Ellen In Amerika!

What a disaster this morning, when we saw the news of the devastating 8.8 earthquake in Chile. The people were so scared by the 3 minutes of earth shaking. It is still pretty scary there, because there are still aftershocks. They have had an even bigger earthquake in the past: In May 22, 1960: A magnitude 9.5 earthquake in southern Chile and ensuing tsunami killed at least 1,716 people. The country is pretty well prepared for earthquakes, but the infrastructure has been damaged pretty severely, and there have been a lot of people killed. As of noon, PST the casualty numbers have not yet been told. Chile’s national emergency agency is now reporting as many as 400,000 victims in the Bio-Bío Region (south of Santiago) alone.

Around 7.10 AM this morning, I called Sonja in the Netherlands. My voice was still sleepy, and I was drinking my Senseo Coffee I congratulated her with her husband’s birthday, and we talked for a while about the situation in the Netherlands. For here it was past 4 PM. When we hung up, Dan and I said goodbye, and I was suddenly totally awake.

We got up in time this morning, and because of that, we thought we had lots of time. So we did not hurry, and as a result, I was almost too late to work! Luckily, Esther was there already. It was a super busy morning. So many visitors, but we managed to help them all promptly. Around noon, I went home and had lunch. Tomorrow, the 26th, a good friend of ours, Peter, is having his birthday, so I decided to make a birthday card with a Smilebox. This is a great feature of Hallmark. It is the easiest online greeting system I know. After I sent it to Peter’s email address, Hallmark asks if you want to put this E-card on your facebook etc. page. They also offer it for WordPress, so I copied and pasted it in the body of the HTML tab, as you can see below.

This morning I got an email with some videos of Sven Kramer and the drama that happened yesterday. These videos were “funny” ones. I think, in time, they will be funny. For now, I still feel so sorry for him and his coach. On the TV here it is hot. In a morning talk show, the deception of the coach was shown and also that Sven was slapping the coach. That was repeated several times, and the talk show woman, said, oh, he is doing it again!! I thought by myself: are you blind? They are repeating the same thing over and over again! Then she mentioned that Sven had given an interview for CNN. The interviewer, who was not quite familiar with his name, asked him his name. Sven answered in a “somewhat” arrogant way: “Are you stupid?” This is not smart, especially not for a foreign TV station. I hope Sven apologized for this “stupid” question

I already wrote this post yesterday, but something went wrong with publishing it. So here it is again!

This morning I had my appointment with the doctor. He gave me, as I expected, clearance on all 4 forms, so Before noon, I had my badge, and key. I am now totally relax. It was still a bit nerve raking because of the clearance from my doctor. But luckily all is fine now. After this, I called Dan and my sister Marja on my cell through the Skype line, and told them the good news. Marja had asked me to let her know what the outcome of the doctor’s clearance would be. She also told me, that I had to hurry home, because Sven Kramer was about to do his 10.000 meter speed skating race.