Tuesday, March 17, 2009

'Back in the US for a few days

DSC06781 Hopped the pond to Minneapolis today for a week's round of meetings …the usual 3-hour drive up to Schiphol required me to hit the road at 5 am. Ugh…but was up at 3 :30 anyway…not sleeping well. On the way over, I watched the Bond film “Quantum of Solice “(much better than expected), read 150 pages of a book of European history (got the background for the first world war firmly in mind now…), and arrived to find warm summer temperatures and, paradoxically, mounds of snow in the parking lots. The locals are telling me that I hit it lucky.

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I’ve dropped anchor in an Embassy Suites: the contrast between the lush atrium interior and the stark parking exterior always intrigues me. I suppose it’s the Mall of America in miniature. So different from the inns and apartments that tend to be the norm back in Europe.

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I always celebrate the first night of being back in the US with a big slab ‘o meat. I’m sure that it’s terrible for me, but it is so good.

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Otherwise, jet lagged out…plans and notes to write, but it will keep… Until then, to bed (if I can get over the novelty of understanding every word on all 200 television channels)

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2 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

Proost & congratulations! I hope you journey back in with repatriation will be documented here?

March 17, 2009 at 10:48 AM  
Blogger Dave Hampton said...

Sorry for confusion and the misleading title; I blame the jet lag. I'm only back for a week of consultations and a chance to visit my son down in Oklahoma, then headed back to the Netherlands.

I'll write with a few more details (and post here as things get settled), but I'm in the midst of sorting out the future. It's pretty certain that I'll stay in Europe (most likely in the Netherlands), but also pretty certain that the expatriate contract will end in a couple of months. That makes for lots of discussions about how life will fall into a new form, and is part of the reason I'm back here talking with folks.

Sorry for the confusion; I hope not to be goign anywhere just yet :)

March 17, 2009 at 11:49 AM  

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