Skiing Colorado (Breck & Vail)

Herewith just some quick pics live from Breckenridge & Vail to show you we are all 3 doing just fine! The bump seems to like skiing already and is well packed up in some fancy stretchy skiing pants that come up to my armpits. It is really great to see Mayo & Patrick here and we have had 3 amazing days already so far. Today we where almost overwhelmed by the thick pack of fresh snow in Vail. Vision is not always great but we are in bright colors all so that makes life easy.

Eelco in his Russian Racing Uniform in Vail today.

Maartje & the Bump in Breck on day 1 (Thursday) showing off the matching outfit!

Laughing out loud over lunch.....

In action,.....we have better shots...but anyway here is the evidence !

us recreating the same pic we took 3 years ago after a day skiing in Vail. We look less like snowmen this time but equally happy.

Weekend American Style

On this for the US memorable day there already is enough coverage on the Inauguration and as we are down to subjects as the coats of the Obama Kids and Michelle's dress choice I think it is ok for me to cover something else!! I wanted to really post some pictures from past weekend but just found out that Eelco took the camera to take some pictures of the inside of an ancient hydrocarbons storage tank somewhere in California. Trust me,....not interesting unless you love steel! Anyway, he is only gone for 36 hrs or so and the pictures will follow at some point. Instead a little after the fact herewith some pictures of Neeltje & Martijn's visit here early December '08.

The keen young engineers in the space centre......(do they really have to read ALL the displays and listen to all the sound bites on the Audio guides -;)

The Saturn V......yes ITS BIG !

Enjoying the Rodeo show at George Range (Neeltje is hungry already again...parasites!) and below us pretending to be interested in a story about furniture we all have seen in our grandparents house...it was interesting but mainly the older parts of the park, antique in the US is not the same as in Europe.

The past weekend we had a nice weekend American style. If you think I am busy,....well then look at wat the Americans try to cram in one day! They need to do everything is appears. We had friends over for dinner on Friday after I already managed a few hours of shopping after a full workday(?!?), then on Saturday Eelco did the very Houston thing and went to play golf at 7am....yes even in winter that early. Means you have more family time after. Apparently he teed off exactly at sun-up at 7.36 or something. We painted the bathroom, fixed a tap in the toilet, cleaned the house, did the bills and went out for a nice meal. On sunday we could have gone to watch the Houston Marathon, but for some silly reason also that one started at 7am!! Trust me it is only between 15 and 20 C out there so it easily could have been a bit later I think. Instead Eelco went to play touch Rugby with his French friends and I painted the bathroom some more. Then we could have gone for the typical Sunday thing - Brunch at a hip place downtown with bottomless Mimosa's (USD8 / glass, then unlimited refills). However instead we had tickets to go see the Houston Symphonic performing some unusual pieces from Weber and Schuman and Tchaikovski's Violin concert. It was really really good and the nice thing was that beforehand the conductor (dirigent) talked for some 20 minutes to the early birds about the pieces they where about to perform. We learned a lot and Eelco felt less depressed about his recent Birthday after as the average audience was 75+ and had some stick, hearing aid or other support! The Soloist was a certain Mr Chocolat (Leonidas), who was no Belgian as may be suspected but Greek and did not look very greek as he was over 2 m tall. But very good he was so ....his 'encore' was some 5 minutes or so and had the whole audience captivated!! The concert hall was also quite nice and well laid out. We will definitely go back for more. After we went for a late afternoon snack or early dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe as they have nice Potato skins there and I have been wanting to eat some ever since I got here in September! After all that we went home and booked our upcoming holidays and trips, hung up some more pictures in the house and somewhere in the weekend we also managed to catch up with the family. So I think we nailed the American weekend thing....it was good, really, but I would not mind lie in every once in a while as well -;) 

PS I am still not over my anti shopping mood but fortunately we found more alternative stores. I was in the Galleria Monday night (THE Mall here) and realised that was also the first time I was there since I got here. It used to be priority No 1 in Houston for me before. Especially with all the advertising we now also receive at the house  with vouchers and offers I resent this whole consumption drive (I buy and hence I am alive) even more.

PS2 Did you know that Houston no longer has a majority in its population? The groups of white Americans, Hispanics and African Americans are all somewhat equal in size these days. You would think that does great things to the city and the culture here...however in our fancier but not too posh restaurant on saturday and at our concert on Sunday this equal distribution is not obvious at all! That suggests some less positive demographic spread if you dig a little deeper into the detail.

Am off packing now for Colorado....Yeahaaa!

New year on Sugar Loaf Mountain (Rio)

We spend the past 10 days in Rio the Janeiro. As a friend of us who lives there informed us earlier in 2008 he was planning to get married around New Year we made up our minds quickly and decided to plan our holidays there.
At the time we did not know we would be living in Houston by now and we thought we where closer here then in Sakhalin or Europe,…however, from Houston to Rio is still a 10.5 hour flight and the time difference between Europe and Rio is smaller then the time difference with Houston.Despite all the prejudices we had a crime free stay in Rio and there was a shooting in the very calm and quiet suburbian, Melrose place type neighborhood our friends in Houston live in over Christmas so we think Rio may be safer then Houston?!

We did some of the touristy stuff and visited the Morro de Corcovado (the Hill with the Christ Statue), Copacobana beach, the Botanical Garden, did a Favela tour (tour through the slu

ms), went to the National Historic and Indians 

Museums, wandered through Santa Theresa, saw the Museum of Modern Art in Niteroi and went up Pão de Açúcar (sugar loaf mountain).

According to the travel guides however, and what we did not really know in advance, the real attraction of Rio apart from the Carnival are the new years celebrations, which according to most guides and reviews comes only second world wide after New York. We have quite a few friends living in Rio these days and hence they had arranged tickets to some party. We had not really paid attention but found out when we got to Rio that it was all rather exclusive….In Rio each year some 2 – 3 Million people celebrate New Year on Copacobana beach. That beach is pretty big and some 4 km long but still – that amount of people?!? Everyone also dresses for white so it is quite a sight. We however had tickets to go to the exclusive New years party at Pão de Açúcar (or actually at the lower of the 2 - Mount Urca). This meant celebrating the New Year with some 300 – 400 people also dressed in white in a somewhat more exclusive environment where we had to watch out less for pickpockets &  robbers and it was easier to stay together as a group. The party was pretty amazing and well organised and we most definatly now also rate New Year in Rio in our top 3! The fire works where amazing, the champagne tasted better and the 3 different dance floors offered a good variety of music. We even got a Samba Band performance from what is supposed to be the best Salsa school in town.

The Favela tour was also pretty interesting. We went through an organisation which is run by a teacher who works in the Favela who teaches some of her own students to run the tour. Our guide therefor was an aproximately 16 year old boy who lived in the Favela himself. Compared to slums in Asia this was paradise. Apparantly there is still quite some gang and drug activity in those area’s but in the 1.5 hrs we walked around we saw none. The streets are narrow and the buildings a mix of all sorts of complete and uncomplete building stules but they are made from stone, have roofs, have electricity, running water etc. The streets are very narrow and can only be taken on foot, there are plenty of stray dogs and there is no doubt a problem with garbage colleaction and it smells pretty bad, but the houses where not that small compared to the apartments in town and there where plenty of shops and internet café’s etc etc. Facilities are lacking and with 2 schools and 1 hospital there is not enough of most things but it looked by far not as desperate and sad as one would think after following the international press on the issue!

Our friends mainly live in the neighbourhoods next to Copacobana called Ipanema and Leblon. Both are pretty upmarket, have their own beaches and plenty of good bars & restaurants and are good neighbourhoods to do everything by foot. We stayed at one of our friends penthouses and so really had nothing to complain about at all! Most of the expats with Families live in a neighbourhood further out of town which we have also seen. That place looked more lijke Miami then Rio – very American and lots of fancy new high rise apartment buildings along the beach. Either way not a bad place to live we thought!