and were going to sing them at mass. Boy were they cute! The closing hymn (?) they sang was If your Happy and You Know It Clap Your Hands! And we all clapped along, including the altar servers and Father Sjacq. I am sad to leave this wonderful international church, I have grown so much.

The Childrens Choir

aren't they darling?!

Lily the soprano (she works for NATO) and the girls

the tenors and the basses

The Four Tops

this guy loves us, he sits next to me and always shares his music with me, I just stand there!

Harm our director

The Hincka Family Singers!

Hardeloop! Saturday 7 Juli

Hardeloop in Dutch means, literally, hard course. The runners here call themselves hardelopers, and we wanted to join them once more before we leave Holland. This run was held on Saturday afternoon which allowed us a lazy morning at home. Everyone appreciated me not rousting them out of bed at 6am to go touring! Especially two job Jerry, who cooked egg sandwiches to fortify the runners. The sun was shining,hooray, and we had a blue,blue sky with high puffy clouds, just gorgeous, and a temp of around 72, PERFECT for a run! We ran the Kadeloop Schipluiden with choices of 5K and 12K for the adults and a junior 2K run for 7-12 jar, and a kinder run for 3-6 jar. Everyone runs in this country! Danny opted for the junior this time, and it was really fun for us to cheer Danny on for a change! And cheer we did, loudly, American style, as Danny blew in at 14th out of 200, with a time of 9:11. All the kids got medals as they crossed the line and a free fresh scooped icecream cone!  About 45 minutes later Molly headed to the front of the start and Charlotte, Jerry and I arranges ourselves in the rear and Danny headed out with the camera to shoot our efforts. After 5 minutes of announcements in Dutch which of course we had no idea what was being said ("please avoid the wild bulls in the second kilometre", the windmill blades drift over the path near the end?!") we recognized the universal signal of the gun and we were off. The course was very nice, with a bit through the little village, out on the spongy bike lane surface with fields surrounding us full of cows and horses, then on to a tow path where we ran single file(indian run!) along a canal with a huge windmill on it and pleasure boats cruising by. At the 2K mark Molly headed straight onward to attempt her first 12K, and the rest of us not-crazy folks headed right... I finished first in our group with my best time in a while 28:10, Charlotte finished strong with a 29:08 and Jerry got a PR 34:07! After I was done gasping and guzzling water we stationed ourselves to cheer Molly on. And man did she look amazing! She had great form and attitude as she passed by, and even did her Molly kick and passed a couple of men in the last 80 metres! Danny presented her with his medal which was so cute! We headed back to the sport complex where everyone hangs out after the races. Over here everyone socializes for an hour or so and the atmosphere is so friendly and fun! They were out of shirts(grrrr) when we got there, but Molly, with Jerry's help, convinced a member of a running club to give her his shirt so she has a memorial of her first 12K. You can turn in your shoe chip for a beer or a diet coke and sit around and gloat over how great you are to have run a race..which we did! Excellent race,Great fun!

fresh as Daisy's and ready to run!

The start of Danny's race

time 9:11!

the sisters are so proud!

the next group warms up

Charlotte heading out..

off we go Danny, see you soon?!

Jerry positions himself for a great race

coming to the finish(I took both gals!)

on his way to a PR

we're done!

Molly coming in, she is far back,in red...

moving in to start the kick...

can she kick after 12K....YES she can!

excuse me guys, comin through!

finish in 1:14:00

Danny gave his medal to Molly

I did it!

Molly setting up the Dutch branch of her fan club!

representing SO in another race, we are so proud to do this

what the race looked like

free icecream

molly coming down the canal at about 11K

Molly on her way to the finish...
sorry my pics are a bit haphazardly arranged, I hope you enjoy them!