Oops...

Since I seem to have started some kind of confusion among my family I thought I might add a little correction notice. I started this log waaaayyy back in August last year and thought that the title "Another Year in Europe" would be great since I had all kinds of intentions to keep everyone updated regularly. I clearly don't know myself very well since this was obviously a goal that fell rather short of the intended target... But the title still stood and no, another year has not been put on my agenda as yet. I'm truly a bit uncertain as to exactly what I'm going to be doing after I finish my thesis and graduate...

On to more interesting bits- my brother Kyle is coming to visit! In May for a week. Its a pretty short visit, but hey company from home is always welcome. I like playing tour guide and showing people around Leiden. Its a remarkably interesting little town even though it's pretty tiny. But I should clarify that. Officially Leiden has over 100 000 citizens, but I honestly couldn't tell you where most of these people actually are... You can walk across the centrum area in less than 15 minutes. The Dutch are highly skilled at cramming people into small areas and utilizing every possible inch of space. The Randstad (the area between Utrecht, Amsterdam and Rotterdam, wherein Leiden is situated almost dead centre) is one of the most densely populated areas in Europe. The Netherlands actually is the most densely populated country in Europe for that matter (if you need numbers, the pop. density of NL is somewhere around 130 people per sq km while Canada's density is just below 3 people in the same area). So needless to say, you get used to living in strangely close proximity to a large number of complete strangers.

Well, enough demographics. Hopefully I can figure out how to load pictures on this thing soon or on some other similar site- I have loads! Dave had a football game in Lelystad last Sunday so we drove there on Saturday and stayed overnight. There are some interesting things about Lelystad, like that its the capital of the newest province in the Netherlands. And I don't mean that its "new-just-joined-the-confederation" kind of thing. The province was actually dredged out of the sea since the Dutch decided that they needed more space (see above for why). So they created a giant area of farmland and built a couple small cities and bingo! New province! There were some interesting things to see (a replica 17th century galleon: the "Batavia", the sea highway connecting the provinces of North Holland to Flevoland, and a giant outlet mall in true "American" style) and hopefully I'll be able to post some pics.

Its also Dave's birthday (30!) this weekend so hopefully we'll be going into Amsterdam on Friday night with friends for... well, you know... I may have some good stories next week! Happy Easter everyone!