I'll go to a Spanish language course tonight!

Sasha found an adult education program in Clarendon that offers a variety of courses, including foreign languages. She signed up to continue her French study, and I will start at "Beginners II" for Spanish.

I've been doing some self-study of the last six months, but my experiences with the German course that I followed in 2004 were really good -- I like to have some structure around my studying.

Sunday evening we went to see Munich, a new movie by Steven Spielberg.

The film is about the terrorist attacks on the Olympic Games of 1972 and of the aftermath of these attacks. It describes how Israeli agents hunt down the terrorist who were responsible for the brutalities in Munich.

The movie is long and tense, with a lot of violence, and the sad thing is that is based on the real tragedy of what happened.

On a lighter note: a small eposide is played in the Netherlands, on a houseboot (woonboot) near Hoorn, a Dutch city.

A nice sight -- Grolsch is on sale in Wholefoods.

I know I've posted quite some pictures of this beer before, but it's just nice to see it.

Last weekend I cancelled the subscription I had on the New York Times.

We had a Sunday subscription since the summer, but I felt it a bit of a waste -- too often I just didn't have the time to read it.

There is always so much else to read, and so little time. Currently I'm reading a left-wing history book, and in addition there is The Economist every week, online newspapers articles and I have to keep up with my Spanish. There's a number of books I have at home that I want to read, including a Dutch book my parents sent me for Christmas.

Today, Sunday January 8th, is the 'birthday' of the newspaper in Haarlem: the Haarlems Dagblad exists 350 years.

The last Sunday edition of the Times that we received.

Yesterday afternoon we were in Georgetown and we had a late lunch there. We saw the first quarter of the Redskins game during our lunch.

Later I went to the Rhino Bar & Pumphouse, a student sportsbar to see the rest of the game. The Redskins were playing their first play-off game in several years against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (Florida) after beating the Philadelphia Eagles last week. Winning the play-offs of course, will lead to the Super Bowl, the most important match in professional football.

I haven't seen many American footballs games yet, but it's a very pleasant game to watch, with a lot of exciting moments. I like it much better than baseball (too slow) or basketball (too fast); it's a pleasantly spectacular game.

To be honest I didn't think the Redskins played extremely well -- the Buccaneers had the ball much more often, and made much more yards than the 120 yards of the Redskin team(an indication of how much power a team has in a match). However, the defense of the Redskins turned out to be very solid, and after coming ahead with 17 to 3 at half-time, the Redskins managed to keep there Buccaneers at bay.

At one point the Buccaneers seemed to have made a touchdown, which would have brought the score to 17 to 17, but the officials ruled that Shepherd, the Buccaneer player, had lost control of the ball just before he came down, and thus the final score stayed 17 to 10. This caused quite some heart pain for the few Buccaneer fans in the bar, but the majority of the people watching were locals supporting the D.C. team that thus celebrated its first post-season victory in years.

Most public places took away their Christmas decoration even before New Year's Eve. The holidays are over, and we're back at work.

Last night I went to CVS to get some stuff, and discovered that the shop was actually prepared for yet another holiday, Valentine's Day. Starbucks also has the Valentine decorations ready. It's about six weeks from now, so they're well on time.

In the left lower corner you can see some Christmas packing paper rolls.

Monday morning we watched the traditional New Year's Rose Parade in Pasadena, California on TV. It was the first time since 1955 that it was raining during the 117 year old parade, we were told. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was the Grand Marshall of the parade and she was driving through the crowds and waving to everybody.

When I looked at the living room table that we had prepared for the New Year's Eve dinner, I saw some nice symbolism in the Bulgarian salt-and-pepper set sitting next to the Dutch tulips.

After some research I found two other sets of items in our house that symbolize a combination of Bulgaria and Holland.

Dutch tulips and Bulgarian table set.

Asenovgrad Mavrud and Grolsch beer.

Two cups: one from the Netherlands and one from Bulgaria.

The livingroom of my parent's house in Middenmeer is being renovated.

Ettie and Jaap are taking out the wood on one of the walls, to replace it with a new, white wall.

More pictures on Jaap's blog.

Sunday morning we slept in, of course, and we took it easy all day. In the late afternoon we went to AMC theater next door, to see The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

This movie, based on books by C.S. Lewis, resembled Harry Potter and Alice in Wonderland, with a little bit of the Lord of the Rings as well. It was a good movie, pleasant to watch and with a good, if slightly predictable story-line.

The special effects were excellent and they were blended very well into the story: no effects for the effects, but genuinely adding value to the story. The computer generated characters such as the Witch' general or the beavers on Aznar's side, were real characters, with real personalities. The beavers by the way are amazingly funny characters -- constantly bickering and arguing, and their facial expressions are very vivid.

After the movie we went to Summers where we saw the Redskins, the Washington football team, win an important final game of the season against the Philadelphia Eagles, This means that they will meet the Tampa Buccaneers next Saturday in the playoffs.