Ready to Visit the Ville!

It seems like it's been 2 or 3 months since the Highfields left, but it was only about 5 weeks ago. With the days getting shorter and the weather getting wetter (if not terribly cold), the Lewis family is ready to go home for a much-needed visit. We've been counting down the days for 3 weeks, and Saturday is the day! But that's looking forward, and this blog is (mostly) about looking back. So here goes!

Lucy had a short drama presentation/ play this week, followed by a 3rd grade potluck lunch. During the classroom talk, we got to watch this great video of Lucy's class playing some marimba.

Lilli surprised me at the end of soccer season by declaring that she would like to play basketball. Her football (soccer) coach asked me if she wanted to try out late in the season, but I was doubtful since she has never showed much desire to play unless cousin Serene was around. But Lilli is tall for her age and there aren't an incredible number of girls at the school that play ball, so the coach thought that she would be a good fit for the team.

Tryouts: Despite her old man not teaching her how to play (or, perhaps because of this?), she picked up enough from Collegiate gym class and other sports to be able to compete reasonably well! Lilli has on the red shorts, to the left.

She was picked to travel with the team to the Hague (about an hour from Amsterdam) for her first real game.
Cuts were to be made after this game and a mini-tournament held at our school last weekend.
Lilli is #12, wearing the bright blue shoes, far left.

 Her first basket! She had lots of rebounds as well. Overall a very good game for someone who has had a grand total of 2 practices, and the girls won handily.

After the game, she still had homework to do (we got home at 9:00).

Cuts were announced early this week and she was one of the 12 (out of 18) that made it! She was very happy and excited - and I'm looking forward to spending some time teaching her at home over vacation (in the cradle of basketball that is our home state).


The large "pool" (about 1 ft. deep) in the Museumplein has been converted into a skating rink for the winter. It is not cold enough for it to freeze naturally, so they have refrigeration units running.

The rink is complete with an added restaurant/ skate rental location, a drawbridge (shown), and a zamboni! The Dutch LOVE skating (you may remember their dominance of the olympics) and long for a cold spell of sufficient duration for the canals to freeze. 

The same rink, with the Rijksmuseum in the background.
Some of the smaller kids use the green chairs to stabilize themselves as they are learning.

My girl!

Some very big news - we found a good Mexican place! Similar to Q'Doba (or Chipotle, so people tell me), the Salsa Shop is right around the corner from Holli's office. In fact, her co-worker is the one who told me about it. Lilli and I ventured there on one of her conference days, and we both loved it. So I took all three of them on an in-service day a couple of weeks ago. it was a big hit all around.

Couldn't resist adding this picture. I'm sure Lilli will not be pleased!

Chicken tacos & guacamole!

A little ambiance - right up Lucy's alley!

After lunch, we continued our trip (via bike) to the NEMO (the science center). There's always something interesting to see and do in here, and they all spent some time on this "manufacturing facility." It is complete with operating stations, quality control centers, and live-action sorting to fill orders. Very neat concept (reminds me a great deal of the packaging operations I supported at Rohm and Haas - and may be a bit more sophisticated...)!

Lilli and I had lunch at a cafe on Rembrandtplein on her other conference day (also very close to Holli's office). Our bikes are chained to the streetlight, and she (in the pink jacket) is going to check out the Nights Watch scene in the distance.

A lazy Saturday morning. At one point in time, Lilli's "onesie" had feet in it, and it actually fit!
Anyone looking for a Christmas gift idea, here you go!

Just thought this was a nice picture of Holli. I believe we were on our way to the Winter Fair at the school.

Outside at the Winter Fair, a couple of food trucks (had to take a picture for Martha Walters). The girls are waiting for some miniature dutch pancakes and Holli is getting some soup.

Going shopping.

Eliza was home (sick) a couple of days, so she made a pop-up castle!

Despite the short days and cooler weather, we try to get out and walk or bike on the weekends.
Here, we took Holli to the girls' favorite playground in Rembrandt Park.
The bigger two are up in the climbing ropes while Holli & Eliza are on the see-saw to the left.

Daisy being Daisy.

Holli has had to do some traveling over the last few months, and quite a lot more recently. During one of her several trips to Moscow, she was surprised and amused at their catering choice - she was certain that they had no idea of the company's Louisville origins...

Better Ingredients. Better Pizza.

She did manage to capture a couple of shots of more well-known sites as her taxi drove her around the city.

Holli also has a knack for catching pretty scenes from her window seat (unfortunately she has lots of opportunities).

And some random pretty things from around town:

I believe Holli took this from right in front of our apartment.

The Dutch do a wonderful job of decorating their streets. I don't think it's just a holiday thing - many of the lights have been up for several weeks and are more themed based on the street name than Christmas. The "9" on this block's lights represents the "9-Streets shopping district"

Lilli and I passed this guy on our way home from dropping her sisters off at school one morning (conference day). Kind of hard to tell what's going on from this angle, but you get the idea that the guy driving this rig is pretty comfortable, and watching him you see that he is plenty skillful in handling it!

From a little further back, you can see that he is operating a claw. For exact reasons unknown, he is using the claw to scoop up water and drop it into the barge that he has been pushing down the canal. Any guess what else is in the barge?

Mostly bikes, but various other things as well. Still hard for me to believe that there are that many dead bikes in the canals. It's not like these guys do this once and they're done. They come around periodically and have these kinds of hauls! I saw them in the same spot twice in the same week!

More interesting (to me anyway) public service operations in action. This is one of the plastic recycling containers that dot the cityscape. I'd guess its footprint is about 6' x 8'. Trapdoors open on the bottom to release the contents into the compactor. The analogous ones for paper and glass are about 6' x' 6' but are underground and about 10' deep. I may have posted pics of these before, but I still find them interesting, especially since I really believe that they do recycle this stuff (unlike the mixed-bins at home that we leave by the curb).

Mr. Mom notes

The exercise equipment arrived, and has seen some use. In fact, I have not been back out on my bikes (for exercise) since we got the trainer set up. I must say that I absolutely HATE riding a stationary bike, but I'm glad that we have the option (riding for an hour or two in the cold rain is not much fun either). I've put in over 16 hours of seat time during the last three weeks, generally reading or listening to the "Serial" podcast to pass the time. Beats concentrating on what I'm doing by a long shot, although I can tell that this podcast is going to be a disappointment.

The back of the garage is now fully consumed with exercise gear, plus a chair for Eliza to watch Holli run.

I've now made it through the first four Jack Ryan novels (Patriot Games, Red Rabbit, The Hunt for Red October, and The Cardinal of the Kremlin) and am halfway through Clear and Present Danger. Rabbit was kind of hard to get through - you could tell that it was written much later, and it seemed like Clancy had a bit of an agenda or was trying to prove something with his style. Not nearly as good as the others.

Did not watch much TV until the last week or two. Caught up with Homeland (was not expecting last week's turn of events at all!) and then saw that there was entire season of Ray Donovan that I missed over the summer. Starting to rectify that oversight (2-3 episodes in so far).


So here's another little difference between the US and Amsterdam (all of Europe?)... Clothes dryers. We bought the bullet and purchased replacements for the washer and dryer that came with the apartment. Although the existing units were apparently good (people here love Meile), they were small. Like three bath towels at-a-time MAX small. With the volume of laundry that our family of 5 goes through, two loads per day were required. Throw in the days where we change the bedsheets and the fact that our family apparently can't re-use towels (I still agree with uncle Cle's take on this topic), and we just couldn't keep up. Especially when the loads take at least 90 minutes in each machine.

I picked out Samsungs units that appear very similar to the ones that we bought at home about 2 years ago (which were nearly identical to the ones we bought at Kenilworth - very happy with this brand). The are some peculiarities with the washer, but for the most part it functions about the same as the US model.

The dryer is a different story as becomes immediately obvious on inspection of the faceplate:

This is from the English (U.K.) version of the manual.
Both my manual and my faceplate are in Dutch, so I had to print out a few select pages from one I found online.

For starters, there are several "levels" of dry. I have no idea what the difference is between Cupboard dry and Iron dry, but based on the drying times indicated for each there isn't much. Also note that there are two different options depending on what type of clothes you're working with (cotton vs. synthetics). I guess that some people have the time/ energy/ patience/ ability(?) to segregate along lines of not only color/ lights/ darks but also fabric type. I'm not one of those people.

Judging by the cycle times, cotton garments must just be tumbled with no air going over them in the hopes that the water will magically disappear. After 3 hours in the dryer on any of the 3 cotton settings (not an exaggeration), you could hang your clothes on a clothesline for a while and they may be wearable. Or maybe not... The synthetics cycle generally takes between 60 and 90 minutes to complete depending on what's in there. This is still nearly double the cycle time as our dryer in the US. Why the difference?

Well, first these units are electric. In my experience, gas dryers operate faster - maybe 25%? Gas dryers are not common here (and may not be used at all? Just guessing) in large part due to the age of and configuration of the buildings. You have to run an exhaust port out of the house to get rid of the CO2, otherwise you'd run the risk of poisoning or even killing the house's inhabitants. Existing Dutch construction doesn't easily accommodate running exhaust ports, so they just stay away from gas.

But - you might be thinking - you have to run an exhaust port for an electric dryer too! Otherwise you'd be dumping all of that humid air back into the house, which would cause lots of problems (condensation, mold, hot house in the summer, etc. - not to mention the lint that makes it through the filter). And here's the second difference - this dryer has a built in heat pump and condensing unit. Anyone that has worked in my units at Rohm and Haas or has studied the refrigeration cycle will see something familiar here in my best guess about how the process works:

A compressor "squeezes" a gaseous refrigerant (call it freon for inaccurate simplicity), causing the gas pressure to increase and its temperature to rise. The hot, pressurized gas is sent through tubes in a heat exchanger (condenser), where a stream of air passes across fins attached to the outside of the tubes. The air stream is heated while the hot gas condenses and becomes a liquid. The hot air is then sent to the drying drum where it removes some water from the clothes, thus making the air more humid and somewhat cooler.

The warm, humid air passes through the lint filter and then goes into another heat exchanger where it passes over fins that are cold. Water from the air condenses on the cold fins and drains to a reservoir, from where it is pumped out to a sewer drain. The cooled and dried air is then recycled to the first heat exchanger and the cycle continues until the air leaving the drying drum is dry (according to the analyzer). The cooling in the second heat exchanger (the evaporator) is provided by the liquid "freon" that was condensed in the first heat exchanger. The heat provided by the warm air leaving the dryer causes the freon to boil, which in turn cools the air!

The evaporator, protected by a secondary "absolute" filter that has been removed for cleaning.

To those unfamiliar with these concepts, I'm sure it is a little confusing (I still have to think about it and I'm not 100% sure I described the cycle correctly). To engineers (and other geeks like me), it is an elegant solution that allows a clothes dryer to be easily located any place with an electrical outlet. An accessible sewer drain would eliminate the need to empty the water reservoir, but that is not strictly necessary, nor is any exterior wall opening.
Additional checks in the Plus column:
- There is no duct/ hose to clog up with lint, which creates a very real fire hazard.
- No air is exhausted from the house, so no makeup air is drawn into the house. This results in a very real savings on heating and cooling bills and reduces drafts/ cold spots in the house.

The only compromise I see with the design is that the air used for drying is not conditioned as well. Much like the heat pumps used to heat a house, this one may not provide a great deal of temperature increase, and it likely doesn't get the air as dry as fresh air from the room. Both of these shortcomings contribute to less efficient drying and thus longer cycle times. However, they are MUCH more energy efficient - to the tune of 50% less than traditional designs. And it looks like they are coming to the US!


That's all for now - we are all excited to see many of you over the next few weeks! Can't wait!