05.2010 Two weddings and a doctorate

As you may have read in the previous posts, May was the month of Dutch family celebrations. Cees-Jan's youngest brother got married the first weekend of May, his sister the last weekend, which then was followed by his brother's Ph.D defense! To just give a short impression of all the festivities here follow some pictures.

Here's CJ's brother Hans-Peter and his wife Lieke, who got married in Leiden. As an alternative honeymoon, they're moving to Singapore for H-P's new job soon!

A group of Japanese tourists thought it was a fun idea to get their faces in the wedding pictures too... the drawback of having your photos taken in a historic church!

Eva-Maria got married to her boyfriend Ivo in Den Bosch. Just before the vows Ivo went on his knee and proposed to her, as apparently he had never officially done that! Instead, he had told their friends he was getting married, so Eva-Maria had little choice than to go along with it when they starting congratulating her.

A little bit of cross-dressing during the evening party. Just the headwear though!

A more serious but no less exciting matter was Hans-Peter's PhD defense. He tackled all the questions from the opposition with great confidence, so they were left with no choice other than to give him the desired degree.

 Here is the young proud doctor posing with his certificate. For the interested, this was the title of his thesis: "PS-PIAT polymersomes for the immobilization of enzymes." I don't want to brag but I did actually recognize the last word.

That was it for all the family fun for now! But we'll be back in Holland momentarily as Joakim is coming over and we'll got to Holland for two weeks in July.

29.05.2010 Dutch safari

We were back in Holland this weekend for Cees-Jan's sister Eva-Maria and her beau Ivo's wedding, which was on Friday May 28 in Den Bosch. It was a great party, more details to follow in a future blog!

In any case, we spent the weekend with the rest of CJ's family in holiday & safari park 'Beekse Bergen'. Here's CJ's mum and his little cousin Dirk, who's always in for a bit of joking around! Good to see everyone again and to be able to spend some time together, which does not happen often enough these days.

But the highlight was of course the safari park. It's quite surreal to see giraffes and zebras roaming through the Dutch countryside, like we got lost in our own version of Jurassic Park! But it's a great way to see the animals, it looks a lot more natural than a regular zoo. And more fun for the animals.
We also learned lots of interesting facts. Who knew that Iwona isn't even as tall as a baby giraffe? She has the legs but her neck lets her down!

Of some animals we had no clue what they were. If you have any idea what these disturbing looking creatures are, please let us know!

And here just a few more photos of some of the animals. The zebra sparked an interesting discussion about its anatomy and its colours...the careful observer will know what we mean!

And isn't the cheetah an (j)aw(n)esome animal?

All in all a great weekend and highly recommended if you are ever in the south of Holland!