We received the first mail on our new address this week.

Ettie and Gerben were the first this time with a nice card for the house and jobs.

On Wednesday I made a round-trip to North Carolina to pick up our house plants.

I left DC at 8.30 am and just after lunch I dropped off my laptop at my old work. It was nice to say hello there, and we had coffee together. Then I drove to Esteban's house in Durham; it was great to catch up. Our plants had stayed there for a week (thank you guys!).

Around 4.00 pm I left again, with the car full of our plants. There were eight plants in total, three small ones and five large. They filled the entire car and I couldn't use the rear view mirror on the way home.

The plants survived the four hour journey pretty well, except for a few branches that were exposed to the sun at the rear window and got too hot and burned. The last two hours I put the air conditioning very cold, and I think that helped.

The plants are now in our home again, and they cheer up the apartment.

The car in the garage of our apartment building. It took twice with this cart to carry the plants into the apartment.

Yesterday I took care of the car registration and got my DC driver's license.

To get the car registered in the District it has to go through an inspection. There's only one inspection station in the city and I've read stories about people waiting in line for a long time, but since I went during working hours it went smoothly.

Fromt the inspectation station I went to the Department of Motor Vehicles in Georgetown, and took care of the paperwork. It was more busy there; I waited a hour or so. Initially I received a license made out to "Guustaff" and fixing that took a while too, but now I'm the happy owner of a DC driving license, a car registration and Zone 2 parking permit, which allows me to park unlimited on the street anywhere in the District.

The only thing remaining now is to install the license plate in front of the car. In DC you're required to have a plate both in front and on the back, but our car doesn't have a mount in front so I'll get that installed today.

Dutch is a full-color glossy magazine about the Netherlands, the Dutch, and the Dutch in North-America.

The first edition of this new English-language magazine just came of the press this week. We spoke with Tom Bijvoet, the publisher.

"You can compare it to the glossies in stores about Italy, France or the United Kingdom", says Tom. “We target everybody with an interest in the Netherlands, and especially North-Americans with a Dutch background."

The magazine will be published every other month. The current edition has 2,500 copies, the goal is 5,000 at the end of the first year. "There's a large potential market", says Tom, "there are some 5 million North-Americans of Dutch ancestry".

Looking at the Netherlands with a North-American view

Tom describes the content of the first edition, which consists of 48 pages. "First, there are the letters to the editor, followed by short news articles. These are Dutch news items that are of interest, such as the new 'Floating Dutchman Bus' at Schiphol Airport. We have several feature articles, for example an article on the surveillance culture in the Netherlands. We tend to look at the Netherlands with a North-American view, and the large number of cameras on the highways, and in the inner cities is remarkable."

There is an article about the history of the Dutch-language press in North-America. Tom: "There used to be several dozen Dutch-language newspapers in the United States and Canada, some of which stayed in existence for a long time". Other items include articles on immigration, genealogy, travel to the Netherlands, the Dutch language, and a 'Dutch judge' comic strip. Tom: "We try to stay away from stereotypes: we're not about tulips and windmills. On the other hand, if there are interesting developments about water management in Holland, we will certainly write about them."

Target audience

The magazine targets everyone with in interest in the Netherlands and the Dutch. It is particularly aiming at the children of Dutch immigrants in North America. Tom: "Dutch immigrants tend to 'Americanize' very quickly, and the next generation usually doesn't speak Dutch very well. But they know the language a little bit and would have liked to know more about their roots".

Tom is also the publisher of De Krant, a large Dutch-language paper, but there are significant differences between the two publications. "De Krant is a Dutch-language magazine. A large part of its audience consists of immigrants who came to Canada and the US in the 1950s. The numbers of the target demographic of the newspaper are declining, which is one of the reasons we decided to start with Dutch. There are simply not that many Dutch-language immigrants coming the North-America anymore, and we don't want to mix Dutch and English in De Krant. We did a one-time special last year in English for De Krant, about World War II, which was a dry-run to see how an English-language publication would be received. "

The authors of Dutch live in the United States and Canada, and one of the columnists is an Englishman who lives in the Netherlands. Of note is the Dutch recipe column, by Nicole Holten, who translates her online success into a print publication.

A Dutch immigrant in Canada

Tom arrived in Canada in 1999 with his wife and 1-year old daughter. They had been on vacation in Canada, fell in love with the country and decided to immigrate to Canada. Now they have four children, and are living in Penticton, British Columbia.

"After our immigration, I came across De Krant, and started writing columns for it. Four years ago, I got the opportunity to take over the newspaper, so I started a publishing business for magazines and several books, with publications about World War II".

Dutch is now available through the publisher, annual subscription fee is $39.50.

Dutch
Mokeham Publishing Inc.
250 492-3002
http://www.dutchthemag.com/
info@dutchthemag.com

Today Sasha started at her new job in downtown DC.

Myself, I have a week of free time. My work at Raritan is over, and I won't start my next job until next week, so through Labor Day I have no work commitments.

Today was a very fruitful day. I organized a lot of our paperwork and worked a little on my hobby website. I also got a library card for the Washington DC public library, an important part of making a city my home.

In the evening we went for a walk together. We're about 10 minutes walking from the National Mall, which is really cool, and we walked from the Lincoln Memorial along the Reflecting Pool to the World War II Memorial. The Pool is under construction, so it was rather dark, but the Mall is a great place for an evening walk.

Thankfully hurricane Irene did not have the major impact that was feared for. To be honest we didn't really notice much, except for drizzling rain all day and strong winds in the evening.

Today was a beautiful and sunny day and we went for a walk. It's pretty cool that we can walk to the National Mall so easily. We visited the new Marten Luther King Memorial. It was busy; originally President Obama was scheduled to dedicate the monument today but that was postponed due to the hurricane. There were a lot of out-of-town visitors at the monument who had planned to see the opening today.

Hurricane Irene is on its way from North Carolina to the northern part of the United States. It is not assumed to hit Washington, DC directly and has lost a lot of its strength, but high water and strong winds could cause a lot of damage.

When DC was impacted by hurricane Isabel eight years ago, many homes were without power for several days. Just in case that happens again, we have bought some extra water, candles and food that doesn't have to stay refrigerated. All loose items have been removed from the balconies and patios in our apartment building, to prevent things from blowing away. The storm is supposed to be here between 8 pm and midnight.

Yesterday evening we went to Mackey's bar, where there was a Friday evening social with the DC Dutch club. It was a nice group of people, and since the weather was good we were sitting outside. There were even real bitterballen.

This morning I went for my first run since we arrived in DC. I passed the White House, the Washington Monument and many other famous sights. It was drizzling a little bit, but no heavy wind yet.

The apartment complex getting storm proofed yesteday.