Highwinds, a new friend, a new car, a new apartment and an awesome Arikok adventure!

HIGHWINDS

Aruba is a windsurfing mecca, and for more than three decades, the sport’s largest amateur competition has been held right here on the island. Of course we passed by to have a look. There were a lot of people and it was really good fun to watch. I bought a longsleeve shirt from last year, a beautifull orange one. Most of the time I go in the water with a t-hirts but these longsleeves are made for in the water and dry much faster. I wanted to buy a blue t-shirt one but those were only for the people who worked there, it said, CREW on the back. Because I would really like a t-shirt I just started to ask people who worked there if I could buy one at the end of the festival. But the thing is, every year they have different colours so they wanted to keep them. I would have wanted to keep them myself aswell but anyway, you can always try and ask. One guy said, just come over tomorrow when its almost finished and we will have a look, who knows.

The next day we started a bit earlier to watch the Dutch play football. After that we had a few drinks and went back to Highwinds and stayed there the rest of the day/evening. At those moments I feel so lucky! I'm working on a beautifull island, where the sun is shining most of the time, the people I'm hanging out with are great, the water is blue and the beer is cold! What do you want more?!

At the end of the day I saw that guy from the CREW shirt and he had one holding back for me! Really nice! So now I have a blue one aswell.
 

A new friend

There was coming a new girl, Evelien, to work with me in the hospital for a month. They asked me if I could pick her up and show her around. Her boyfriend was joining her for the first week. In between we went with a few people to the beach and watching the sunset & sunrise on the Hooiberg. On the 4th of july it was independence day, and because there are a lot of Americans over here they celebrate it. 
 

My new car & new apartment

Renting a car here is not really cheap and I already wanted to buy one but without a personal number. But everything takes a long time for stuff to be organised. But... I finally got one so I bought the one that I saw a month ago. The rental car I kept for a few weeks more, so that my first visitors could use mine (looking forward to that!!). A week later I put all my stuff in my new car to move. That was the first time that I really was going to use the car. But then the accelerator (gaspedaal) didn't work and the engine light was on. I only saw that I didnt's had coolant anymore. I only saw that the car didnt't had coolant anymore and my neighbour didn't also saw something else. So we puched my car back up (when I tried to push the accelerator down my car was rolling down the street). So we went in his car to get some coolant, perhaps that will do the trick. Too bad it wasn't that. He would call a friend of him, a mechanic, the next day to see if he could find something. So I moved all my stuff to my rental car and went to my new apartment. The next day I moved out but had to leave my new car there. After work I drove to my new apartment and felt immediatelly at home. I have a pool, a nice new kitchen and my bedroom was big enough. I've never had such a big closet for my clothes. I had little house warming organised, just a few friends coming over to have a drink and dinner. I invited Evelien aswell so she could meet some people, her boyfriend was already back to the Netherlands. It was not a big party but it was good. After that we went out. 

In between I heared that the accelerator was working again but that something else was broke. So I was going to bring him to the mechanic together with my neighbour to let him be fixed the next day. Hopefully everything is working properly now.

ARIKOK

The Arikok National Park takes up approximately 18 percent of the island of Aruba. You can walk there or drive trew it with you car, but to get to some places you need a SUV (or walk in the heat). Pascal, one of the guys that is gonna stay for a year aswell, has bough a susuki jimny, a little suv, and we wanted to go to Arikok with that. He didn't had a back seat anymore, the previous owner took that one out. Because it could get pretty rough I suggested to put pillows in the back so that we were not gonne have bruises all over our body. GREAT IDEA!!! Monkey see... monkey do. It was such good fun! I was really happy with all the pillows because we were bumping around in the back the hole time. I made a few films during the drive but it doesn't look as spectaculair as it was at that moment so I didn't put them on the website. 

Next time..... EVELYNE!!!!!!!! My awesome roommate from Switserland! She is gonna be here for two weeks! I'm really looking forward to it!!! She is bringing a friend and another girl that's from Switserland is coming over from Amerika, she is doing an au pair job there right now and has a week off and will join us for that time.