Bangladesh: Chittagong shipbreaking yards

What do you do if you are a vessel owner and one of your vessels is written of and not profitable anymore? You sell it for a scrap metal price to a shipbreaker in Chittagong. Then you ground the vessel full speed on the beach when the tide is high. At low tide hundred's of Bangladeshi's with hammers and cutting torches take care of the rest. This is considered the most polluted place on earth....

Bangladesh: Dhaka

Pakistan

Like sister like brother

Today was the day for Stasiu's first pickle experience. Nina loves them, but Stasiu had never tried them. It was a big hit! He never put it down although really eating it was a bit hard with only two little teeth at present. Let's consider it a good practice round.

Scary Nina!

Nina almost scared me out of the kitchen with her ghost act yesterday!

Stasiu playing hide and seek

Stasiu is getting very mobile and thinks playing hide and seek under chairs is hilarious.

Potty time

Nina wants to go potty and she's doing very well indeed. Of course she prefers to go in the most comfortable spot of the house: living room in front of fireplace while watching one of her favourite shows: de Film van Ome Willem. Before we know it she'll be retreating to the bathroom with a newspaper or book, but for the time being Pampers are still on the shopping list.

FT Weekend Edition

The Financial Times Weekend Edition: After Miffy and Barbapappa it's Nina's favorite..

Fun in the Snow

We went to Bowen Park to try out the sleigh while it was snowing. Nina and Stasiu had fun and Staszek got some excercise.

Remote control...

This is what happens when Nina grabs the camera remote control...
She probably made a hundred pictures in a few minutes. It was funny to watch her pose for each picture once she understood the purpose of that little device.

Nina and Jip still best buddies

What can we say: just look at the pictures, they tell it all! Jip is not always so sure of Nina's signs of affection, but he seems to put up with it. He just loves any form of attention :)

Sinterklaas in Chicago

And finally it was the 5th of December, the day that we would celebrate Sinterklaas together with 75 other kids at the Dutch Club in Chicago. The children were called in alphabetical order, making Nina and Stasiu the first ones to come to Sinterklaas! Nina shook his hand, twice, graciously accepted the pepernoten that Piet offered her from 'de zak' and that was that. No panic, no crying! In fact, she kept going back to Sinterklaas over and over again and found it all very interesting keeping a close eye on 'de zak' full of pepernoten en taaitaai of course. The wait for the presents was long but fortunately there were tables with crayons, colour sheets and art supplies to keep her busy. Stasiu just took it all in with his Pieten hat on.