First Thanksgiving

This was my first Thanksgiving here in the US and we had the appropriate dinner here at our place. I wish I could tell you some interesting stories about it but there really aren't. The dinnertable we ordered arrived the day before the dinner as scheduled. Familymembers came over and the turkey refused to get up to temperature. Seems like a pretty regular Thanksgiving to me, but hey, what do I know about it? My only experience with this festivity is what I see on television and in tv-land Thanksgiving mostly consists of familymembers getting together over great distances to pick up old fights. The most humorous note here was somebody asking why we didn't have Thanksgiving in the Netherlands. Luckily, another familymember came up with the snappy reply that we were celebrating getting rid of those pesky, colonizing Europeans in the first place :-)

Pim

The Secret Language of Americans

Strange discoveries all around. Recently, a friend of ours, Tracy, became a mom. Nothing strange about that but then her baby made it on Oprah so we all had to watch. The item was called "The secret language of Babies" (http://www2.oprah.com/tows/slide/200611/20061113/slide_20061113_350_102.jhtml). The researcher involved claimed that all babies make the same basic sounds to indicate the same basic feelings. It kinda makes sense based on her explanations for these sounds. The explanations are all based on body reflexes which are in all probability indeed the same for babies the world over. Then yesterday we went to a Burger King drive-through to get some food. I pulled up to the speaker and heard a sound which I can only classify as "eeeow". I thought the employee was clearing her throat but Maria said that she just said "Can I help you?". I now realize that Americans have a secret language of their own which I have to learn. It's not because they can't speak yet like babies, Although a lot of them are not really able to articulate that well ;-) It's because soundquality of the phones is so bad. There's so much static that if you don't know in advance what somebody is going to say you end up asking them to repeat it 3 times. Not that anybody adjusts their articulation for that. If somebody asks me to repeat something I do it slower and better articulated. Not here. And obviously that gap is now filled with secret sounds. Look at the clip on Oprah's website and you'll know what I mean. And to link it back to the drive-through, if you think the quality of the phones is bad go check out a drive-through. It's a miracle you actually get what you want.
By the way, Maria says Tracy's baby is the 4th one.

Pim

Pim & Maria do America - The Season Premier

Pim & Maria do America - The Season Premier

Okay, I guess we have to start somewhere. After opening lots and lots of boxes we finally recovered the info to login to this blog. Lots of stuff happened since we last saw you guys. I won't bore you with telling you about all the paperwork but suffice it to say that they will let me drive now, they'll believe that I am who I say I am and I can pay for stuff ;-)
Let me pick out something to make you guys laugh. We bought a car for me on Saturday and it's everything I vowed never to touch: it's white, it's an automatic and, get this, it's a station. Sure, take your time. I'll wait while you finish laughing...... Anyway, as if that weren't bad enough, a warning light came on the day after we bought it. Did I mention we bought it as-is which means no garantuee? Not even to the door. To my surprise however the cardealer was prepared to fix it without charging us anything. So yesterday I got the car back again which was just in time to pick up our new almost-giant-size-which-could-never-fit-into-the-mazda-anyway tv. And here's the good part, the trunk wouldn't open so I spend a good 20 minutes in the pouring rain trying to get it open. That was fun ;-)