No cash November

We made it through no cash, no income November! It was a month full of cheap-to-free clean fun. Including: more (free) yoga classes; a weekend away to Martijn's mum's place; window shopping; skipping end-of-the-week drinks; walking in nature reserves and getting into the autum spirit by throwing leaves on yourself (good for the fun:money barometer); having friends who shout you a plane ticket to Oslo (!!!); and continuing my "voluntary" job (who said the activity had to be cheap for us to be included on the list?).

It looks like no cash November will also be spilling over into December. Martijn starts his new job on the 1st, but wont get his first pay till just before Christmas. Looks like there may be lots of home made "things"leaving our house this year trying to pass themselves off as gifts/cards (eg. this years christmas cards will be the cut out photos from an old calendar. The images have absolutely nothing to do with christmas, so I am planning on adding some christmas spirit to each picture! You have been warned.)

No need to say there has been no news on my visas. I did have a slight panic moment when we came back from Oslo. We flew to Oslo from a small airport just on the other side of the the Dutch-German border (not far from where we live) and had organised to catch a shuttle bus back to Nijmegen from the airport monday night. Anyway, the Dutch police had set up a road block just 2 meters into the Dutch side of the border and were checking everyone's identification documents (here everyone has to have their official identification with them if they leave the house.. for me, this means never leaving the house without my id-visa). As I said, we were in a shuttle bus with about 8 other people. When they got to me, they took away my passport and visa to "control"if everying was in order. I knew that there would be nothing wrong with my papers, but it was a bit unsettling cause Im waiting for new papers.

What was really interesting was the reaction from my fellow bus peoples. There was one other guy who's documents had to be "controlled" - and he was obviously a foreigner because he was darkskinned, spoke broken Dutch and didnt have a Dutch passport. The people in the bus, who had obviously overlooked this last fact, were acting like it was some sort of insult that this guy should have his documents checked, saying things like "just because he was not white he gets his papers checked". I on the other hand, being the white girl, had no sympathy. No one even looked at me. No one told me that I had just as much right to travel into the Netherlands as anyone else.

After about 5 minutes, our documents were returned and the bus continued on its way.


So that was November.

Im hoping next month to:
finish my knitting project that I have been working on and off for the past 2 years
- get a visa
- be paid
- help Martijn spend his first pay
- avoid the Dutch christmas (5th of December)



Our "date". Walking in a heide reserve feeling the autum spirit.

Photos I took during one of our cycling training mornings. Dont let the sun fool you... it was cold.