Life in Lent, Part 2

In our last post, Stacy described our home and neighborhood (although, try as she did, mere words cannot capture Ian's primal Braveheart-meets-300 yell that he gives as he runs to the other line in the neighborhood games of Red Rover). I wanted to describe a little bit more about the town we live in.

We are loving life in the Netherlands. What's not to love about a place where rides bicycles everywhere, everyone speaks English as a second language, and all of the restaraunts serve pancakes at every meal!

We've been getting into Bike riding-- the family that we are renting from lets us use their bikes. Back home in California, the boys don't ride bikes much since our road is a steep hill. Dom and Ian both have really done a great job learning to ride, although when we ride long distances, Ian rides on Stacy's mega-bike.


Our town, Lent, is a small little town, but it's just a 15-minute bike ride over the River Waal (it's the Rhine) to Nijmegen.
Nijmegen is the oldest city in the Netherlands, with ruins from some Roman settlements dated at 17 A. D.


The city is really beautiful, even though there aren't too many old buildings left-- during World War II, the U. S. Air Force accidentally destroyed about 80% of the old town when they bombed the city, thinking they were bombing a German city of Kleve just over the border. They've forgiven us. In fact, a few days after we arrived, they celebrated the 4 & 5 Mai (the 4th and 5th of May), when they remember the days that the Netherlands were freed from Nazi control in 1944, and they still honor the French, Canadian, and American forces that helped them.

The oldest standing building is the Valkhof, built in 1030 A. D., and it is still used as the location of city festivals.

This has been a great place to live in because people are incredibly friendly. In fact, some of the neighborhood kids are in a local soccer team, and one day when some kids were sick, Dominic and Ian were invited to join for the day to fill in the roster. We didn't win, but the boys had a great time.
We spend time most days tutoring the boys on some school work, now that they're no longer in German schools (and I spend time working on research and writing lectures for next semester), but during these last two months we have had a lot of flexibility to take advantage of cheap train tickets and cheap RyanAir tickets (don't get me started about RyanAir...), visiting places like Florence (staying for a week at the amazing villa of our good friend Elizabeth, hanging out with her and her wonderful dogs Althea and Macchiata),

Paris,

Berlin,

Amsterdam,

Dublin,

and the Lakes District of England.

Well, our year in Europe is just about over. This Friday, we take the train back to Heidelberg so we can spend a bit more time with our friends there. Then, next Monday we fly back home. We have had incredible experiences, but we are all really ready to get back home to our friends and family.