The rain in Holland falls mainly on the plane ....

It feels like home, when it rains in Holland. We finally have arrived. It's Sunday morning and just finished talking to my wife over Skype. Megan has been talking over Skype to her boyfriend all night, and finally went to sleep around 7am.

Funny, when people use IM it's ok to be multi-tasking, answering once in a while, while you're reading e-mail or doing something else on your computer, like writing in your Blog. But, it is different when you're on Skype talking to each other. Then, multi-tasking becomes a problem. The other person is saying something, while your mind is doing something else and you don't hear the whole sentence. You say "what?" too many times and the person on the other end becomes annoyed with you, because you're seemingly not paying attention to what they are saying.

Today is our second day in Rotterdam. Megan and I arrived yesterday afternoon around 3pm. It was quite a trip. When I woke up Friday morning at 7am in California I immediately looked at the Continental website to see if our flight at 11:45am was delayed. And, yes, of course, it was. It was already delayed till 12:38pm, arriving in Houston at 6:30pm, while our flight to Amsterdam was still leaving on time at 7:10pm. I panicked, because 40 mins to change planes with the huge possibility that it would land even later, I was certain we would miss our connection in Houston for a second time. I immediately called Continental. All other earlier flights from the Bay Area to Houston (SFO, Oakland, San Jose) were booked solid. Get to the airport to go on standby on an earlier flight was the advice. So, we hurried and left the house by 8:45am. In the end, we didn't get on an earlier flight and we left SFO at 12:38pm exactly. I had learned that our A'dam flight would leave two gates down from our arrival gate, so if things would work according to plan, we would arrive just in time to get on to the next flight. Iff, that is "if and only if."

Around 5:45pm local Houston time, the captain came on the intercom; "Ladies and gentlemen, we were just told by the Houston tower that we need to go into a holding pattern around Houston, and we will be landing around 6:45pm. Sit back, relax, and we will be on the ground shortly." What? I gasped. Sit back and relax? Are you kidding me? These [bleep] [bleep] are going to make us miss our flight again, and we will be stuck the entire night in Houston. Crap!! I knew it, this is going to be the trip from hell. Somehow, I relaxed. Where I would have freaked out when I was younger, at middle age I am able to take things more as they come. Oh well, whatever. If we miss it, we'll just get a hotel and stay the night. No biggie.

This seemed to have saved us, although, I don't believe in these things. We landed at 6:40pm and were at the gate around 6:50pm. We got out and ran to the next gate, where to my surprise our Amsterdam flight was delayed until 7:38pm. Excellent, even time to get a coffee at Starbucks!! From then on things went smoothly. I got on the plane using my brand spanking new US passport, and Megan got into Holland with her brand spanking new Dutch passport. How fortunate we are. The immediate benefit of having dual citizenship is the fact that you can use the shortest and fastest lanes at immigration at all times. When arriving in Europe, we can take the "European Union citizens" line, and when we arrive back in the U.S. of A. we can take the US. Citizenship line. Eventhough we had landed about an hour late, we were at the train station in Schiphol in less than 30 minutes after landing. Now, just buy a train ticket to Rotterdam, call my sister to let her know we are on our way, and hop on the train.

"The next train to Rotterdam is in three minutes from platform 6!!" "What? Megan, run, while I call aunt Elisabeth." I knew taking my tent, sleeping bags, mattresses, etc, etc, was going to be a pain taking the train, and indeed I was huffing and puffing dragging my big duffel bag, my backpack and my always too heavy computer bag across the platform. Toot toot, huf, puf, tschh ... there went the Rotterdam train, right before our noses. For God sake, planes and trains are always late, but of course, not at this moment. Away it went. Next train, 30 minutes later.

We arrived in Rotterdam, got to Elisabeth's and had a wonderful dinner together with Oma (my mother), uncle Belly (my brother Jan) and prima Elijah (Jan's son), who had arrived from Curacao the day before, and aunt Elisabeth. A nice family Sierhuis gathering in rainy Rotterdam. It's not very often that this group of people is together for dinner. It's something special for us. Well worth the long trip from sunny California. After dinner, around 11pm local time, Megan was ready to go to the local Dutch kroeg (pub) around the corner. A typical Dutch Saturday night event. For Megan her first time sitting at a bar with a drink, without it being illegal. What a great feeling for both her and me. It will probably sound silly to anyone reading this, but I felt content and a sense of pride sitting with my eighteen-year old daughter at the bar in Rotterdam, the city she was born in eighteen years ago, drinking a beer. Back to our roots. Nice!!!