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

It is warm here. Monday and Tuesday were my last free days. I worked around the house, did a lot of biking and took advantage of the nice weather by finishing my book in the back yard. I have found a new good author,  Jennifer Weiner.
Tuesday morning I had an appointment with my dermatologist for removing 4 “warts” on my arms. Two times of nitro oxygen treatment had not helped, so now he wanted to scrape them under local anastasia. The injections hurt a bit but I did not feel anything of the scraping. It was done quickly. I hope it will heal nicely.  Tuesday afternoon I checked the mail and finally a letter from the school district, regarding my interview. I did not have too much expectations of it, because I was not content with the last interview in front of the board. But…….out of 200 new and internal candidates, I had the highest score for everything (tests and interview performance), and I am 1st in rank for the first upcoming position as a para-educator III. I screamed like a high school girl! I was so surprised.  I called Dan and we cheered the good news.

Wednesday, my first day at school with the special need children started. It was so much fun again. There were a few new kids, and they were so upset their mommies and daddies left them behind with us. One little boy cried for 2 hours. We tried to comfort him and made him part of the activities, but he kept crying.  Suddenly he stopped and all looked okay.  One other boy, I knew from last year, started to spit at other children during recess time. When I walked toward him, he spit at me. Okay, I thought just leave him alone, asked the other kids to go somewhere else to play and ignore the boy. Later in class, he was not permitted to join us in the group session. We explicitly explained to him why he was not allowed to sit with us. He was not amused, I can tell you that. After school I saw I had a missed call. The school district called and they already want me to go for an interview next week to a school near by our house. Because I am on the first rank for the PE III position, I am the first to be invited. That feels pretty neat I’ll keep you updated!

And today, it’s Dan’s birthday!! Happy, happy birthday, my wonderful husband!I  made a chocolate cake with chocolate fudge topping. I will decorate it with whipped cream and writing when we are going to eat it. I hope he will like his presents we will give later today! Now I have to run, another school day for me!

Friday I had to do the weekly groceries, and because I entered the shopping mall from a different side, I passed Ross department store. This store, for those who don’t know, sells “designer clothes for very afortable prices,” and when they have sale, you might catch up with really good bargains. But sometimes the clothes they have aren’t my “style” or not my size. This time, however, I found very nice tops for an incredible price. I was totally happy!! After doing the groceries at the same mall, I biked home in a nice, sunny afternoon.

At home, I started to make dinner, and soon Dan arrived with Ryan. Because we were planning to watch a movie, I made some snacks ahead of time. This time, I made saltines topped with horseradish/cream cheese/square slices of ham. It tasted great! We decided to watch Date Night with Tina Fey and Steve Carell.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6SQqazrNY4 It was hilarious. We laughed the whole movie.

Saturday morning, while Ryan was still sleeping, Dan and I went to the gym and again, I believe, we lost “some”  calories After lunch, Dan took me to work for my evening shift at the local hospital. It went fine, I only had a bad stomachache. Luckily I did most of my shift with a colleague, so I could “escape” when it was necessary. Around 11.30 PM, Dan picked me up again, and we went home.

This morning, Dan made breakfast; pancakes! For me regular ones, for him and Ryan, blueberry ones.  Around 11.30 PM Niels, Melanie, Dan and I spoke on Skype. It was heartwarming to see and hear my son and his girlfriend again. After this talk, which I think was as important as vitamins, Dan, Ryan and I went to the Leo Carrillo Beach state park in Malibu. The weather was great, and the beaches were pretty packed. These Beaches are full of caves and rocks you can climb on. The tide was high, but I did not expected it was dangerous. Already within minutes my sandals and pants were wet. So I thought it would not hurt to go into the caves, the water would not come higher than my knees. I only did not expect, the waves would smash against the wall and then smash on me! I just had taken a picture, and in an instant, the water surprised me big time! I was soaking wet! brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…I stumbled out of the the cave to go into the sun. Dan and Ryan laughed and they had the “decency” to ask if I was all right! Yeah right!! After sitting for about 2o minutes in the sand and enjoying the beautiful beach, we walked under the freeway toward the mountains and started hiking/geocashing. We had to cross a campground. If we want to camp out in a tent or RV, we definitely will camp out there. You have everything there: a great campground with lots of big spaces under trees at the foothill of beautiful mountains to hike in and 2 minutes walking distance from the beach. If you are planning to spend your vacation in Southern California, you cannot ignore this beautiful part of the state. And on top of that, you are in between Santa Monica/LA and Santa Barbara. Enough to do, I think. And…… 30 minutes from our house

We’d only found 1 geocash. Around 5.00 PM we were home again. I have to say again, it is  a pleasure to live in this part of the world!

Here’s a gallery of our day.

Have a wonderful week!

Already it is Wednesday evening. Time flies!  So far a pretty easy week. Not much work other than in the house. Monday morning I received a phone call from the school district. They have a long term assignment for me with the school I like so much! I’ll start next Wednesday. I can’t wait, to be honest.

The backyard gate that I’d painted last week looks so nice, so I decided Monday to paint the back door of the garage in the same color, and it looks much better now. It was fun to do, mainly because it went very quick

Ryan had stayed over Sunday night. He and I had a nice brunch Monday morning, and he played his games. Around dinner time, his mother picked him up. My father in law called after dinner. He and Ann fled Missouri because of the extreme heat there and went for a 2 week vacation to Michigan, Buffalo NY and to Canada. I heard it is beautiful out there.

Tuesday, Was a very random day. I had a nice talk with my sister Marja. We talked a lot about our upcoming visit to the Netherlands, and she told us that they (my brothers and sisters and in laws), have postponed the family day from August toward November! Dan and I can be there now also! We both are very, very pleased with that!

In the afternoon, I biked to the postal office, and because it was such wonderful weather I took a side tour through  town to the stores, and then I went back home. In the evening, we went to the gym and I worked off a lot of “need to loose calories” After coming home, and taking a shower, I watched the recorded American Got Talent show. I fast forwarded it till I saw this:

Is’t it amazing? I believe everyone here in the States has seen this talented girl in several news shows on national TV!

Today, I went to the library and got myself some nice books. Last week, I finished a book of Sophie Kinsella. She is the author of the  Shopaholic series. This book of her, “Can you keep a secret?”  is even more hilarious. It made me burst into laughs several times. I can truly recommend this book to all of you who like humorous, chick flick books.  Also today, I ordered Dan’s birthday present on line for next week. I cannot tell what it is, because he probably will read this post as well Yeah, as if…….. I was always against shopping on line for birthday presents, but now, come to think of it, I start seeing it has some advantage over shopping in stores

It has been a wonderful weekend. Saturday, we did the groceries in the morning, and in the afternoon, Dan dropped Ryan me off at the Pacific View mall in Ventura. I wanted to get some presents for Dan’s birthday. It was fun to walk around there again. I wished I had more time though Ryan was calling me all the time, when I was ready, of course he was done with his shopping much earlier than I, so he had had it after an hour. I met him in the middle of the mall and he did not had another choice than going with me to look for some jeans He was not too thrilled about that, but he did not complain too much either

At home I made rice with a veggie-spaghetti sauce. I also added a jalapeño pepper from the garden. This made the dish a bit too spicy, but worse was that my hands were drained with the juices of the pepper. Later that evening, after washing my hands several times, I tried to take my lenses out of my eyes. This has been one of the most painful moments I  experienced. I thought I went blind. After 15 minutes, I could open my eyes again, both turned red and wet. And the next day, after having washed my hands over and over again, I tried to put my lenses in again, and it still was like fire in my eyes! I had to leave out one contact lens because my eye was too irritated. I love spicy food, but not with this result, I can tell you that.

Saturday evening Dan and I watched a great movie. “The ghost writer”. The end was, as in so many movies, a bit weird, but it is absolutely a to-see movie! http://www.hulu.com/watch/125416/movie-trailers-the-ghost-writer

Sunday, we got up early. We had discussed what we wanted to do this weekend, and Dan read online about an airshow on the Point Mugu Navy Base. Knowing the men would love this event much more than the Fiesta’s event in Santa Barbara, I agreed we could go there. It was a great experience. The navy base is huge! It was an experience all it’s own, to drive up there, to see all the houses, imagining the families who live there. And there is literally everything on the base. Elementary school, highschool, shops, cafe’s, you name it.

After parking our car, we still had to walk a long way to reach the airshow. There were so many different planes: old ones, the new, more advanced ones, big ones and pretty tiny ones. Also a jeep from World War II and a helicopter.

I have never seen a helicopter close by Soon there was an air show of a small double decker plane with a woman wing-walker. Of course she was attached to the plane, but it was pretty scary to watch. The plane did loops and went up straight into the air.

There were so many air shows. There was also Chuck, a helicopter pilot. He is the only one in the world who can do loops forward and backward with a helicopter. It was so spectacular and scary to watch!

Also very impressive was a demonstration of an A10 Warthog, which simulating dropping bombs.

You felt the ground shaking, when the pilot “dropped” the bombs. The explosions ware so real.

Then a big C-130 plane dropped a huge amount of water. These planes are huge!

There were of course the F-16 planes, which are making a lot of noise But the most impressive demonstration was by far the American Air Force Thunderbirds. Man, what a stunts they showed the public and how scary it was. Several times it was too scary for me to watch it.  Here some pictures of their stunts. BTW we took over a litte more than 150 pictures! I know………..:-)

And yes, I finally was smart. I wore a hat

The only “downside” of the day was that it took us a long time to get off the premises of the navy base after the show, but other than that, it has been a memorable day!

Today, Kimberly is having her 20th birthday, dear niece, have a wonderful year!