Julia’s Journical

Elke drove and I directed (not really) to Eindhoven airport to drop Lindsay off. While waiting for Lindsay’s flight we sampled some Australian icecream (the brand is called Australian icecream!)

There are were some side effects, words such as Sheila, galah, streuth and ‘aussie aussie aussie, oi oi oi’ were unavoidable. There were some strange occurances…but i don’t think they were related to the ice cream.

Elke and I said goodbye to Lindsay and walked back to the car. We tried to pay for the parking at a bus ticket machine and decided to use the proper machine before hopping back into the car and heading off back to Oss.

That afternoon my cousin Joris came over briefly despite being locked in his house earlier that day! It was nice to see him again! Not long after Joris left my uncle Juriaan arrived to take me with him to Nijmegan.

I arrived in their house in Nijmegan and felt like I had arrived back home to my family in Berowra! My Nijmegan rellies are so much like my family that its almost spooky. Mick who is 11 is going to a Bi-lingual High School after the summer. He already speaks really good english so he and I on my second day in Nijmegan worked on a school assignment he was doing about Australia. To reward ourselves we made brownies before going into Nijmegan to run some errands.

On the Friday night Marleen went out in a glittery green car.

Jur, Mick and I decided to play Shulbok,

I got a score in the high 60s and was very impressed with myself until Jur and Mick, got scores in the 100s! I think its time to do a little bit more practice.

I forgot to take a photo of Mick having his turn, so he kindly set up the board for me to make it look like he was midway through his turn then posed for the camera.

After that we decided to light the fire in the kachel (stove)

We each chose a comfy spot to sit or lie down in the case of Mick.

Here is my cousin lying peacefully on his bed

And here I am about to launch a pillow strike on my cousin lying peacefully his bed.

While sitting around the fire we played games such as ‘guess who’ ‘I am going to an island and I am going to take…’ and this fun game Mick taught us. We each write 2 sentences or lines on a piece of paper, fold it up so the next person can only see the last line and they will write the next part of the ’story’.

Here is one of the results:

Once there was a purple chicken called John Simon Robsey
who enjoyed drinking old milk while watching the Bold and the Beautiful
She was picking her nose, then a car drove into their house
His father grabbed a gun and pulled trigger, it exploded in his hands
The police arrived and knocked on his door “what are you doing?”
I am watching the Bold and the Beautiful, I hate that series
So do I his sister thought she slapped him in his face.
The End.

After writing stories and laughing hysterically we decided to bring out the marshmallows,

Vince arrived soon afterwards and we took turns finding funny videos on youtube using my iphone

Vince chose dutch rap, Mick chose pokemon satire, Jur chose 70s disco songs and I showed the boys the Candy Mountain clip.

On the Saturday, Juriaan and Marleen took me with them to 2 garden centres, where they bought a variety of plants for their garden, one I accused repeatedly of being dead…but apparently its supposed to look like the way it did. They did buy a Bottle Brush which had lots of buds on it and was about to burst into flower, if it doesn’t flower I am in big trouble!

While Jur planted the new plants I played basketball against my cousin Vince, who is 13 years old and probably the tallest person I know and has been asked to join the Nijmegan basketball team…so naturally I lost. I did manage to shoot one goal but that was because he accidentally hit me in the head with the ball and was so busy apologising that I had a second to throw the ball through the hoop! He was not impressed with my tactic of getting the ball and blindly throwing it in the general direction of where I thought the hoop could have been. He instead showed me some awesome ways of shooting a goal, he was very good.

We then all made ourselves pretty and hopped into the car for the long trip to Maastrict for my cousin Michiel’s graduation from Uni party. The Nijmegese Decates family and I arrived 3 hours early so we could explore the town a bit.

We had dinner at an Italian restaurant, where the waiters spoke English, Dutch, Italian, German and French and would often change language mid sentence! It was really funny but also quite exciting!

Mick’s English is amazing and he helped me translate the menu so I could order my pizza.

My uncle Juriaan

reminds me so much of my Dad, Jeroen

(Dad with our Indonesian rellies in Brooklyn)
Maybe its because they are both so photogenic?

Marleen thinks they are similar too

After pizza we wandered around the deserted streets, wondering where everyone was.

We found out. Kermis was on! Its travelling carnival that comes to each town square in Holland, there are rides, games, dutch treats and sweets, lots of bright flashing lights and lots of noise, so we walked right past Kermis and found another quiet street to have a drink.

After our drink Marleen went inside the cafe while the rest of us, Jur, Vince Mick and myself hid behind a model of a giant cone of hot chips. We thought we were sooooooo funny, she walk out of the cafe and kept walking, not at all upset that we were missing

We found some cool things while wandering around Maastrict
a bridge with water!

some round things which you can stand on

and a clergyman with a flame thrower

then we mucked around for a bit

Maastrict from Julia Holmwood on Vimeo.

After an Ijsje (ice cream) we headed up to the society bar that Michiel’s party was being held. I got to see some of my cousins again and actually take photos this time!

Michiel is on the left with the white shirt on, Joris is next to him and then its Jikke, Michiel’s girlfriend and next to her is Jikke’s sister.

this is Tom and I

Elke and I were standing together and Tom offered to take a nice photo for us, so we stood together waiting for the photo…and the turned the camera around and took this photo

of himself!
it was a pretty funny joke, we certainly LOLed

My cheeks are all red because a certain uncle encouraged me to drink a glass of Rosé. (I normally don’t drink) He says I was tipsy…I wasn’t…I was just having fun with… red cheeks!

We left early because we had a long drive back to Nijmegan.
Up next, My week with the Nijmegan rellies Part 2.