Amsterdam

Hi all

Alright so I have finally gotten around to taking some pictures of Amsterdam.  There are still many more pictures to take of this lovely city however this is what I managed to snap today as I was wondering around.

Lots of canals here in Amsterdam, I am told that without all the canals there would be real water problems in the city.  It is funny apparently Amsterdam does not have problems with flooded streets, not like Venice, I guess when you get as much rain as they do you adapt.

The city is alive there is always something going on and people going out.

The canals all have different names however I am confused how the boat owners are able to figure out their way around the water ways as there are so many different bridges and canals.

The design of these buildings is very common for downtown Amsterdam.  I must say that I love the look of these buildings and would love to own an apartment in one of them along one of the canals (the only problem is that the homes start at around 200000 euros and go from there)

Those boats are not only there for transportation but are there for living as well.  There are a number of house boats along the canal (I would love to live in one but I hear that they are cold during the winter)

These buildings all along the canal all contain flower shops

One of the flower shops and below a picture of some of the flowers

This is one of the various fast food restaurants in Amsterdam, basically the way this works is that it is like a vending machine for hot food.  You put your money into the machine and get what you want be it burger, hotdog, fried chicken, etc.

Some people are just desperate for a garden

My attempts at photography

Well I hope that you have enjoyed just a taste of what Amsterdam is like I am hoping to get more pictures and post more pictures over the next week or so.

Love you all

London

Hi all

I first want to thank everyone for their birthday wishes, it was really nice to open my email and see birthday wishes from my family.  As I am sure that you have figured out I have managed to get to Amsterdam more or less in one piece.  The flights were no problem and I was delighted to find that I was able to spend almost an entire day in London before having to head off to Amsterdam.  I must say that London is a lovely place and I am certainly intending on returning.

I was really fortunate as the main bus station that I cam into was in the city of Westminster (this is where there are a lot of important buildings and places)

I am sorry that the pic is on it's side but I forgot to rotate it before putting it on the blog.  Anyways I am pretty sure that this church has some historical significance however I was unable to figure out which church I was looking at and I liked the way it looked so I decided to take a picture.

This is just a pub that I came across I liked that it was called The Shakespeare and even though I didn't go in for a pint (as they were fairly pricey I decided I still wanted the picture)

Buckingham Palace, as you can see the flag is not flying so that meant that the Queen was not in:  As a result I was unable to go and have tea and crumpets with her majesty but next time I am in London maybe I will have better luck.

I was a little disappointed to find out that there would be no changing of the guard while I was there (being that it was sunday and I guess this is the day when the guards get to be a little lazy) and while I didn't watch the guards for very long it is true that they didn't seem to move a muscle while there were standing guard.

This is why England is in a financial crisis these gates must have cost a small fortune to make and this is only one picture of one set of gates.

Picture of the Palace form the end of their crazy long driveway

I originally took a picture of this really cool fountain (that is water flowing down the front of the monument) and then I later found out that this was a memorial to Canadians for their sacrifices during the second world war.  I may be a little bias but I say that it was the nicest monument out of all the monuments in the area.

This was the Washington monument which was close to Buckingham Palace (but not as close as the Canadian Monument)

The entrance to Hyde Park (this is just a giant park in London where everyone seems to go on a nice summer sunday afternoon)

They had a beautiful rose garden here in Hyde park and this is my attempts at being a photographer.

Again I am sorry that the picture is on its side but this was a picture of the pluck (spelling ?) in front of the Princess Diana Memorial and below is a picture of the memorial

It was kind of difficult to take a picture of this memorial so you would understand what it looked like, basically it was like a water going over rocks and creating little rapids going down a hill and when it reached the bottom it would collect in a pool.  They encouraged people to play in the memorial as that is what Diana would have wanted (I am not going to lie I think we need more interactive memorials I am a fan)

Random swan, they are seriously all over the park (the park is situated around a man made lake which is full of people boating around on paddle and row boats).  It was funny as the birds are clearly very comfortable with human contact as they would walk right to you if they thought that you may have something to feed them.

I am not sure what this arch was called but I liked it and therefore needed to take a picture of it.

A picture of the london eye (it was very expensive to ride and by that point in time I had run out of battery life so I couldn't take any more pictures)

But before I ran out of batteries I was able to get a video of Trafalgar Square

As I say in the video it is difficult to explain unless you have actually experienced it.  It was really a sight to see.

Anyways this was London.  I am hoping to soon start amassing picture so of Amsterdam and to post those shortly because honestly Amsterdam is a beautiful city and there is so much to see and do I am not even sure where to start.

I am going to go for now but I love you all and I hope you have enjoyed your quick trip though London as seen by my camera.

Oh, the Places You'll Go! by Dr. Seuss

Construction

Renovations are hard!

Yes that is how I have decided to start this blog and I will say it again Renovations are hard.  It s not that I am doing the renovations but I am doing the organizing and if you ask me the organization part is the more difficult part.

The first difficulty was finding someone to do this job.  It seemed that a few years ago everyone had a contractor that they would suggest however that does not seem to be the case today.  After a swing and a miss with a contractor that grandma had suggested I ended up choosing someone from the Christian Catalog (hahaha not a catalog for christians but rather a directory of christian repair people) to do the job.

The second difficulty was after having the contractor come and see the sink it was suggested that we not only replace the taps but the sink as well as there was rust and this would lead to future problems.  Following this news this meant that I now had to figure out where and what to buy for a counter.  This was surprisingly difficult as I thought that it would be a simple task of simply looking at Home Hardware or Home Depot websites and finding what they have for counter tops.  What I found is that it is difficult to find a simply laminate countertop and rather there are lots of stone countertops.

The last difficulty is making sure that what I am finding is what dad is good with.

Oh the joys of a holiday back in Winnipeg.

Not all in our family are world-travelers this summer!

Dearest Judy, Wes, Rebekah and Lynnette,

Well, not having been to too many places lately (unless you count Daegu and Pohang - but they're hardly exciting), and, considering I don't currently have a camera to take pictures with and post on our blog, I guess I'm just the interested observer - but somebody's gotta fill that role - right?!?!?! I want you all to know that I am a HUGE fan of each of the members of my family though, and am content this summer to live my live vicariously through the adventures of my beautiful bride and troublesome children!!! Sure, life is routine and somewhat boring this summer, but I'm at least trying to keep busy, getting a jump on the lesson planning for the upcoming semester. Lesson planning isn't all that easy, right Wes?!?

I do miss each and all of my family members - but, to be truthful, I mostly miss my wife!!!! I think of, and make sure to pray for each and all of you on a daily basis. I recently wrote Nettie and said, among other "pearls of wisdom [????]" that the parent/child relationship is one of imbalance - parents think of, and are concerned for, their children on a MUCH more frequent/urgent basis than the opposite - why so?: Good question, and one I hope to ask the Lord about when I'm dwelling in eternity!!! However, by accepting this as true, our children at least know that they're frequently thought of, cared for, and prayed about!!!

Keep those pictures of all those exotic places and people of the world coming [posted here on good ol' blogspot, that is!] - Albania, Hungary, Slovenia, Holland [even Winnipeg,] etc. - I LOVE seeing them and savouring the memories I know they must represent for each of you - like I've said, living vicariously is good enough for me this summer!!!!

Love, always and forever!!!!!

-Hubby/Dad

Berat

Hey Family!

So here we are, we went to the airport yesterday and will be in Lushnje until Monday. Mom got her hair cut and looks really good. Everyone says that she looks young (its true she does).

We had a great time in Berat. Mom, Becky and I lived in the home of Ariana and her mother, one of the believers. The other girls lived in another home.

One of the highlights was the street evangelism. we did a skit, danced, face painted, made balloons and also talked with people. That was really fun. I'm glad we could do it.

Here are some pics:

This is how we felt most days after lunch. i don't know what kind of drugs they put in our lunch but it SURRRRRRE worked.

DON'T MESS WITH ME!!!!!!!!

van Bruggen's can dance??? thats right, fan dance style

The two beautiful brides.

Heres a group of us ladies. Some are Albanians that we lived with but all are people that we became friends with.

New Challenge

Hi all

Alright my Challenge for this week is that everyone post something.  As I stated in my last post we were doing really well with the posting for a while there but we have lost it and I think that this blog is really something that we should keep up.  Even though we talk over skype and email each other it is still nice to have this and to be able to look back on previous posts to see what we were thinking or what we were doing.  I encourage everyone to consider what a benefit this will be in future years when we can look over it again and remember.

Love

Wes

Adventurous 9

Hi all

So I know that I have not posted for a while and in fact it seems that no one has been posting for a while.  I am intending to change this and start to post again.  The first thing that I am going to post is the Adventurous 9, these are the people that I went to Hungary with and taught with for a month.  I have over 8 gigs of pictures to sort though and decide what to post and what not to post (what is worthy of this blog and what is not so worthy) but I thought that I would describe the main characters of the last month.

This is the dream team, we were pretty much the trouble makers of the group always looking for ways to annoy someone or make trouble somewhere and escape camp when ever possible. (starting from left to right Chris aka JC aka Jackie Chan, Viki aka Wiki (the Hungarians could never pronounce the V properly and after calling her Wiki the name just stuck), Alissa aka the blackfoot (called the blackfoot by JC and myself as she constantly seemed to have dirty feet, we actually hypothesis that she took a shower with her feet outside the tub to preserve the dirtiness of the feet), Wes aka Wes (me being me there was never any need for a nickname)

These are some of the ladies in our group looking far too cool for school.  HAHAHA at least they thought that they were too cool for school. (In this group of rapping beauties starting from top left and moving we have Becky aka shorty (to be honest I am the only one who referred to her as this), below with the hood up is Jean (half korean and half Canadian), beside is Wiki once again and beside Wiki and below the guy is Martina aka Tina (Again this is one of those things where only I called her Tina because I knew it annoyed her and it made me laugh)

With the exception of the two guys this is almost all the ladies from the group, we are missing one. (starting from the left we have Shorty aka becky, Polly, Diana, Jean, Wiki, and Tina with two camp guys in the background.  This is what happens when you show up to a camp with 7 foreign girls in tow you tend to make a bit of a stir)

So as you have seen over the last few pictures this was the group that I spent 1 month with in Hungary.  JC was from the UK (London), Wiki and Alissa were from the US (New York City), Dianna was from Romania, Becky was from Malta, Polly from Hong Kong, Tina was from Chek, Jean was from Canada or South Korea take your pick and then of course there was me (I was the angle of the group always against doing anything wrong and of course the most responsible).  It is funny after spending 1 month together you tend to get pretty close to people and I can honestly say that I am going to miss them. However I am sure that I will be seeing some of them in the not too distant future (especially JC, Becky and Tina)