“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.” – William Penn

So it’s been over a month, whoops. This may become a trend, but I’ll try to avoid that. Time really does fly and it’s hard to keep up!

Work has been hectic, although that’s normal. The project pushed out a bit farther than we had planned, so we’re still going strong and I’m likely fully involved through August. BUT we do have some new exciting ventures we’re going to tackle once this project is complete, so I’m really excited to get to join a unique team to work on company development!

Now back to the fun stuff! To celebrate July 4th (which was a Thursday) we, the Americans, made plans to have an awesome BBQ in one of the parks in Amsterdam. The first thing I learned is that a lot of parks in Amsterdam do not allow grills at all, so we found the one park in West that already had some in place! We even invited some of our “Honorary Americans” aka the Brits the celebrate with us as they’d never experienced a true American BBQ. We had burgers, brats, pasta salad, veggies, corn bread, etc. It was a fantastic spread. & then it rained. A nice little drizzle ALL DAY LONG. Luckily, most of us are used to it in the Netherlands by now, so we lasted most of the day outside in the rain xD
I will say, I think most of the people at the park were looking at us going “typical Americans….”, but it was worth it!!

I got pulled in to help out a US project after that and had to travel a few times in the past couple of weeks to Germany to review and track status of material critical to that job. It was my first experience in Germany and it was a plant in a tiny town just across the border from the Netherlands. It was a nice break from the normal day to day and of course I got schnitzel for lunch at least once on my journeys!

We had a celebratory happy hour with our Subcontractors two weeks back to say thank you for helping us get through this tough project. We held it AT THE BEACH and it was a great turnout. Of course, as predicted, there was a bit more rain, but luckily not too much to stop the fun. A group of us even ended back in Amsterdam to continue the party for the night (& I was the only one at work the next day!).

This last weekend we had an internal company wide leadership meeting day to follow up on a similar one held back in November. Since I clearly wasn’t at that one, it was a great experience to hear from our leadership out here and get an understanding for some of the major struggles and goals in our company right now. The full day event was actually fantastic and really helped solidify my choice to work here!

I got to meet my colleagues from our project in other countries for the first time and similar to the previous segment, a group of us once again ended up out for the night in Amsterdam. It was good fun only to be followed on Saturday by a team BBQ outing south of Amsterdam for everyone to bring in their families for people to meet. It was really nice, but I was extremely tired after both days of having to be so social…you know me. I can only take so much before I need to go back into my shell and recover.

Last night my best roommate ever Gab was in town!!! (Well her and her husband are here for a couple of days, but we grabbed dinner together last night). It was SO great to see them, it’d been since I left for Europe since I had. But the most amazing thing is that they just moved to Atlanta, so now every time I go home to see the fam I can see them too!

Tomorrow night I have some family in town and am grabbing dinner with them. It’s been I don’t know how long since I’ve seen them, but it’ll be a fantastic night for dinner.

Then Saturday is PRIDE! (Although it started last weekend)The most insane massive parade in Amsterdam. Remember me telling you all about Kings Day? Apparently, Pride is even bigger. I’m not even sure I’m prepared for this at all, but stay tuned and keep an eye on my Insta story for minute by minute updates on the insanity!