Saturday we went to a shopping mall near the Pentagon, "Pentagon City". These malls are a real American phenomenon: a mall is a very large shopping center with many shops in one big building. Most of them are outside the city, and reachable only by car. We have been to this one here a few times to get our new things for the house, because it's well reachable by metro. The "Arena Boulevard" in Amsterdam is perhaps comparable to this type of malls.

In the mall we saw Santa Claus. He is there all day for children to have their picture taken with him.

I've prepared this story and pictures at home; I didn't have time to go downstairs and upload them yesterday. We didn't order internet yet. Not that that's so terribly complicated but we want to have the best deal possible, and a combination package with cable-TV seems now the best way to go.

The last picture is of a small shopping district near our house. In the background you can see the lighted logo of Barnes & Nobles, a bookstore.

At my work many people use AOL Messenger (or "AIM") to communicate with colleagues in other offices.

This weekend someone told me that she couldn't sent me any messages anymore, and when I came in the office I experienced the same: my account seems to have been blocked by AOL. I have really no idea what could have caused it, and it's rather annoying. I'd rather not create a new account and have to add my name to everybody's buddy list again so I'm trying to contact AOL but that's not been very succesful so far.

For now: my MSN Messenger account is guusbosman@hotmail.com.

Today it is Sinterklaas in the Netherlands. This is probably the family celebration that I will miss the most of all the holidays. I have great memories of the Sinterklaas party: the presents, the poems etc, but most of all the great atmosphere with my closest family. Jaap and Mieke are now in Leeuwarden where they'll celebrate with Ettie and Gerben. Sinterklaas visited the United States yesterday, he was at the Dutch embassy in Washington D.C.

Here the preparations for Christmas are going on everywhere. Yesterday we went to a shopping mall where they had a huge Christmas tree with Santa Claus under it, for the children of course.

When we moved, now two weeks ago, it was a very busy time so I didn't have time to put all the pictures of the moving online earlier. I have placed a number of pictures online of the weekend when we moved from Rosa's place to our current apartment.

Yesterday evening we went to Pentagon City again, a mall nearby (a mall is basically a large shopping center). This time, we didn't have to get a lot of things. We took some small stuff for in the bathroom and the kitchen, like a rack for dishes, and we had dinner in a Californian pizza place there.

Yesterday afternoon I went for a drink with two colleagues, that was very nice.

Every morning when I walk to work I pass by a firebrigade building.

This morning the firebrigade crew was preparing their trucks for Christmas with decorations. They were very friendly, and they allowed me to take some pictures.

Today Prince Bernhard died at the age of 93. He was the father of our current Queen, Queen Beatrix.

Three people sent me a message over MSN to tell me that he died, almost at the same time. Internet is a good way to stay update on the daily news in the Netherlands; I read Nu.nl everyday for example, and sometimes background articles in Trouw or NRC, Dutch newspapers.

Saturday evening we went to the movies. We saw "National Treasure", an action movie in a James Bond/Indiana Jones style. Honestly speaking the movie wasn't very good, and I guess it was made for a much younger audience, but we had a very nice evening. It was fun to go out and relax. What I also liked was that so many famous places in the States played a role in the movie, such as the US National Archive.

Afterwards we went to Summer's, a bar in our neighbourhood, where we ate and had a few drinks.

Sunday we spent the afternoon in Georgetown, a nice neighbourhood across the river from Arlington. We had lunch in a place which claimed that many presidents had patronized it. It was a very cozy place and the food was good.

Yesterday I went for fitness in our building for the first time. It wasn't very busy in the fitness room, which is located on the highest floor and has a great view. It had been a while since I ran a longer distance, and I could feel that running took me more effort than it used to do. I guess that's a matter of exercise. I'll also have to find a program that suits my style of running -- there's quite a difference between running a real track and running on the treadmills we have up there.

I've developed a cold over the last days, nothing too bad but a bit annoying.

In today's Washington Post there are two large articles about the Netherlands. The first one, on the frontpage, is a background story on the murderer of Theo van Gogh. It describes how this guy radicalized over time into a fanatic terrorist. At first I didn't recognize the name of the murderer, Mohammed Bouyeri, because in most Dutch newspapers his names is depicted as "Mohammed B.".

The other article deals with an experiment by the Dutch government to distribute cannabis through pharmacies for people with certain (terminal) illnesses. The experiment is not as succesful as was expected, mainly because the price of cannabis in the pharmacies is almost double the price in "coffee shops", where cannabis is sold for recreational use.

The Washington Post newspaper is published every day of the week. Just like the Dutch newspaper's Saturday editions, the Post's Sunday edition is extra large. Actually, we bought today's (Sunday's) edition yesterday, on Saturday -- there is an "early Sunday edition" available that obviously does not contain the news up to Sunday, but does come with the extra parts that are pre-produced anyway. It's great to have such a huge paper in the weekend.

Today we are taking it very easy, and that feels great. I'm having a really good time here, and the last weeks have been very nice, but it has also been quite tiring. We didn't really have free time last weekend since we just had to go out and get some basic furniture: it's not very convenient to live in a completely empty apartment. But after a relaxing Friday evening it's now weekend, and our house is at least partly furnitured. We had breakfast together, the way we were used to in Haarlem, and then we went out. Not for large shopping, but just for fun.

In the morning I opened a bank account. Friday I received my first salary, and because I didn't have a bank account yet, I received a physical pay check. Checks here are in general much more common then in Holland. By the way, my salary is paid every two weeks instead of each month, something that is quite normal here (Sasha's employer for example also does that). Anyway, we walked to a bank near our house that I wanted to work with.

It's been fun to choose a bank, and my choice is Rigg's bank. This is actually a local bank: they have only branches in Washington D.C. and the cities around it, not in the whole U.S. However, they have quite a lot of ATMs here, and (important), they have branches nearby my work and our house. They're also used to dealing with international financial transactions. It is important that a bank has a lot of ATMs around, because if you use an ATM of another bank, there are extra transaction charges that are at least $2,00.

Opening the new account took a while, as the lady that helped me was not very experienced. But we were not in a hurry and she was very friendly. I opened both a checking account and a savings account (spaarrekening), the latter giving interest. As long as you keep enough money in the account, the accounts are free. Sometime in the next few days my paycheck will be "cleared", and then I can start using the temporary ATM card that I received.

We went for coffee afterwards, and then we walked around in the neighbourhood. It's great to be just together and have time to walk around etc. We had lunch at home.

I also like it that today I have time to update my website. It's now 17:00 o'clock here, and I am writing this article on the PC in our apartment. However, we don't have internet here yet, so I'll put the text and pictures on a disk in a while and upload them downstairs in our building's "business center", basically a free internet cafe.

Wednesday we received our first mail: a card from my parents. The next day we received a card from Ettie and Gerben.

Thanks from both of us!