Monday, August 11, 2008

Take me down to the Paradise City....

Hello.. Hello!!
So we are reaching today the forth week in Amsterdam. I have been putting off blogging for these past weeks but I promise I would get better. In the next paragraphs I will do my best to give you an update of our new life in Amsterdam.

To begin I will officially introduce our roomates. We are living with two Russian couples..From Left to right is Alexey (Oxana's Husband), Dmitry (Cisco member), Oxana (Cisco Member). Dmitry's wife is in Russia and will be here in a couple of months.


Our Neighboors are a Mexican, Argentinian and Venezuelan Couple

Argentinian Couple, Gabriela aka Gabi and Juan Pablo (Cisco Member)

Mexican Couple.. Marisol (Cisco Member) and Josue.

Unfortunatelly we don't have pictures of the Venezuelan couple because we haven't spent any time together.

Second Week.. Cristian started working. From what I have heard this week was pretty much an introduction to Cisco, diversity courses, leadership, and Networking 101. His commute is around 45 minutes in tram so he leaves around 7:15 and comes back around 7:00 to 8:00pm.

During the day while Cristian goes to work I clean, do laundry, go grocery shopping, cook and apply for jobs. So I have been a dear candidate with impressive qualifications but not good enough to a couple of companies mainly Nike.

Third week..The week was pretty slow. Cristian is coming home earlier from work which is very nice because we don't eat as late as we were doing the first couple of weeks. On friday morning we found out that we have mice in the apartment. As our lease contract says " There are mice in Amsterdam. They keep out of your apartment when you keep it clean and when there is no garbage or food leftovers." So I guess we were not being clean enough. We not only got one mouse but two. Dmitry said they were small but apparently they were as big as a beer bottle. Cristian and Dmitry put a tramp and some truffle cheese (11 euros for less than 1/4 pound) and time off death of Mouse aka Chuck Norris around 5:00pm.

That night we went to the soccer match to see Arsenal, Ajax, Inter and Sevilla.. pretty entertainning. Some videos to follow.











This weekend we had the pleasure of receiving our first committe member in Amsterdam, yes Gents Stephan Loose. Steve drove Staurday afternoon and that night we had Mexican food with some Cisco people and later that night we went salsa dancing. It was a lot of fun. The next day we walked around the city and made it to the red light district. We had a wonderful time.. more to come when the other members make it to AMS.Last night we finished the weekend at Gabi's and Juan Pablo's room eating pizza and drinking Wine. Sadly, the night finished by finding another Chuck Norris at their apartment.. time of death is still unknown because it still alive.

I will finish with a couple of bullet points with interesting things:

  • There are 53 steps to our apartment on the 3rd floor

  • Heineken is the cheapest beer.. 5 euros for a 12 pack while hoegaarden is 5 euros for the 6-pack

  • The cheese store in our neighborhood has 400 different kinds of cheese

  • When I introduce myself as Colombian, the first think people say is "you sound American"

  • For having blue passport we don't have to go to the Doctor for immigration services as other people from the Cisco program do

  • The sun goes down around 9:00pm

  • Our question that we keep asking ourselves is when do Dutch people work if there is always people at the bars drinking beer and smoking?

  • Women use hills all the time riding bikes, walking long distances, visiting museums, maybe even cleaning the house

  • and Yay we got the room with the badthroom!!

to be continued.....

1 comment:

Anacecilia said...

I'm so impressed with your blog making skills!