Hi all!
This is my (Frans) first contribution to this blog and to keep the mums in touch of our adventures on the North-American continent. My story starts at 6 o'clock in the morning in Zeist, as we started our journey to Dusseldorf airport. After an emotional goodbye with Jasper, which as I discovered later was on the same plane, and the ladies I boarded the plane to Chicago. Nine hours later we found ourself on the beautiful (sarcastic) airport at which we participated in a six hour doing-nothing contest before we took the plane to Edmonton. During the journey across the oceans, many emotions were awakened, such as extreme joy (expressed by singing beatle songs), extreme grumpiness (especially seen at the US customs guy) and extreme boredom. The definite highlight were the four Germans on the plane who had a sleep and bailey-drink mode, which alternated every hour.
At the airport of Edmonton, a silent arrival-hall appeared to our tired eyes. But suddenly the music swelled up slowly, from a distance a bright white light increased in size as it came closer, the violins exploded into a heroic climax!!... And as beautiful as ever, Sander 'notorious Oos' Osinga appeared to us, an aura glowing around him. We ran toward him and gave him the mother of all hugs.
Sander, accompanied by his side-kick Kaylee, brought us to Hope's house. After a beer and a lot of talking and babbling, we went to bed after a 28 hour long workday. Both me and Jasper experienced some jetlagging as we had 4 hours of sleep before we woke up again and started with the new day. Sander picked us up with our van, 'the hoff', and we went to the university, where we met prof. Rick and the lab crew. After a good old fashioned poutine (fries, gravy and cheese, kinda like a kapsalon) we went shopping at bonny doon (the mall near Hope's place) and experienced all the wonders of capitalism such as cheap shoes for Jasper (photo's will follow). So far this day and this story.
Superbye!
