Trial test

Well, time for another blog now :) About time as well, as it's been a couple of weeks already again.
Anyways, last Tuesday I had the trial test for my drivers licence. It's completely like a normal test, other than that you don't hear whether you pass or not, you just get asked what you thought went good and bad and well the stuff you need to work on. This is fairly new, but it helps keeping the amount of people not passing down due to having experienced it already once as well.
My test didn't go exactly fantastic though sadly. Then again no body expected me to drive fantastic yet I guess since then it would have been the final test and not another two weeks of lessons and all. It didn't go exactly fantastic because I was seriously nervous and started making more and more mistakes towards the end of my lesson (I had an hours lesson before the test). To which my instructor started moaning an moaning harder and harder and thus even before the test even started I had no confidence left already..
However, it was not all bad, because apart from knowing how the final test will be there's another pro to taking the trial test. It's that if you pass the special manoeuvres you had to do during the trial test, you don't have to do them again on the final test. This part of the test went good and thus I at least don't have to do any parking, turning and other shit like that during the test but only driving :)
The parts that still scare me are highways, sooo fast! And I need to do all the things at the same time, like speed up and look and keep the steering wheel straight and all that.

Something else that's been happening often and fast, so far without any result though is checking houses. I'm now getting emails, with places that fit our searches, every day. Of those we pick the ones we like, if there are any at all and forward them to Sue. She then contacts the company to see if they can arrange a viewing but so far that's not been possible yet. They always wanted rid of the houses in the same week, which is of course way to quick for us sadly. But Sue and Tom are going to take a look around this Saturday, so hopefully they will be able to find something semi decent :)

I have also send the form that needs to filled in by the Dutch government to them. So hopefully it won't be too long before they sent it back and I can sent all of it to the UK.

Also, I've changed the look of the blog. First there was another look I liked which made me lose the old one I had, so then I came up with this. Pretty nice I think :)

Anniversary and more

Well, it's been a while already again since my last post. But that doesn't matter! This is a whole new one, with pictures! :)


First of all last Thursday Dan and I have been together for four years already! Four years.. Doesn't seem that long at all really.. But well, we decided to have a little day out together as there was still a couple of things we wanted to do here in Amsterdam. One of them being a canal cruise through the centre of the city. Another was to actually visit the palace at the Dam, but sadly that was closed until later in October, so we'll be coming back for that later in the month most likely :) The canal cruise was awesome. It was fantastic weather, if anything a bit too hot, but well, on the water that's not too bad. Took a couple of pictures too, which I'll litter around this little post :) First the one to the side is when we took of with the boat, just a couple of cool looking houses with a seagull sitting on a pole in front of the brown house.

The pictures above and below are a clock tower called 'Malle Jaap' or translated to 'Crazy Jack' by the very British sounding taped tour guide. It got the name due to the fact that for years it was unable to keep the time. Also you can see that the base looks different then the top. This is because the tower was first lower and only hundreds of years later the top was put on.

To the left is a picture of the smallest house of Amsterdam. It's just about a metre wide. If you look at the doorway, it just about fits the door and that's it. For you who aren't sure which one on the picture it is: yes, it really is that small green and white house that's already much much lower then the rest of the houses.


The next picture is one of a couple of very traditional looking houses on the 'Herengracht' (Gentlemen's Canal as translated by the guide). I thought they were looking all pretty and renovated there together with the three of them :P
  

Then the tour took us through the old harbour and behind the Central Station, that's the train, bus, tram and metro station for the city. It's one of the biggest stations in the country if not the biggest. Also, you can see a 'small' bike storage stand too. 

After that the boat turned back into the town centre and we got off again. All in all it was quite a nice hour of seeing and hearing stuff about Amsterdam :)


But before we went on the boat trip we went shopping as well. And we bought, among other stuff, some leather Magic the Gathering deck boxes. As seen on the picture below :) It's even got a magnet in it's flappy top :)

On a completely different note, Rachel told us last week about this awesome small washer thingy. So I went to look for it on the interwebs and it turns out they are available in the Netherlands too :) So I got us one. Which means I've now been writing this blog while waiting for the washing to be done! I can do washing at home!! :D To the left is a picture of it in it's first use :)