Point back at the US

When I am about to write the blog I look at the pictures taken throughout the week to recall any specific events that you should know about. My source failed me this week because we didn't take that many, just a few that you will see at the end of the blog. So just as the banking system is poitning back at the US we will do the same at pointing and updating you in how our family is doing back in the US.

To start we want to show you our beautiful niece Hannah. She Look how big and cute.. Isn't she adorable?

Lina is having her baby Shower this weekend and she is showing the cuttest belly. Less than a month ago she was barely showing but now she has a bigger bump.
Just some pictures from these week. We had a beer tasting festival in our room. From left to right the percentage of alcohol increased from 5% to 12%. The last one on the right tasted sooo bad. We found a winner and that is the burgundy Bavaria can. It tasked just like Jeremia Red at BJ'S.

With the lack of Mexican food and avocatos.. we decided to try to make a 7-layer dip and it came out pretty good.

To finished up the week we had another Latino Flocking night. We cooked Arepas (which are corn-based bread from Colombia and Venezuela)
Some pictures from the event: The Cheff, Daibory from Venezuela

The boys. From left to righ Cristian-Chile, Miguel-Venezuela, Josue-Mexico, Bruno-Mexico, JP-Argentina

Yummy Arepas
Me and Gaby

The whole group

Tonight Meik is coming to see us and then on Wednesday we will go back with him to Bremen. As the holidays are approaching we are trying to figure out where to go. I want to either go to Slovenia, Budapest and Istanbul.. and Cristian wants to do either London.. Any voters? Where should we go?

Love,

Kika

Chuck Norris 4- US 0

Hello my favorite peeps! So it looks like this place is agreeing with us. We are feeling more at home everyday. We have developed a great group of friends

and we are enjoying the new life in Europe. I feel like this pretty much every day.

This week hit me hard being away from home. The job at Nike fell through and although I got great feedback from the person that interviewed me saying I was Nike Material I got very home sick. Cristian has been sick this week with the flu, and pretty much he sleeps all day. The weather has not been very nice to pump up the mood. To add to the complain bucket list I lost my touch in the kitchen this week.. the rice burned, the chicken was dry, I bought the wrong milk and the cheese was sweet instead of salty.
As I was researching about homesickness I found a prevention, which is for parents "not to pick the child up before the period of separation is scheduled to end." That prevention technique in my case failed completely. When younger, my parents (mostly my dad) couldn't say NO when I asked him to pick me up at a friend's or my grandma's house, when I promised I would not get homesick.

To put a band aid on the heart or on my separation anxiety I found a way to feel close to home and that is NPR and youtube. As weird as it sounds hearing an american english speaker makes me feel at ease, except from Sara Palin. And watching Letterman interview celebrities and mavericks make me feel in a homy environment.

Last but not least we had close encounters with Chuck Norris. When our door is open we can see into the kitchen where Chuck Norris makes his rounds. Most recently we saw him searching for food so we set some traps.

Round 1: Chuck Norris nibbled at the cheese (we are using goat cheese that it is 3.oo Euros for 100g) in the trap until it was all gone

Round 2: We (meaning Cristian) reset the trap with cheese and Peanut Butter... Same result

Round 3: We tied the cheese to the trap with dental floss and video taped Chuck in action.. same result + the video was all black lack of light

Round 4: We set the traps again before going to sleep ...Same result. We must remember Chuck Norris facts when battling Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits.

We should also mention that each time we set the trap, we set 2 traps so it actually Chuck Norris 8, Us 0

Next week we are looking forward for a small trip to Bremen to see Meik F.P.

That is all I got for now

I feel like Mr. W.

Love,

Kika

Brown Pride Weekend

I have been avoiding blogging because as much as I want to give you good news about Nike, I don't have any news yet. I failed to blog the first week because I thought I would have better news the following week but that was not the case. So I am just going to tell you that the interview went well and in three weeks they will let me know (I got used to those responses from Cristian's job search).

So now lets talk about our lives in Amsterdam. The past two weeks in pictures:
Cristian and I celebrated our First Anniversary in a Mexican Restaurant.

The food was not very authentic as we can see the guacamole was black and they served us fagitas with potatoes and salad and not beans and salsa.. are u serious?Oxana our roomate turned 24 and she cooked sushi for us.
She loves Jane Austin so as a present we gave her the Jane Austin collection
Dima got a broken window and it took about 3 threat emails and 2 weeks for the landlord to come and fix it
Sandra (Godmother, Cristian's mom's best friend from Chile, high roller and good friend) came to visit us in Amsterdam.
She took us to this amazing Spanish restaurant owned by Cubans for tapas called Pata Negra. Last time we had Jamon Serrano was in 2003, we (as in I Kika) got so sick of eating so much that I was not able to eat Jamon Serrano until last week. We had Pata Negra which is the best of the best of Jamon Serrano. It is the Manolo Blanik of shoes.

Cisco employees were asked not to flock (stay with their own kind) and to be open to hang out with different people. As we can see in the following pictures the latinos took that statement and expanded to Spanish Speakers only. We had our first "Latino Flocking" this weekend. (Cristian called it 'brown pride weekend' but they didn't get it. jaja)

These are all the girls starting from left to right: Costa Rica, Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil. Argentina, Italia/Spain, Mexico and Mexico. Left to right: Argentina, Colombia, Chile/USA, Mexico, Costa Rica. The picture does no justice.. let's try this one... lol
Some other pictures

So we finished our Latino Flocking succesfully but I am not sure about these kids..
To finish I will post a video if me dancing because it is funny..Gaby is signing in the back

That it all folks. Love Kika

This looks like a cool place to Kick it

Yesterday we found out that Lina is having a boy. As we can see in the picture she is showing a little belly.. doesn't she look beautiful? A few things that I already know my nephew is going to love:

• Motorcycles
• Baseball
• Camping
• Gourmet home made food
• By the age of 2 he is going to know idiasabal, tetilla, drunken goat, garoxa (Different kinds of cheese.)
• Disney movies
  
• He is going to be a tree huger because his mommy loves organic things

As we are approaching our anniversary, Cristian wanted to get us a great present. That is the second big news.. yesterday we brought home two beautiful folding bikes. We haven't name them yet but pretty much they are Trasnformers, they are not Japanese but look at their cannons!!


Cristian has been infatuated with these bikes, he probably spent 20+ hours looking for them. Keep in mind that a week has 120 hours (Monday to Friday) and this is Cristian's schedule:

Work: 40 Hrs/week
Commute: 10 hrs/week
Dinner: 5 hrs/ week
Soccer: 12 hrs/week
Sleep: 35 hrs/week

That is around 102 hours a week and the other 20 he spent them in looking for bikes. Where did Kika time go? I am going to quote Barr "mmmm hmm." You would think that with the high demand for bikes in Amsterdam it would be easy to find one.. it is not

Now for the third news I am going to quote Kellie in:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ligANxVEN14

Dear Nike: Thank you for calling me and scheduling an interview for us to meet. Yes, that is right I have an interview on September 10th. Seriously, my heart fell after the call and I had to pick it up and place it again. As some of you guys have heard me when I talk about Nike "it makes me faster and I promote the passion I feel when I am equipped with Nike. What can I say "I got soul but I am not a soldier."

The forth and last update was that Cristian decided to quit his soccer career in Amsterdam. In his last training he met these two Brazilian "ballers" as he called them. They are currently playing for Vasco Da Gama and came to Amsterdam for tryouts at bigger clubs then FC Amsteland. Cristian wanted an autograph but these kids were 16 and 110 pounds and thought he was 44 so he held off.

The last updates of the week:

1. It was Oxanas B-day and Gaby and I did Tiramisu as you can see in the picture..Yummy Yummy

2. We saw Hannah this week and she is talking so much. She recognized us through the camera and sent us kisses

3. I thought I had some skills in cutting hair but as you can see I failed completely by trying to cut some of my hair, it is completely uneven. My mom almost killed me when she saw me in the webcam
4. This is Cristian studying Cisco so hard.. LAN lines, Proxies, etc


5. Thank God I still have some hair left.. you can barely tell the bad hair cut
That is all for now.. see you next week?

What is the word in Amsterdam?

Do you know that the secret to understanding a city and its people is to learn- what is the word on the street?" Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, pray and Love

Amsterdam: At this point it is SEEKING.. cause we have not found it yet

This past week was Cristian's 28th B-day. Juan Pablo (Our Argentinian neighbor) was born one day before Cristian in 1980 so we celebrated both of their b-days on Friday night with a Pasta Party and strawberry cake with Nutela.


Making a wish and blowing the candles

Cristian got an amazing B-day present by approaching a guy in the metro station who was wearing soccer gear and asked him for some soccer info and he introduced him to his soccer team manager. Cristian went for a try-out the next day and was invited this week to play again for FC Amstelland. As Cristian said, "that was one of the best things that could happen on my birthday"

A Cisco Update, Cristian has been taking communication classes where they teach him: Eye contact, pose, gestures, tone of voice, use of the room, memory hook and the closing statement. One of the videos taken by the Cisco instructor.



This is Cristian practicing at home with us

The public speaking training is going well underway since Cristian is a few of the native English speakers, he gets a lot of compliments as some people still assume he was raised in Chile.

My parents and mary came to visit this weekend for a couple of days.We went to Bruges in Belgium. It is known as the "The Venice of the North", unique little town that has supposedly preserved its former look in such a striking way.


The landscape is dominated by 15th to 18th century building but there are this little trinket retailers like H&M, Sephora, and some others that are popping in the landscape as well.

Mary throughout her trip has taken this awesome picture of her jumping in different cities. We called them "got a little Jordan in you" because as we can see in some of them she is able to jump super high.


I tried to copy her but failed. As seen in some of the pictures.



In Bruges I did my first successful jump so I do have the Jordan gene in me. That is me on the left and Mary in the middle.

Last but not least I got this awesome contact at Nike. She is a Colombian girl called Patricia and she internally submitted my resume. She said that maybe I will get a call either this week or next week if they are interested. Keep your fingers crossed.

That is it for now more to come next week..