Oct 26, 20207 min read

Seventh week

Hi everyone, I'm back!

I’m so happy now I write this blog! I’m sorry, I already know that this blog will be long. My weekend was so great! The weekend makes my week good again. This week was a little hard to be hones, physical and mental. I notes that the kids are harder to handel with and I notes that my body is tired. The first couple of weeks everything is new and you have a lot of energie to go to the weeks, but now you really know that you will get tired from it. But it is not bad! I still did so many fun things!!

Sport

I tried again to find a sport to play. The first week I arrived I searched for a sport to do in the area, but because of covid and that a lot of sports are sports that you play in school it was hard for me to find something. So I tried again and better to find something and I found some cool things! I was searching for some gyms in my area and I found 2! Onelife is a gym that is new new, it will open in January with a swimming pool and many different classes. Or I found Gold's gym, a cheaper gym that is in Olney for a long time already. I got a free pass for 3 days at the Gold's gym so next week I’m going there with a girl I have met on Facebook. She is a member at the Gold's gym so I will work out with her next week. So next week you will found out how it went.

I also found some other sports, like swimming, volleyball and dance. But I couldn't found that much of that and most of them are closed or online. I really would like to do a different sport, I played volleyball my hole life and I’m really interested in other sports to. I thought this will be the perfect opportunity to try and found new sports to play. I send a email to a volleyball club with some questions about the club and if I can join them.

Leah has announced her own company!! I’m so happy and excited for her! It is so cool to see how she is busy to start her on business and to see how people react on her announcement. She want to open in January and she is now busy with everything for the building. She is starting a running studio. It is like a gym but all focust on running. She has classes, treadmills, weights and recovery sessions. https://andrunning.com

I told her about that I was looking for a sport or gym to go to and she helped me with finding some things or asking others for suggestions for me. It was so sweet of her to help me! She send me some gyms or other sport things in the area and shared her experience about the Gold's gym, because she went there before covid. She also offered that I could use her gym and follow some lessons at here studio if there were spots left. :) I’m so happy!!

I went for a run!! Yes you read it right! I run. I never run, I never liked running, but last time I went with Leah to her and her friends work out where they run a lot. I kinda liked it so I was thinking about running on my own and I did. I went for a run with a workout audio on the app: Peloton. It was a 20 minutes run with a warming up and during the run you had some intervals, you had to run fast for 1 minute and then you had to jog for 45 seconds. I really liked using the audio for running, because then it is not only running. During the run I had blisters... I hate blisters... So for my next run I need sport socks. I don't know if I did a good job with my run, if I was fast or if it was a long run, but I’m really proud of myself and I did it!! Some times I walked a little, but yeah haha that is fine. For the ones who are interested in how, where and what I run I will leave the link here: https://members.onepeloton.com/profile/workouts/f1b89fd8e9494976b612f1183810092a?utm_source=ios_app&utm_medium=in_app&locale=en-US

Kids

This week we did some fun things again and all in the theme of Halloween! At first I had my first Halloween party! Haha not a real one, the kids made a Halloween party in the basement. They prepared different kinds of fake food and after the food was ready we dressed up a little.

We have baked Halloween cookies! It took a long time to bake them, but it was stil fun! And the most important, they were good!! We decorated the cookies with frosting and make them into Halloween cookies. I made some banana pancakes again, we have swept up the leaves into a big pile where the kids played in and the kids gave there stuffed animale dogs a bath. Also 1 of the pumpkins went bad and it was disgusting to clean it. So for the couple of days we stayed in the smell of the rotting pumpkin on the front porch.

Friends

I saw some friends of mine this week and I also have met a new girl! Tuesday evening I went to the Colombia Mall to meet Larissa, a Dutch au pair that I met on Instagram. I had contact with her before we both were in the US, she arrived a week later than me. It was fun and of course nice to talk in your own language again. Friday night I been to Larissas place, a German girl in my LCC group. We made s'mores in her backyard at the campfire. It was a great night and nice to see her again. :) The other nights I stayed home with Leah and Ryan and we watched something on tv and talked.

Weekend

My weekend was great! I was with Sharon and Salsa the hole weekend (both au pairs in my LCC group, from Sharon you have heart before and Salsabi is the girl I went to Philadelphia with). We went to Shenandoah National Park on Saturday. And I will tell you: It is BEAUTIFUL out there! I was so happy when I was there, it was indescribable how happy I was. At first I thought that Shenandoah was a park like the great falls from last weekend. That you had a parking spot where you park the car and then walk through the park, but this park is so big and it is made for cars. You could drive to some lookouts or hike trails and park the car over there, but most of the time we spend in the car. We entered the park in the North and then drove South, but we only made it until the middle of the park. We went to the highest point that you could come by car! There were many trials you could go for a hike, but we did only 1. There was a hike that is 9 miles long to go to the highest point of the mountain, but because this trail is so long we didn't had enough time to do that one. So if it is op to me I really want to go back and go for the long hike to the top of the mountain! We went to different look outs and took way to much pictures haha. We drove to the National Park like we were on a road trip, we had our windos open, great happy music playing and just enjoyed looking outside.

At 5pm we drove back home, it was really busy to get to the exit, but that is part of the tourist spots. We went to a diner, YESS a real American diner that you always see in movies! It was so cool and the food was great. We also got a milkshake, of course! Going to a diner and not ordering a milkshake is not a match. When I was back home Leah and Ryan were telling me that were we live is the perfect place, because in a 2 hours drive you are in the mountains or if you drive to the order side you are at the beach. Also there are a lot of big cities in the area to go to. This area were we live is perfect, I really do love Maryland!

This day was so great, from a National Park until a diner! A typical American day. I’m excited about tomorrow!

It is Sunday!! Yaaayy we went again with the three of us, but today to DC. Salsa never been to DC before so we had plannend to show her around, but it was a rainy day... Sharon picket me up at 1pm and we both drove to the metro station, we went to DC by metro. We sat in the metro for like a hour until we were in DC. Also it was really cheap to take the metro, we parket the car at Shandy Grove (in the weekends you can park there for free, during the week you pay around $5) and took the metro from there. It was really quiet in the metro, there weren't that much people taking the metro. Sharon told me that before covid it was really busy and you had to stand up in the metro, so normally it wasn't that quiet. I payed $2 for the metro card and $6 for the metro back and fort to Metro Center (DC). The only clumsy thing about the metro card is that you can only use it in DC area, not in hole America or different cities. But I still like it because I think I will go by metro to DC more often.

Sharon got us tickets for the Smithsonian American Art Museum, were we went at 4pm. Before we went to the museum we got something to drink to warm ourselves up, because it was cold outside today. The metro wasn't that special, but I still liked it and it was nice. The museum was so big! It was beautiful, some parts of the museum I thought was less interesting then other parts, but still beautiful. We saw portraits, paintings from landscapes and other different things. Also there was the famous map of America in let lights with televisions. After the museum we went to China Town, a neighborhood in DC. We had diner there and enjoyed our day. After diner we went back to the metro station and took the metro back home.