November 2003

Tonight the Dutch soccer team qualified for the European Championship 2004. I could hear the neighbours celebrate after the 5th and 6th goal. I'm sure nobody expected a 6-0 victory!

I am not a big soccer fan in general, but I enjoy the bigger events like the European Championships. Next summer we'll have a double pleasure: Bulgaria qualified at once for the soccer championship by becoming first in their group.

The draw for the final tournament will be held on Sunday 30 November.

Since a few days I have a cold. It is nothing serious, but it's quite inconvenient. Tonight I'm staying home, with a warm cup of tea, oranges and other healthy things.

In December Sasha and I will go to Bulgaria, for Christmas and New Year. I'm looking forward to that very much! Tonight I'm revising my Bulgarian vocabulary. To study Bulgarian words I'm using a computer program that I made in 1999.

Every now and then I'll check the soccer game that starts at 20:30 o'clock. It's Holland vs Scotland, and Holland needs to win tonight to qualify for the European championship in 2004.

Yesterday I went with Karen and Arjan to the Toneelschuur, a theater and movie house in Haarlem. It's located between the Grote Markt and the red light district, in a beautiful building which has been re-openened a couple of months ago.

The movie, 'September 11', was very good. Eleven filmmakers from around the globe offer various views on the World Trade Center tragedy, everyone in a different type of movie. The only requirement is that their creation takes exactly eleven minutes, nine seconds and one frame (11-09-01).

It's a really impressive movie, although some parts are better than others. I liked the Bosnian, French and Chilean films the most. The Japanese creation was probably too difficult for me.

Yesterday I was in Heereveen around noon. I visited my grandmother there, which was very pleasant. We showed each other many pictures and we talked a lot. Around 16:00 o'clock I took the train to Leeuwarden.

Ettie and Gerben were having a party. There were many things to celebrate: birthdays, graduations and a new house. The party was very nice; I liked it a lot. It's much easier to actually talk to people when you're not organizing the party yourself (like last week); I enjoyed it. There were also some people I haven't seen in a long time.

Click on Read more... for a few pictures.

In a while I'm leaving to Friesland. I'll visit Oma Groen, who lives in Heereveen, and later I'll go to Leeuwarden. Ettie and Gerben are giving a party tonight.

It's an easy trip: from Amsterdam there is a direct train to Leeuwarden, a trip of around 2 hours.

I visited Ester and Richard tonight.

We had dinner together: Richard's famous lasagna. I saw Jip too. He was studying walking, that was nice to see.

Today I received flowers from Stichting Dagcentra IJmond, very nice.

Daniël is staying here now, he's leaving to Hungary in the morning. I made a pizza -- pretty good, if I may say so.

I'm going to bed early tonight.

What a great night! My birthday party got completely out of hand on a Monday evening and I enjoyed it a lot.

Late at night I had a very nice and very long phone call, which was the best part of a wonderful evening.

There will be some pictures later, now I'll get to Chess as soon as I can.