As the World Turns

You should just see the list of blog entries I meant to write over the last month. But the world has been turning too quickly for me to keep up.

After our Morocco vacation, I made an emergency trip home to Portland for another week (thank god for the 10-hour nonstop flight between Amsterdam and PDX: it's like magic!). Then, two days later, we were off to Rome for a long weekend. And there, on the steps of Trevi fountain, Jeff and I got engaged.

The engagement came, more or less, on our six-month anniversary in Europe. So I deem it a suitable time to catch everyone up on our other major "accomplishments" while here:

• After five months of bureaucratic mazes, never-ending paperwork and much anxiety, Jeff got his Dutch residency permit. I am very proud of Jeff, and very grateful to the cosmos. Seriously, just try googling "Dutch-American Friendship Treaty" and you'll see how little we had to go on.
• Jeff has also launched his first Android app. This is particularly impressive when you consider that Jeff taught himself the Android programming language from scratch this winter.
• Somehow, without much effort on my part, I turned 30. That makes me officially an adult.
• I learned to ride a bike again.
• And as for traveling, I have made it to 14 new World Heritage Sites. That just leaves some 865 or so to go.

But back to that list of nascent blog posts: I would still very much like to share them all, but spring in Holland is ever so distracting. So they might be a little out of chronological order, and come in fits and starts, but I will do the best I can - and I hope you enjoy them.