Though I have been promising new pictures for a while now I have had problems getting the pictures from our digital camera to my computer. In the meantime, you will have to live with the lack of updates. Hopefully, I will be able to resolve the problem soon. Today is the Danish election and I am somewhat concerned about the outcome. Though this is the closest election in a long time, all indications are that the current government will continue, though it will be on a more uncertain mandate. The last couple of days I have been participating in a trading game on the web-site of the biggest Danish newspaper - Politiken. The game is simply put that you trade on outcomes of the election and the opinion polls.
Before I loose many of my saved up points today, after a bad investment in the Social Democratic Party being the largest party in today's polls (which they didn't become), I just wanted to share my good track record. As of this morning I was no. 14 out of almost 1500 participants - Unfortunately I will now fall a couple of 100s positions. Anyway, I have been true to my believes, and truly hoped that we would get a change of government.
On the way home from Europe, where Lieke, Liva and Joop got delayed for 22 hours in Aden, they met a guy from Egypt that was very kind to the kids. He is here to work on some programming work for one of the mobile providers and we met up with him last week where Lieke and the kids took him to the old city.
After a well deserved holiday in Europe the whole family is now back in Yemen. Lieke and the kids got quite a delay on the way back as a plane had skipped off the runway in Sana’a and their plane therefore got rerouted to Aden where they spent almost 24 hours in the airport and later at a hotel. So they have not quite recovered yet. We have returned to the last draws of the monsoon season in Sana’a and an invasion of locust. Parts of Yemen is suffering quite a bit and the situation is complicated further by lack of action due to concerns for the honey production. So right now the grasshoppers are allowed to roam free as insecticides would kill off the bees as well. The citizens of Sana’a are happy though as they eat the grasshoppers – it is considered a delicacy and is called the “flying scrimp”. Anyway, I just wanted to make a short update with the promise that I one of the coming days will upload some pictures from our summer holiday. Thanks for everything while we were in Europe.
Lieke is turning 40 today, so she has been celebrated with presents and hugs and kisses.
Here is a picture that we took yesterday of the three beautiful girls
At the Children's Konninginnedag there were a lot of different games. Here Liva is at the ballon Obstacle course and as it can be seen she is taking it very serious.
For the special children’s Konninginnedag Joop found it most appropriate to dress up as a princess
As Liva had her birthday while we were in China and Lieke and the kids needed to return from the Netherlands before we could celebrate Liva in Yemen, it has taken a while for us to get our act together and have the birthday party. But this weekend we finally had the party. As it has been a tradition since we were in Mexico, we had a Piñata and on the picture above the Liva and Joop are in the middle of filling it with candy. The party was great with 31 kids and their parents.
While in Guangzhou we stayed at the White Swan Hotel and we grew quite attached to the "function rooms" of the Chinese restaurant as they gave us a possibility to be "alone" with the kids. This is from the best of the "function rooms", which not only had a table but also two sofas and a television.
