Obama speaks at Mack's Apples!

Yes, it's true. Andy Mack, Jonathan's dad, who is traveling in Europe, got a call from Senator Obama asking if he could speak at his apple farm. And now it looks like he will be the next president of the United States. YEA! (sorry mom and dad)

Obama's kids carving pumkins at Mack's Apples. (last year)

Getting Ready for Madrid

Well, I guess we are almost ready to go to Madrid-well, physically but maybe not mentally. We got cheap Ryan Air tickets again. We got our bus tickets to Eindhoven Airport. Ryan Air doesn't leave from Schiphol Airport. Tomorrow we have to send a box of books to Japan.
We have both fallen in love with this city. It will be hard to leave but it is time. I'm ready for the next chapter. I looked up our new apartment on google earth our street is lined with trees. I think we will be on the fourth floor. I will miss the walkable size of Amsterdam. It's back to taking the subway in Madrid. I found a Spanish school with the help of Deborah. Thanks Deborah. I haven't contacted them yet so I hope I can get into a class starting Monday. Classes start every Monday. I've been studying Spanish. It seems a lot easier than Italian.
Anyway, a day at a time. We think Jonathan's dad is dropping by before he flies to the states on the the 1st. He is in Venice, Italy at the momet. (We think, anyway.)

Amsterdam at Night

(our neighborhood)

out our window and to the right

crossing the bridge nearest our house

our apartment is to the right

the new market

Chinatown, one block behind us

an amuzement park set up in Dam Square

My version of Amsterdam

My version of Amsterdam

Westerbork

20 or 30 minutes away from Tineke and Wietse's house is Westerbork. We spent the afternoon there. It was very moving. It was a beautiful, fall day. The leaves were turning and the sheep were grazing. one can't imagine such horrible things could happen in such a place.

Camp Westerbork was a World War II concentration camp in Hooghalen, ten kilometers north of Westerbork, in the 2northeastern Netherlands. Its function during the Second World War was to assemble Roma and Dutch Jews for transport to other Nazi concentration camps.
In 1939, the Dutch government erected a refugee camp, Centraal Vluchtelingenkamp Westerbork, in which people--mostly from Germany, but also from Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland, and mostly of Jewish faith--were housed after they had tried in vain to escape Nazi terror in their homeland. During World War II, the Nazis used the facilities and turned it into a deportation camp for Jews, about 400 Gypsies and, in the very end of the War, for some 400 women from the resistance movement.
Between July 1942 and September 1944, almost every Tuesday a cargo train left for the concentration camps Auschwitz-Birkenau, Sobibór, Bergen-Belsen and Theresienstadt. In the period from 1942 to 1945, a total of 107,000 people passed through the camp on a total of 93 outgoing trains. Only 5,200 of them survived, most of them in Theresienstadt or Bergen-Belsen, or liberated in Westerbork.

Anne Frank and her family were put on the first of the three final trains (the three final transports were most probably a reaction to the Allies' offensive) on September 2, 1944 for Auschwitz, arriving there three days later.
Etty Hillesum stayed in this camp from 30 July 1942 until 7 September 1943, when she and her family were put on the train to Auschwitz.
The Canadian 2nd Infantry Division liberated the several hundred inhabitants that were still there on April 12, 1945. The first soldiers to the camp were from the 8th Reconnaissance Regiment, followed by troops of the South Saskatchewan Regiment.[1]
Following its use in World War II, the Westerbork camp was first used as a penalty camp for alleged and accused Nazi collaborators and later housed Dutch nationals who fled the former Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). Between 1950–1970 the camp was renamed to Kamp Schattenberg and used to house refugees from the Maluku Islands.

In the 1970s the camp was demolished. Near the site there is now a museum, and monuments of remembrance of those transported and killed during World War II. The camp is freely accessible.

Each single stone represents a person that was killed.

Rails-monument at Westerbork: broken rails of a former track which was used to transport people to and from the camp

Each one represents a concntration camp. The number on the side is how many people died.

Not more pictures of birds!!!