A Last week we went to the zoo with M's friend from school. We'll call her West Coast L to differentiate her from M's cousin L. West Coast L is a lovely little girl with a great imagination, just like M. She is also one of the older kids in a class of kids with birthdays in both 2007 and 2008 and when M started school and there were only a handful of English speakers, she was there for him. She also doesn't go to school on Fridays so it works out well.
It was freezing cold but that was OK. The zoo has plenty of inside places: reptile house, primate house, butterfly house and one we'd never been in, the small mammal house.
This past Friday we also hung out with West Coast L and her mom. M had suggested a swim, so we took a trip out to Amstelveen to the hotel pool we used when we came here for house hunting. The previous two times we went to the pool we were actually registered guests but nobody checked. On Friday were weren't, and they checked, so as you might imagine M was pretty disappointed. But we decided to go to West Coast L's house for lunch and when I later apologized to M for swimming not working out, he said, "That's OK, going to [West Coast L]'s house was even better!"
M's love of swimming is another motivator to get the bike situation sorted out. There's a great pool not to far away from us, but it's too long a walk, especially with a little kid. Public transport is kind of a pain, but it would be a very easy, fast cycle.
