Hallo Washington!

Dear friends and family,

I promised I'd give you all an update on how things have been going, so here it is: my brand new blog/newsletter!

We arrived at Dulles International Airport on Sunday, around the time the World Cup final started. All our luggage arrived with us, and my cello survived the journey very well, much to my relief, given United's bad reputation when it comes to transporting musical instruments! (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FGc4zOqozo)

After a slight hitch with the key, we finally got into our apartment and could settle in. The flat is lovely, with wooden floors and luxurious finishings, but I don't think it's much bigger in terms of floorspace than our living room in Delft. There isn't even a separate bedroom - just a bed that folds up into a cupboard!

It does have a complete kitchen, though, and I've been thoroughly enjoying the dishwasher and oven, not to mention the decent-sized fridge! Food is quite a challenge over here. I am paranoid about becoming fat Americans, so every trip to the supermarket is spent scrutinizing ingredient lists and nutritional information. We do our shopping at a small supermarket called Safeway just up the road, and I must say I was pleasantly surprised at the nice fresh fruit and vegetables they've got there. It's remarkable, though, how everything seems to come in packaging sizes that are just more than I want. The other evening, Andre commented on how remarkably many TV advertisements pitch their products to families here, and I suspect that the bigger packaging points to a society that is more family-oriented than Holland, where the supermarkets seem to cater more to singles and couples. Andre thinks it's a way to get people to consume more, and he's probably right. I just find it a terrible shame to be forced to buy more than I can use up before it goes off and have to throw what's left away.

Besides the well-known fact that Americans like fried foods, you could say the taste here generally runs toward the sweet. Most things have some form of sugar or sweetener in them, making dodging hidden calories a nightmare. All the supermarket bread has added sugar. We found a good French bakery down the road (Le Pain Quotidien - there are branches all over DC!), but there a loaf of bread costs $3.50, making it a bit of a pricey exercise. I've come to the conclusion that the only answer is to buy a bread maker and make our own bread. But for now, we're eating sweet supermarket bread.

In a way, you can understand why Americans eat so much junk food: it makes economic sense. The other day, I bought a small pack of lean mince (about 360 g) with which to make lasagne, and it cost $4.19. So that's without the pasta, the cheese and the other fresh ingredients. You can get a hamburger meal for about $5, and you don't have to spend time preparing it. Then you understand.

I must say, though, I haven't seen very many hugely obese people. One naturally tends to notice the extremes, but on the whole they're definitely in a very small minority in DC. In fact, what strikes me is how many 'normal' people there are. This is very likely because this is DC, a city with many highly educated people and at least half a dozen universities and colleges in and around it. I believe the picture is very different if you move further south, or to the smaller towns.

On the whole, people here are a lot more colourful in Holland, and by that I don't just mean lots of different races altogether (because that is the case too). For one thing, women dress a lot more elegantly than women in Holland. It's been so nice to see all the dresses and skirts, teamed with make-up and pretty shoes. I do my best to keep up! Also, you don't have the 'Hollandse nuchterheid' - the governing principle for behaviour in the Netherlands that says people should be reasonable, restrained and rational. Here, people laugh and talk uninhibitedly in the street and in the metro (underground), are not afraid to get emotional about stuff (in fact it happens remarkebly often that TV programmes will use swelling music to stir up emotions) and, above all, are unashamedly, unreservedly proud of their country. When we walked into the bank on Monday to open an account and told them we had only just arrived, the first response whoever we spoke to was always a hearty, 'Well, welcome to America!' You see the flag everywhere: on T-shirts, in malls, flown in front of people's homes and other buildings (government and otherwise), on the sides of trucks...

Andre and I were talking about it when we were here in December. It seems Americans don't have the squeamishness about open displays of nationalism that the Europeans seem to have got as a lasting result of the Second World War. Not to mention the complicated relationship that a white South African has with their country, given recent history...

Yesterday, I went on a little exploration expedition to some shops in Columbia Heights, an area to the north east of where we are staying in DC. My mission: to buy a kettle. I had looked on the Internet, and come to the conclusion I needed to be at a shop called 'Best Buy'. When I got there, however, they turned out to mainly sell electronics, and had a grand total of one (!) kettle to choose from. Fortunately, Best Buy was in a shopping complex with some other shops: one downstairs that made me think I'd arrived in Pep/Zeeman on steroids, and then two others that were okay: one called 'Target' and the other 'Bed, Bath and Beyond'. Both are massive shops with a mind-boggling array of products to choose from. For the Dutchies: Target is Hema on steroids. For the Seffricans: Bed, Bath and Beyond is Mr Price Home on steroids. I only took a short look around in both, and was overwhelmed by the massive choice. There were so many beautiful things for the home! I can understand why people throw a lot of things away - you want new stuff all the time, because you don't want to have to choose between all the pretty things in the shop! Not that I intend to go that route - but it will be fun when we get to set up our own home soon.

These early days are all about gathering information, and every day brings another flood of it. It's not only about finding our way around, but also about taking note of where to buy things we may need. The past week has also been about doing some basic admin and setting up the structures that we had to break down or tie off in Holland before we left. We now have a bank account, have applied for a social security number for André and we have phone contracts (although Andre has to wait until he has a phone, because he wanted the newest iPhone and it had to be ordered). We are going to look at two potential places to rent this evening and tomorrow afternoon respectively. I need to find out about whether we can drive with our South African driver's licences, with a view to getting licences from here and buying a car. Yesterday, André brought some brochures with information about medical insurance options, and it turns out we don't have to pay such a horrendous amount for medical insurance: only $189 a month instead of the $850 we were first told - a huge relief!

So things are slowly falling into place.

I will mail you all from my new email address, which is linked to my phone, so I look forward to hearing your news too!

x Annemarie (and André)

PS: for more photos, please see my facebook album at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=499978&id=894080450&l=a79ec8b6be