Canadian Invasion

My parents have been here now for a week and a half.   I have three days left with them before we get up and put them on a plane… not something I am looking forward to.   I am looking forward to getting back to our old routine, as I’m sure my parents are… but the airport scene always sucks.  I always want to get it overwith really quickly, which is weird because I should want every last minute I can with them, but those last few minutes can get really tense with the trying not to cry and all that.

We’ve been having a great time.  We’ve done some sightseeing type stuff and a fair bit of shopping but for the most part we’ve mostly just been spending time together, which is nice.  They’ve been here a number of times so they’ve done the whole touristy thing.

As you can see above, one thing they have done before but were keen to repeat was the Saturday market here in Rotterdam.   Spot the Canadian!  Mom may have managed to blend in but no way in hell dad was.   With all the Dutchies walking around in their winter coats these days, dad got a few weird looks going around in shorts.   In his defense though, it was 20 degrees… so I’m not sure why they still wore their winter coats anyway.  It’s like once October hits it’s winter and that’s just that.

We also visited Kinderdijk again which I’ve been to a number of times but still couldn’t stop myself from snapping photos of.   I figured it’d give mom and dad that real feeling of where they are.  What says Holland more than windmills?

Last Sunday they got to meet some of my friends, which was great.  I’m always talking to my friends about my parents, and to my parents about them… so I thought it’d be nice to get everyone together, and what better excuse than Canadian Thanksgiving!

It was my first time cooking for so many people, but thankfully I had my mom there to help and Penny took care of all of the baking (omg, best cake ever).  I got a huge turkey which was almost 17 lbs and had a ham as well.   Unlike Ramona, this turkey wasn’t as keen to spread her legs for me to stuff her.  So, we named her Prudence.  Not sure why we always name our turkeys, I’m sure Peta would be disgusted that we give names to animals just before we put them in the oven.

Sunday we went to Diergaarde Blijdorp, but I haven’t gotten those pics off my camera yet.  It was a beautiful day for the zoo though and we all really enjoyed it.  I always forget how huge it is until I get there again.   I was bummed to see that the gorillas were inside, because it’s quite dim in there and they have this shadowed glass between the crowd and the gorillas and a gate that keeps you away from the windows, so you can’t see them that well.  I guess we can thank this lady.

Today we are off to Corpus, which I’ve been really keen to see but saved until my parents were here because I thought they’d find it really cool as well.   I’ll be posting pics of that later as well.

Ok, that’s all for now!  Hope everyone is enjoying the nice fall weather we’ve been having here, we certainly are!  Even though it’s made my parents completely disbelieve every word I’ve ever said about the horrible winter weather over here!