Ellen In Amerika!"MY EMIGRATION TO AMERICA AND MY ADJUSTMENT TO LIFE IN CALIFORNIA SINCE SEPTEMBER 2008"

Yesterday, I talked with Niels on Skype. I finally saw Niels’s little kitten in his new house. What a cute kitten. So small. Unfortunately, the Skype talk with Coby did not happen. Maybe next time.  We had to go to the stores for lots of groceries and looking for a bike for Ryan. There was not much choice on bikes within our budget in the stores we looked. We will look further. I was supposed to have the day off, but while we were doing the groceries, I got a call from the hospital, and they asked me to work for 4 hours that evening. I discussed it with Dan, and we decided to have an early dinner. At 3.30 Pm, we were preparing dinner, and we heard police car sirens close by, and for some reason I walked to the front of our house. I first saw a police car turning with high speed onto Lantana road at the opposite of Gonzales road. Right after that 3 more police cars with sirens raced into that street. I said to Dan, this is something big. We kept hearing the sirens for a long time. After half an hour, we heard the sirens getting louder, and a helicopter was flying circles above our house. When we were just starting to eat our hamburgers and baked potatoes, we heard an awful sound, and we ran to the front and saw a car hitting the curb, and a man ran out of the car. The police cars stopped and several police men jumped out of their cars with their pistols in their hands, and chased after the man.  The helicopter was so low above our heads, it was pretty scary. Then, within minutes more police cars and firetrucks and an ambulance came into the streets. It was like TV but more real. My goodness, what a thing, this happened 20 yards from our front door!! We walked across the street to the corner where the man had run. The police had caught him right away. We were able to see him and we all thought he was pretty young (and incredibly stupid!). The streets around this scene were blocked with a yellow tape so traffic in our neighborhood was a disaster for a while. Later, we read in the online paper that the man (32 years!) had stolen the car earlier this month, and the police wanted him to stop the car. The car thief sped up, and he drove with 70-100 miles an hour through town! It started in Oxnard, then he drove to Ventura and came back to Oxnard and it stopped right in front of our house!! He caused several collisions. That awful sound we heard was from scraping the pavement and hitting the curb. Ryan and I had the same impression at that moment. Because it sounded like gunshots and the helicopter started to fly lower and lower, we thought the helicopter went down, just above our house! The thief probably will do some jail time. Because of this, our dinner was cold. I took a few more bites and then Dan had to take me to work. This has been a very memorable day for us! Welcome to the USA, Ellen  At work, it went very well. It was nice and busy, so the time went by quickly. Back home we watched some TV, and I went to bed in time because I had the early shift today.

Work went fine today. During my lunch break, I walked outside for about 20 minutes. The area surrounding this hospital is so scenic: Green hills, beautiful blue sky etc. Dan and Ryan picked me up, and we went looking at more stores for bikes. We still have not found a bike that meets our demands and fits in our budget. We’ll see. I asked the men what they want for dinner. Ryan picked Hamburger helper. I picked up some veggies out of the garden. The meal tasted very nice!

During dinner, we watched the birds in our bird feeder. It is so funny to see them eat, it is as if we have 10 pets now and then One of the birds has an orange coat, we named this bird Queen Beatrix of Oranje!

Have a wonderful week, you all!