Posts from ‘May, 2009’

In the Netherlands, like pretty much everywhere else, some people have children.
And other people want to have children, but can’t.
So there are fertility clinics, sperm donor clinics, egg donor clinics, and so on.
The trouble is,  not a lot of Dutch men want to donate their sperm.
Why? It has to do with the kids. See, here [...]

Guest blogger Graham Jackson tells us what it’s like as a foreigner in the Netherlands preparing for the arrival of a new baby.
My Dutch partner and I are awaiting the imminent arrival of our first child.  It is an incredibly exhilarating time in our lives. Now that we have everything ready, there is also sufficient [...]

This week on Curious Orange (the radio show)…
The Dutch need donors… sperm donors, that is. But Nederlanders aren’t exactly lining up to do their fatherly duty… and we’ll tell you why.
We’ll also take you to the Amsterdam Hilton, where, 40 years ago, John and Yoko held their bed-in for peace.
And we’ll tour a 250-year-old Dutch [...]

Ok, when I add this to my canal-muck-dredging video, I know you’ll all think I’m a garbage-gunk-grossness junkie… but today I saw old bicycles being hauled out of one of the canals in Amsterdam… and it was so cool I just had to take some pictures!
Enjoy!
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Last but certainly not least… the winner of the Quadricentennial essay contest for the senior division was Eva Fu-Yun Fan, a student at Townsend Harris High School, in New York, NY. (Read more about the state-wide contest - and why it’s Dutch related - here.)
Listen to my conversation with Eva here… and read her essay [...]

The essay contest winner for the junior division was Callie Kanim, a student at the Good Counsel Academy in White Plains, NY. (For more about the contest itself, read this previous blog entry.)
Click here to listen to our interview with Callie.
Here is a photo of Callie (on her way to school) and you can read [...]

This year marks the 400th anniversary of the founding of New Amsterdam in what is current-day New York.
Of course, there are all sort of festivities in NY and the Netherlands to celebrate the occasion… one of which has been an essay contest for students in New York State. The assignment was to “explore the New [...]

Timo Smeehuijzen - May 24, 1987 - June 15, 2007
There are no words to fully express what the Smeehuijzen family has gone through since 2007, when their son Timo was killed in a suicide bombing in Afghanistan.
The bomb went off as a Dutch convoy headed back to base after celebrating Women’s Day in Tarin Kowt. [...]

One of the things that Michel and I kinda obsessed over while we were in Afghanistan was the idea of a job where the stakes could include death - either yours or someone else’s (a kill-or-be-killed kinda thing).
We couldn’t imagine ourselves in this situation and relentlessly questioned any soldier who’d had a life-or-death experience.
What we [...]

I’m a little late on this since it happened right when I got back from Afghanistan… but I thought it was too funny not to post.
Apparently, a new yellow tulip has been cultivated here in Holland and was recently showcased at the world-renowned Keukenhof gardens.

So what’s the big deal?
It was named after SpongeBob SquarePants - [...]