A new visitor

Since F's mom is in the hospital and f's stepdad is sick and experiencing backpains, we offered to adopt their dog in the meantime. Here is mimi, and we are dog-sitting for a week. he's a cute terrier dog, but needs a haircut really soon! he's a lot of work, he's been potty-trained by we walk him in the morning, go back home for lunch for walking again, and another walk outside before we sleep.

hanging out in amsterdam day

so today was our sightseeing day in amsterdam



I am not used to seeing so many people again and i got a little bit confused and disoriented in amsterdam with the chaos of people, tourists, cars, bicycles and trams crisscrossing the streets of amterdam. we got our bicycles with us and went around the city.
first, we went to museumplein, but we didnt have enough time to go to the museums. so we just had coffee and cake at the cafe at concertgebouw, then went to the dinner and forum of joma sison, the former ccp leader who is now exiled in utrecht. them met up with joel ruiz, famous gwapo director of arkeo films who is doing a 5-month study trip on directing in binger lab in amsterdam. we had some pizza and beer near his home in jordaan and had a good time!

henrika

f sister came over from germany, for dinner and also to sleep over the weekend in our flat.


so we cooked her a sumptious dinner of salmon in lemon and white sauce (cooked by f), spicy gambas (cooked by me) and roasted zuchini. For appetizer, we had a variety of cheeses and for dessert, it was yoghurt ice cream with fresh raspberries! yum!

Fish sarciado

This worked well! f said this is his favorite so far. since i didnt have fish sauce, i just used soy sauce and it worked! i used tilapia fillet rolled in bread crumbs, with cherry tomatoes!..yumyumyum

The train!

Finally my own dutch bike!

As I told you before, when I was a kid, i had an obsession with bikes. I always asked my parents to buy one for me for christmas and they never did. Though I didnt understand that time and I only thought that they were un-loving parents...but it is actually dangerous to cycle in our neighborhood in Sampaloc, or for anywhere else in Manila for that matter. No bike-paths, vehicles left and right...awful!

So when I got my own bike last month, I was ecstatic! Although I still have to get used to the bike paths (I need space everyone! dont cycle so close beside me please!), I really love being able to cycle everywhere. My school is just around 10-15 minutes by bike.



So to make my bike a REAL Dutch bike, I had to get the little bell:

And we got side bags as well! It works pretty well for grocery shopping!

our neighborhood

here is what my neighbourhood looks like:

these buildings are right in front of our building. i love watching them at night, because they have all these big windows and being dutch, they dont put the blinds or curtains on and you can see what they are doing inside. At night, i feel i am watching a doll house. The building looks very nice and modern.



This is the housing behind us. I call this the yellow building (duh!). its low but i like that its yellow.

and this is our building. we live on the top floor and we have a real good view of the city. although our building from the outside looks very boring compared to the other residential places around us, the inside actually is very cosy and nice. We also have nice big windows around our flat and I love it. (I just cant walk around naked or the neighbors will see me. hehe)
Its called Het Palais (The Palace.)