Scuba Diving Birthday

I started off the first day of my thirties with an incredible boat dive off Anacapa Island (which is part of the Channel Islands off Ventura). This was my first boat dive with the Spectre Boat and they were so great. The team was friendly, their lunch was delicious (BBQ chicken for most, veggie burger for me) and their fresh water hot tub was perfect after three tank dives.

Of course, I always learn a lesson with each dive trip and this time, I lost my mask by not having a secure grip on it and watched it fall in off the side of the boat, oops. The boat did have an extra mask for me to use but it was such an old mask that it didn't allow for easy decompression. I actually had to dive with only one glove so I can stick my hand up the mask to decompress which was a tad annoying but it was my fault for losing my mask.

Since October is my favorite month, it's only fitting that October is the best time to dive in Southern California. The water was a nice 68 degrees with visibility from 50-80 feet. The sea life was out in full force with lots of lobsters, sting rays, starfish, a baby octopus, sea lions and even a giant sea cucumber pooping. It was the perfect way to bring in my thirties.

• wearing my underwater birthday hat •

• channeling my under water michael jackson •

• first enc0unter with a baby starfish, too cute •

• bang bang •

my october...

My favorite month is here! It just holds so much goodness that October has always been my favorite time of year!

• season change: as much as California does not have a true change in seasons, I can still feel the small changes from the different breezes to the subtle color changes in the leaves. So ha, there are some seasonal changes in California!

• my birthday: this year, it's the big thirty! I love celebrating birthdays and don't mind the whole getting old factor (ask me again though in about ten years). I am even now embracing my gray hairs. I want to be one of those old, rocking woman who has a full head of gray hair.

• random woman i saw rocking out in little toyko...i envision to have her wild hair, kinda •

• oktoberfest: a wonderful excuse to drink lots of delicious beers (it even starts this year on my birthday)
• halloween: need I say more?! Although I'm not sure what to be this year since I haven't had a lot of time to think about it or put an outfit together. Perhaps this year I will be a zombie but what kind?! Halloween also has more significance now since it's when "Army Man" met "Audrey Hepburn."

• army man and audrey hepburn •

So yea, I heart October.

End of Dutch Adventures, now to Cape Town Adventures

Family, old high school friends, college friends, work friends and long distance family all journeyed out to the Netherlands for our 09.09.09 wedding celebration and it was awesome. It was amazing to have so many loved ones close by to celebrate again with us and to show them more parts of the Netherlands besides just Amsterdam. We celebrated with a (mostly) true Dutch celebration which included a wonderful three course meal from a Michelin rated restaurant (that is conveniently located across the street from his parents house), a canal trip through the city of Utretch which included a traditional Dutch Pancake lunch next to the canal, a journey into Nijmegan - the oldest city in the Netherlands and of course, endless partying in Amsterdam. My liver and kidneys will probably never forgive me for the damage that I did to them on this trip (example: our wedding celebration evening for eighty guests final alcohol invoice was for: 60 glasses of Prosecco, 275 beers, 20 bottles of wine and 92 shots of a variety of hard booze). We definitely partied a little too much during these past two weeks but when is the next time we are going to have this group of awesome people with us to party in the Netherlands?

• my boys since high school •

• my mom's family from belgium •

• college friends and our awesome neighbors •

• dinner in amsterdam at d' herengracht •

• on top of st. stevens church in nijmegan •

And now it's time for some piece and quiet. Marijn will be working out of Cape Town for the next three weeks so during that time, I will be a glorified, traveling housewife and to be honest, I don't know if I really mind ;) It will be good to venture off to a new country and see if this is a country that we could live in. Right now, the move between London or Cape Town is quite unclear and hopefully during this trip, there will be more definition of where we are going to relocate too. I am a planner and "look ahead-er" so not knowing where we are going to be living in the next couple of months makes me a little nervous but it's just another challenge that I am looking forward to. Since I'm back to being an unemployed traveler, I've re-opened my other blog: traveling kime to write/muse while in South Africa. I'm hoping to write more while I'm there since I will have a lot of time on my hands so I'm sure I will balance between these two blogs although I really wish that I could link them...that would just be much easier to streamline everything. I did find it funny that my closing Euro-Asia blog post from August 2007 mentioned that my next trip would be Africa. Guess it was written back then that this would be my next adventure, heehee yay!

Love Grows, Part Twee.

The in-laws have an incredible green thumb and combined with the rainy/cool weather of the Netherlands, I was pleasantly surprised to see what our plantable wedding invites have grown into (prior blog post here). In Northern California, our invites have grown to be only plants, large green stems with leaves so I have been unsure of what they were to become. But the in-laws have been able to make them grow into something quite spectacular: actual flowers! Bright, lovely orange flowers with a faint sweet smell...sigh. It gives me the warm and fuzzies to know that our invites have been successfully grown into flowers!

• they are quite tall •

• a bee enjoying the flower •

Being back in the Netherlands is always fun but it's more of visiting family than traveling so this trip has included more traveling and experiences. Some of our friends have come out to celebrate our second wedding celebration with us so we've been able to take them out and show them parts of the Netherlands. As the rest of the family and friends start arriving this week, we're going to be in full travel mode and really showing them the nooks and crannies of the Netherlands and it's very exciting since no one has been here before. My understanding of the Dutch language is also getting better. I can only speak a few words/phrases and my pronunciation is quite poor but it's become a fun challenge listening to Dutch and finally being able to start picking out words (which helps me follow conversations better, I just can't figure out the exact context yet). It's fun being able to start picking up a new language and am curious if I will ever be able to fully speak Dutch. That would be quite spiffy.

• i heart the netherlands •

Next Steps

I can't believe that September is already here, what happened to the year?! This year has held a lot of new beginnings and life changes so it's crazy to see that the year is almost over.

We're heading off to the Netherlands to celebrate our wedding with Marijn's family. It's incredibly exciting since my family and some of our awesome friends are flying out to celebrate with us. Most of them have never been to the Netherlands so we get to really show them around besides the standard Amsterdam that everyone normally visits. Of course, to make this journey even crazier is that right after our Netherlands travels, we're hoping on a plane and heading straight to Cape Town, South Africa. Now this is going to be absolutely incredible and I am overwhelmed with giddiness about it.

Although Marijn will be working during our three weeks there, it's going to be the best time to travel and experience a new country but will also allow me to really digest the next personal steps for me in life/career especially since it will be the best time for me to redefine what my goals will be. Being unemployed, it will be nice to take a step back and reexamine what I'm looking for and what better place than the backdrop of Cape Town?