Golf lessons !

Katameya Heights Golf & Tennis resort is a huge compound about half an hour of our area Maadi. Villa's are built around a golf area which makes the place very green and nice looking. I surprised Arthur with 3 golf lessons of an hour each for our 10 year anniversary and 4 year marriage anniversary. We enjoyed it so much !! Today is our first official lesson, last week was for free as the instructor could not do a full hour.. Tonight we take Femke with us so let's hope she will keep herself occupied..
Golf is everywhere around us in Cairo, as the weather is always good it is a nice outdoor sport for many (richer) Egyptians and expats. And it is not that expensive to take lessons, we paid around 80 euro's per hour for the 2 of us. They are private lessons, this way the instructor can correct you all the time.





 
 
 
 

The Three Janse girls

 
 
 
 

10 year Anniversary: highlights

1st of June 2000 was the day Arthur and I fell in love! 10 years have passed since then, 10 years full of amazing highlights...We have travelled together to many beautiful places in the world, to 24 countries to be precise, have been living 7.5 years abroad now, got married, bought a 3000 m2 piece of land in the country side of Urla, Turkey and build a house, and are now parents of cute little girls Femke & Lente.

Portugal was our first destination together and a few years later we went back to celebrate our honeymoon there. We read an article about Lebanon as holiday destination and booked a flight, then 9/11 happened.. what to do? Cancel our flight? We thought hey it can´t be any safer than in the Middle East! Nice (France) & Monaco were weekend trips with cheap Easy jet flights. On a big sailing ship we sailed to a harbour in Denmark. As Belgium is close to The Netherlands we went there several times, to Antwerp and Brugge, but also to the coast. London is one of our favourite destinations, we never went there in Summer time though, only during Christmas and New Year. In Stockholm we visited my friend Frank and his wife Irina. Dublin was a surprise trip from Arthur, he proposed to me in a park, very romantic. 3 weeks we travelled by car through Cuba. Thailand was absolutely fantastic. NY was a place Arthur wanted to go to, but I hesitated for a long time, then said yes and was pleasantly surprised. Venice we went to by car with sister in law Pascalle and her boyfriend Michel. Arthur´s auditor job led us to many European cities like Oxford, Vastervik (Sweden), Zurich (and St Moritz! and Bern!), Paris, Barcelona, Stuttgart and Milan and Lake Maggiore. Then in January 2003 we moved to Turkey and travelled extensively in the country of my parents and forefathers... The charming islands of Greece and Athens were not far from Izmir so favourite destinations for us. Malaysia and Singapore we visited in December 2008. In Curacao we stayed 2 weeks with excellent hosts Jan & Ester. Before moving to Egypt in 2009 we spent a lovely time at Lake Como in Italy and Lugano in Switzerland. Our last big trips were to Sri Lanka and Dubai.

Our ambitions for the next 10 years?
Explore the Middle East & Africa a bit more now that we live so close. Travel to Canada and check out possible areas to live. Perhaps move back to Amsterdam for a few years. Sailing lessons and hopefully within 10 years own a sailing boat.

Routine of Lente

Here an example of a day in the life of Lente!

Woke up at 5.30 for a feed, stays awake untill 6.50 and then sleeps till 8 AM
Another feed at 8.20 AM, diaper change, some time spent alone, some time at mommy's lap, sleeps at 9.45 untill 12.15
After her feed she stays awake again untill 1.45 and falls asleep without crying!
A long sleep now untill 4.45, stays awake one hour in order to sleep untill 6.45. Now the next feed is already after 2 hours but sometimes that happens! She stays awake 1 hour, and after another feed she falls asleep at 8.15 in the evening. She wakes up at 1 in the night, and lucky for me, she falls asleep right after her feed.
Another long sleep untill 5.30, we go to the living room for a nappy change and some cuddling with daddy (who goes to work at 6.30). She falls asleep at 7 and a new day has begun !!

To sum up: Her feedings are most of the time (during daytime) every 3 to 4 hours, at night she manages to sleep quiet long, sometimes even 5 hours in a row. At daytime she is more and more awake with in the afternoon a long sleep and in the mornings shorter periods of sleep (1,5 hours)