June 27, 2002
We went to Rotterdam to visit my cousin Vinay. We ate some broodje crocket with him. He gave me three Feyenoord soccer things: two mini flags and one BIG flag. I went to Erasmus Brugg, which is a bridge. Later, I went to Madeline and Channah's house, which was also in Rotterdam. Then we went across the street to feed the deer and then later in the evening ate dinner with Madeline, Suniel, and Channah. Then we went back to Tante Lenta's house. When we got at Tante Lenta's house in Ter Aar I had to go to straight to bed. I argued but it didn't work. So I had to go to bed. The funny thing is that as soon as my head touched the pillow I fell asleep. My papa told me that when I woke up.

June 28, 2002
We went to Breda on the way to Belgium and ate poffertjes with Oom Frans and Tante Lenta. Later we went to a brown bar. I had chocomel and ate a salami milano sandwich. I also ate Lady Kathy chocolate. I saw a windmill in Breda. I made a quill. In Belgium, we went to Tessenderloo, which is where my Oom Tony lives. I picked raspberries in his garden. I met my cousin Simon, Tante Marianne, and Oom Tony. I also played with their chickens. It also was my first time seeing a camera as small as a yellow post-it-note. I thought they were so small and cute.

June 29, 2002
Bokrijk is an open-air museum. There were old houses, toys, and bikes from the way people in old Belgium lived. They also had fake frites. I played in the Speel Tuin (playground). Later we had a big indo dinner. I met Emma, Caroline, and Tomas. I slept over at Caroline's house and got to sleep in her room. In her room she had two posters: one was a Harry Potter poster and one was a K3 poster.

June 30, 2002
This Sunday we met with Janroel and Arthur. We all drove to Leuven, where we all went on a train to Brugge. It was Madeline, Suniel and Channah; Arthur, Nadine, Caroline and Tomas; Janroel and Simon; my Papa and I. This was my first real train ride. It was fun. There were all sorts of weird noises and I was never sure if it was going to stay on the track. It took a really long time – more than an hour! Janroel taught me a magic trick with my hands that's pretty cool. In Brugge I bought lace and a little Manneke Pis statue. I put it in my room. I also had my first real Belgian waffle. It tasted really good! We went on a boat tour of canals of Brugge. There are canals and bridges everywhere. Brugge means bridges in Dutch. We saw lots of very old houses. It was a pretty place. The roads were made of cobblestone. Later, we went back to Leuven on the train and met with Catherine and Emma. Leuven is a town with a University. We had dinner there. I had spaghetti with Dutch cheese. There was a statue that was real neat. It was a statue of a student reading a book and pouring beer in his head. It was kind of funny. Later we drove back to Caroline's house. She lives in Veerle. I played soccer with her brother in the backyard and had the BEST ice cream in Belgium, which was made there in Veerle.

July 1, 2002
We rode the Thalys to Paris from Belgium and it only took 1 1/2-hour! The first thing we did is we bought a carte-orange so we could go on the Metro for free all week! When we arrived in Paris we were going to go in to the Notre-Dame but instead we just looked at it, because it was closed. We took the Metro to the Tour De Eiffel that we went up later that night. The Tour De Eiffel was scary and fun all at the same time.

July 2, 2002
We saw the Arc De Triomph and it was very fun. I hope I can go again. The Arc De Triomph was worth climbing all those stairs. Later we went walking down the Champs Elysees to buy Tres-Chic clothing. We ended up not buying anything. We decided to go to the Hard Rock Café for dinner. Then we took the Metro to the hotel and went straight to bed.

July 3, 2002
We washed clothing in the morning. Then we went near the Louvre to check out the tickets for the next day. We ended up shopping and found an outfit and Auntie Monique bought it for me. Later, we went on a boat tour called Bateaux Mouche on the river seine. We also went to the Hard Rock Café and saw our favorite waitress. Later, a lot later, we came out and when we got to the Metro we had missed the last one so we had to walk ˝ blocks.

July 4, 2002
Monique got swollen so bad that she couldn't get out of bed! My papa and I took the Metro to the Louvre. We saw the exhibits in it. Then we took the Metro back to the hotel and dropped some stuff off then went to the La Basilica du Sacre Coeur in Montmartre and when we were done looking at it I rolled down the hill it was so fun and scary at the same time. A lot later we met up with Monique and went to the Moulin Rouge. It was so fun, funny and cute. Then we took the Metro back to the hotel.

July 5, 2002
We went back to Belgium from Paris Gard Nord on the Thalys. When we got to Belgium Janroel and Simon picked us up and we went to downtown Brussels to the Grand Place for lunch. As we walked around shopping for stuff to get, we ate chocolate waffles near by. Little bit later we saw the Manneke Pis. It was sort of disappointing because he was dressed in clothes and I thought he was going to be naked like in the pictures. My papa says people dress him all the time. But he was peeing. Then a bit later we saw a Robot Man that if you put money in his jar he would move. We got to make wishes on a gold statue.

Janroel took us to the Atomium. It was really huge and shaped like an atom. It was scary and fun. We went up an elevator with a glass top that let you see the ropes pulling you up. It went surprisingly fast and we got near the top faster than I thought. I was expecting that there would be things like empty rooms, but there were chairs and old things in there.

Later we went to eat Frituur in Tessenderloo. There we had frites (fries), krokets (breaded meat and stuff deep-fried – try them they're great!), and curryworst (kind of like a hotdog, but deep-fried and shaped like a canoe). I didn't like the curryworst much. It tasted sort of funny to me.

July 6, 2002
In Belgium, Oom Tony drove us to Holland (I slept the whole way) and Oom Frans got us a rental car and we got a houseboat. Then after we settled in at the boat for about 40 min. then we bought some things at the store then we had home made pizza at Oom Frans and Tante Lenta's house. Then we went back home.

July 7, 2002
We went to Kijkduin, which has the ocean at it. I also went to Madurodam which is in The Hague. Later we had a BBQ. Monique got drunk. After she got drunk she painted my nails and she left lots of blank spots.

July 8, 2002
We went to Amsterdam and went on a canal boat tour and it was fun because I took pictures. Then when we got off we went to the Red Light District it was embarrassing a little bit because I was the only kid there. Then we went to the Hard Rock Café in Amsterdam were I met a cute 20 or 21 year old guy, I really mean cute! Later in the evening we went to Monnickendam to pick up Monique and met Jan, Arletta and her dog. We hung out at their house for a bit then we left.

July 9, 2002
The next day my papa and I went to Cafeteria Prick. Then we went shopping for food and batteries for his camera and while we did that he found some hair bands. Then we went to the boat my papa went to sleep and Monique was still asleep so I started to clean, a hour later I they both woke up to a clean house and very deep sleeper but they managed to wake me up as soon as they woke me up we went to Cafeteria Prick.

July 10, 2002
We went to Amsterdam to go to the van Gogh museum my favorite paintings are Starry Night and the third self-portrait and I was disappointed because Starry Night wasn't there, my papa's favorite painting was Crows in the Wheatfield. The van Gogh museum was neat and also very big. Later we went to Volendam and got our picture taken with Dutch clothing on and that was fun. Before that we had poffertjes. They were good, Volendam is a fishing village, a very beautiful fishing village.

July 11, 2002
This morning Monique left with Arletta. We went to Delft with Tante Myria and Oom Chris. When we got there it rained very hard so we went in an office until it stopped raining. We ate poffertjes in the same place that President Bill Clinton had eaten them. Then we went shopping. Tante Myria really knows how to shop. We got to see the Delft flower market - it was beautiful. I ate some herring, then I found some real gold dolphin earrings. Tante Myria bought them for me. We shopped for a Delft Blue porcupine for my mom because she likes them a lot, but we couldn't find any. We had stroop waffles. They are like two thin little waffles with a caramel honey in the middle. They taste great. A little bit later, we had patat in a puntsak with pindasauce (that's french-fries in a pointed sack with an Indonesian style peanut sauce). I wish I could always eat them that way. Tante Myria found a great deal on some klompen and my papa bought me some. I like them a lot. Then we went to their caravan and went for a little walk and when we were headed back we ran into 5000 (to exaggerate) mosquitoes and I started to cry because they were behind me and in front of me and I was super scared because I'm allergic to them. Actually, before we went out, Tante Myria gave me some of her Italian leather sandals that I really liked a lot.

July 12, 2002
In the morning we moved out of the houseboat and went over to the Wonderhuis – a bed and breakfast place that was owned by the same lady that ran the House Boat. We went to Oom Frans' house, had some coffee and then he took us to Ajax stadium. Ajax is a soccer team from Amsterdam. We got to see them practice and they didn't seem very good – they argued the whole time. We had broodje kroket outside the stadium. We took the tram from there to the center of Amsterdam. Later, when we got off, we ate poffertjes in the Pannekoek Huis (that means pancake house) - they were yummy. After, we went to the Rijks Museum. I liked the paintings a lot. I pretended to milk a cow in front, but it was a sculpture. We saw the Nachtwacht (that means the Night Watch) and a bunch of others from Rembrandt. I think he's very good at painting. When I see the paintings, some of the people in the paintings look real. I don't know how he does it. It's amazing. Oom Frans took us walking through some areas of Amsterdam that we hadn't been to yet. We walked by Rembrandt's house and the Rembrandt Plein where they had a lot of stores. Later we ate some bagels at a New York Bagels store. It was good. We drove back to Oom Frans' house, we picked up Tante Lenta and then we went to Alphen an de Rijn and ate ice cream - it was so good I liked it a lot. Tante Lenta bought me a Dutch sticker book and my papa bought me an Asterix comic book to go with the Tin Tin book he got me in Brussels. He also finally found a Feyenoord uniform shirt to match mine – although his is the newer one.

July 13, 2002
We went to the Gemente Museum and we saw sculptures made from Degas and paintings from Mondrian. After we saw that we saw the North Sea Jazz Festival after we saw that we ate some Indonesian food we went to Scheveningen then later we went to Rotterdam to stay at Madeline's house for a little.

July 14, 2002
This morning we drove through Leerdam where my Opa Opa Sprong used to live but he is not alive anymore. He was dead before I was born. Then we went through Eindhoven and we stopped in Valkenburg. We met all my Belgian cousins and their parents to drive in two cars instead of three. I went in Caroline's car with her mom driving. She is a wild driver. I mean wild! All of us then drove to Germany. We went to the village of Monschau. It's not too big or too small. We bought some candies and ate bratwurst. There were cobblestone roads and they were bumpy and some were loose. They were sort of cute. They had some special festival with a stage and a brass band with some kids playing in it. They were playing some kind of bad disco music that my papa was dancing to. We then went up this hill to this tower. There were maybe 296 steps at the least to get to the tower. It was over 1000 years old. The town looked bigger from up there and it seemed like you were flying if you looked over the edge. It was a bird's eye view. From Monschau we went through this forest to get to Vaals. Vaals is in Holland. We stopped there because we thought it was the right tower we were going to, but it was the wrong tower.

We got there just at the ending of this extreme sports race. They did running, swimming and bicycling for 47 hours or something like that. The winners came to the finish line right when we got there. There was a girl and a boy that were in the winning team. We then drove on to Driepuntland (three-point land.) Driepuntland is marked by a border stone that is in the middle of the three lands: Holland, Belgium, Germany. On the Dutch side there was a big maze that you could walk through. We couldn't come in even though there was somebody that just went in. It was closed a couple of minutes before we could buy tickets. Tomas was crying like crazy because we couldn't go. They still wouldn't let us in. On the Belgium side there was the viewing tower. We thought it might be closed also, but it wasn't because it was on Belgian soil, not Dutch soil. In Holland they close things early on Sundays and in Belgium they stay open till the last person leaves. The tower was tall and we took an elevator up. Tomas was afraid of heights, but we made him go anyway. It wasn't as tall as the Tour de Eiffel, but it was pretty tall. You could see three different countries depending on which way you looked. Later by the border stone, I was in all three countries at the same time. I had my legs split in two of the countries and my hand in the third. You can see the pictures. We took a lot of them. On the way out we tried to eat at a restaurant there on the Dutch side and it was closed. Caroline said "Ik ben bos." That means "I am mad." And she was!

So we decided to go back to Valkenburg where the car was. There were a bunch of hotels, but it didn't seem like there was anything else. As we were walking we turned a corner and, boom, there was a whole street full of stores and restaurants and bars and things like that. I saw a picture in one bar of a lady that had a forty-acre bra. We ate an Italian dinner at this restaurant right on the street. I drank a chocomel and so did Caroline. I fell asleep on the three and a half hour drive home, because I was so worn out from the day.

July 15, 2002
We left the Wonderhuis and over to Oom Frans and Tante Lenta's house. We mostly had a free day. My papa, Monique and I went to lots of places. We had fun together hanging out. I would tell you more if I remembered all of the places we went.

July 16, 2002
We went to the airport and went in side while we were in side we went to get some food cause we didn't have breakfast yet this morning so we ate chocolate waffles. Later we got on the plane to PHL. It was a long and boring trip, but I dealt with it. On the second trip to SFO, I threw up while sleeping. It was morning by the time we got there my Opa picked us up and took us home.