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

Saturday evening, ready for bed, but I wanted to write a bit before I meet Mr. Sandman.

Last week I had a two day NCPI Training in Camarillo. This training is required for my work at the school. Dan was able to drop me off in the morning, but I had to go back by public transportation. Never again! I’ve done it before but these two times were horrible. First, I had to make appointments with Dial a Ride. At first it looked okay. But then, when they did not show up at the agreed upon time, I panicked. Luckily, both times I made it just in time to get my bus from the train station in Camarillo to my town. There, I had to wait 20 minutes for my next bus. Not sure why this is here, but there were a lot of homeless and mentally disabled people waiting at the same bus stop. At one point, I felt a bit uncomfortable. It took me 2 1/2 hour to get home. I was exhausted! The training was very interesting and intense though. We had to do some defense exercises, and because I was one of the tallest, it was a bit more difficult for the others to get me “under control” We had to write so much that my hand hurt after two days! At home, I had to learn all the stuff we wrote down. The test after the two days was more difficultt than I thought it would be, but I am pretty sure I passed it. We will see if I get my certificate in the mail.

Friday, Dan and I had an appointment with the optometrist. Again, he helped me wonderfully. My “bad” eye has a contact lens that gives 50 % sight in it. This is exactly right for me reading a book and working on the computer. For further away and closer by, that eye is not useful at all. I told the optometrist, that for the small letters on packages at the grocery store, I need a pair of magnifying glasses, which I do not like. He said there are new lenses on the market that has a “+ part”  build in a contact lens. He let me try it, and it is great! I can now read all small prints on the labels of the groceries.  I only have +1 for now. Dan has his glasses since last year. He was and still is not happy with the progressive lenses.  He explained that to the optometrist, and now he will get normal lenses for distances.  When we got home, Dan picked up Ryan and we had dinner. In the evening we watched a new episode of Southland. This is such a great police series.

Today, I got my first driving-lesson from Dan. I drove for 45 minutes at a parking lot, and I wasn’t even scared! I liked it! But I am sure I need to build up a lot more confidence before I will hit the road Dan is such a patient and nice instructor. He knows me of course, and he knows when I get ticked off

After Dan took the drivers’ seat again, we went to the stores and did the groceries. We had a lot again! Because Walmart is such a huge store, we’d split up and each of us took a part of the groceries list and that went a lot faster!

At home I made Squash Casserole from a new blog, this Italian Family I am following. She has tons of great recipes. I already tried her Focaccia bread, and this one is much easier than the one I made before. The squash casserole is absolutely a keeper. I made a lot for the 3 of us, but it was all gone!

Tomorrow I have to work in the hospital from 9.00 AM Till 2.00 PM. And Monday back to school again! I cannot wait to see the kids again.

I wish you all have a very good week!

For everybody: “Happy 2011! I wish for everybody as much as I wish for myself!

New Year’s Eve was nice. Because Ryan spent the night with his mother, we planned to go to a restaurant and have a dinner-dance. We were there a few years ago, and it was quite good.  But this year, they did not have a live band. So around 6.00 PM we suddenly decided to stay home. We had so much nice food in the fridge, and I had made my bitterballen again…We had a great evening! We started with Butternut Squash soup and a cheese garlic bread. It was so delicious.

We bowled 4 games on the Wii, while we ate crackers with French smelly cheese and drank our wine. We  had some extreme high scores. We both had at one game 7 strikes in a row! Unbelievable, I know!! Then we watched a stand up comedian DVD and ate the bitterballen with mustard, yummie!.

At midnight we toasted once again a great year and thanked for a wonderful year we had. We tried to call Holland in the afternoon (there it was midnight ). But no luck at all.  Around 1.00 AM we went to bed.

New Year’s Day I was able to talk with my sister, a friend and my inlaws. Around noon we drove up to Conejo Mountain for our yearly tradition: A New Year’s Hike! It was great. I wanted to hike on this mountain for some time because we can see this mountain from our house. It has the shape of a volcano. The weather was good.

Because of all the rain we had, the paths were in bad shape with still some water going through. We walked for about 2 hours and we made it to the top! The last part was pretty challenging because I have some trouble with heights! Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr….. I could not look down, so steep it was!

Then, when we went back, we had to scoot down on our bottom, feet, hand..and so on It took us an hour to get down the hill. It was truly a prefect way to start this New Year!

Back at home, I quickly prepared some dinner and, after changing clothes, I was at 6.00 PM in the hospital for my evening shift. It was very calm beside one code blue and a RRT.  A colleague had left the DVD movie called, “The Bucket List” in my drawer, so at home, Dan and I watched that movie. It was a very good movie, I recommend it higly. Sunday it rained here almost the whole day again. A good day to take all the Christmas stuff down. We had bought 2 big size storage bins, and everything fit perfectly in it. After cleaning the floor, the house was back to normal again.

I forgot to mention that on New Year’s Eve afternoon, we went to Walmart for some birdseed. Nowhere were normal sizable birdseed bags. On our way outside, I saw artificial Christmas trees for sale. I was curious and wanted to know how much 70 % off was. A tree of 6.5 ft. from 98 Dollars, now for 25 Dollars! With clear lights!! Now are we in the “possession”  of 2 living rooms, and because we have already a colored lights Christmas tree, I did not have too think to hard before buying this one also. I now cannot wait to see how it is to have two Christmas trees in our house. Yeah, pretty decadent, I know

Today Dan was having the day off, and we went to the gym. It felt good to do that. Ryan came home from school and had dinner with us. His mother picked him up, and I had a nice evening with Sting on the new stereo system and reading my new Nook