First Things

Corwin has been here for nearly a month now. He's been hard at work at the Roosevelt Center here in Middelburg, Netherlands in the province of Zeeland. This area is in the very south of the Netherlands and fairly close to the ocean.

Middelburg is a smaller town with just under 50,000 people. It is a town that my Mother once lived in. But if you asked her where she is from she will usually say Yerseke which is just a bit to the east of Middelburg. I just arrived about 1 week ago.

Our apartment is small, but very nice and it is located right in the center of the town. We live above a store and our windows open onto one of the main streets of the town. That's our flat on the floor right above the Manfield name.

This street doesn't look so busy in the photo, but it is very active. Early in the morning the activity starts with stores opening and people shopping. Today was a celebration and there was a lot of music playing as well. Also there is usually a bright orange awning that covers our windows. It is retracted in this picture.

The inside of the apartment looks like an Ikea store. It's all painted white and while it is small, it is surprisingly efficient. It's a slice of the building from the street in front to the street in back. The living area is in the front with the only windows. Then a connecting hall with a door to the washer and dryer closet. Then the kitchen, bedroom and last the bathroom. So you have to go through our bedroom to get to the bathroom. Interesting.

You come into the apartment between the hallway and the kitchen. The door is just to the left of the area of the kitchen in this piture. 

The very first lower 'cupboard' is actually the dishwasher. The buttons to operate it are on the top surface that you can see when you open it, on either side of the Whirlpool logo. The sink and the oven are pretty typical, except that the oven is both a microwave and a regular oven.

And the last 'cupboard' is the refridgerator with a freezer section on the bottom.

So everything is quite convenient and there really is quite a bit of cupboard space. Sadly, they just have a Senseo coffee maker here. It's the kind that takes the pre-packaged pods. You can see it and the electric tea kettle in the first picture on top of the dishwasher. 

The living room is very large and bright. One of the pictures is taken with the orange awnings up and the other one with them down.

The windows are those European kind that can either swing out into the room like they are in the bottom photo or pivot out from the top as they are in the top picture. That lamp is a floor lamp that can swing all around the room!

The TV is great and we get quite a few English stations, thank goodness. We are such TV heads! I'm getting addicted to some British shows. One is called House under the Hammer. They buy houses at auction, fix them up, and then check back with the people to see if they are happy and how much they saved or lost. Another is called Bargain Hunters and two teams of two people each go to a flea market, each with an antique dealer, and the show gives them 300 pounds to spend on three items. Then they take those three items to an auction and see if they made good or bad purchases. If they sell for more than they paid, the people get to keep the money. But often they sell for less than they paid. They don't get penalized for that. The third one I like is called Cash in the Attic. (Can you see there is a theme here?) People write in to be contestants and then if they are picked, the people from the show go to their house and go through it looking for stuff to sell at auction. Sometimes the stuff goes for way more than they thought and other times it sells for about the same or less.

The first of these two photos is taken from the kitchen looking toward living room. The second one is taken from the living room looking into the kitchen. There you can see Corwin faithfully working on his computer at the table. That light on the wall--the big square thing--is made out of a fabric with light bulbs inside.

The next picture (below) is of one of the skylights. There are two--one in the kitchen at the fridge end and one in the bedroom on the other side of the same wall. You can open and close them with a remote control the same way as you operate the awning at the front. But so far we have had the skylights open all the time since it isn't really that bright here.

This is our bedroom. Just enough room to walk along the footend to the bathroom and it has quite a bit of storage area on each side. The closet is on the right and shelves on the left.

And lastly, this is the bathroom. It's a real step saver. The shower is just tucked into that corner. We have to squeegee it down after each use. But it works just fine.

That's all for now. I'll write more later.

Marilyn