Dear family and friends,
It’s November, the wind is howling outside, the trees are losing their leaves rapidly; it’s definitely autumn when I start our Christmas letter of 2014.
The Kleinjans had a very special and good year! We had two 50th birthday celebrations, yes 1964 is a fabulous year!
And Robin turned 21 and Noa 18 years!
In January we had an intimate party for my 50th birthday in our house in the Netherlands. Geraldine cooked together with her lovely mum a wonderful Indonesian “rice table” for us! I felt very blessed being surrounded by the people I love so much. We kept it small because we knew we were having a garden party in July for Rob’s 50th birthday! In the Netherlands we say that you will see Sarah for the ladies and Abraham for the men. And often there is a straw filled old man or lady in front of your house, so the whole neighbourhood knows you turned 50!
At the end of January Rob finished his time for the Danish company that took over Hartwall and started working for Heineken Amsterdam in a temporarily job living in Amsterdam. April 2nd, no not on April’s fool’s day, Rob started working in Linz/Austria. Of course I stayed with Hugo in Helsinki, while Rob tried all the hotels in Linz.
End of May ‘Royal the Gruijter’ came to move our belongings to our new post, Vienna in Austria. May 30th we got the keys of our apartment in the 8th district in Vienna, Josefstadt, near the Rathaus. It’s a ground floor apartment with a big garden! Nice for Sammy too! It’s very quiet because we are situated at the back of the building. But when you leave the house at the street side, it’s busy, noisy and lots of traffic. Shops, restaurants, beautiful buildings, transport in front of the house, that’s what I love of living in the city!
June went very quickly, probably because of the two weeks that I stayed in Vienna to get organised in our house. Rob is commuting every day to Linz by train. This takes him 1hr and 15 minute plus to get to the train station and in Linz to get to the office all together it will cost him 2 hours.
He sees this travelling by train as an extension of his working day. He reads his emails, makes calls, he can rest if he needs to and I’m at my ease, because it’s much much safer than driving every day 200km to Linz and back!
One phone call end of June from Noa who lived in Reading in the UK changed our summer and our year tremendously.
I will make a long story short. Noa didn’t do well on her Mok exams, (practice exams). We suggested that she could come to the VIS (Vienna International School), but only if she did the year again. So here we are with Noa in Vienna! Rob and I were very exited about it and Noa too. She was happy though in Reading, except that they don’t do proper graduations with the gowns or proms nor did they have the right (American) sports for her.
An international school is what she knows, it’s her world and she loves that.
On July 12th 2014 we had a fantastic party in our garden in Zoeterwoude in the Netherlands. Lynn and Emily came all the way from Cape Town a few days earlier, then the next day Karen Jarvis, the Florey’s, Chown’s, Zuilll's, Van Der Meijs'jes, and the Pakowski's came. We had a pre party on Friday night. It felt so special. We haven’t seen some of our friends for maybe 5 or 6 years! The next day when we really celebrated Rob’s 50th birthday many more from all over the globe came to join us. Frank sung a great song about Ikea’s in every country, ‘the screwers song’ and Ard finished it all with a fantastic speech and so Rob was honoured with “The Golden Ikea screw”! Very special! He will cherish these moments, especially when we move again and he will drive to Ikea to build again 20 cupboards or so! Soon after the party we left for three weeks US with the children. We started in New York, then we flew to the Cranmer family in Tampa. After that we flew to the west coast to San Francisco. From there we drove to Santa Barbara, where we stayed in a holiday house. The Ruiz family who live in LA were so kind to come to see us in Santa Barbara. From Santa Barbara we drove via LA, the Hollywood sign further to Las Vegas, where we actually celebrated Rob’s birthday with a helicopter tour over the Grand Canyon. And here our very special holiday came to an end. Rob flew straight back to Vienna and I stayed a few days longer in Zoeterwoude, before I drove my little BMW back to Vienna.
Jack (19) is very happy in Stirling in Scotland. He had a very easy first year. With the three subjects economics, philosophy and computer science he was still a bit bored, so he tutored other students and he did an online Swedish course. In June he had his first philosophy essay-exam published in a Czech magazine! He left the campus and lives now with three other friends in a little house in the centre of Stirling. During the summer he worked at finance in Heineken Zoeterwoude just like he did last year.
Robin (21) is still very up north in Jutland in Aalborg/Denmark. She’s very happy there and has fantastic results! Now she’s doing her drivers lessons. First aid and slip course are included to this course. She is studying business administration. Robin brought Sammy from the Netherlands to Vienna for us by plane! She saw him arriving at a normal belt where the suitcases are coming……..weird!
Hugo is happy here, but if you ask him, the ISH in Helsinki was the best school ever! It is funny how children experience things differently. He is doing really well at school. In November he qualified for the VIS ski team. That will be a new challenge for him. He is 16 now, but the tallest of his siblings and myself. And I recon he will grow a little more!
I’m very busy here in Vienna. I’m the Global Connection Coordinator of Vienna. Noa and I gave an interview for the Global connection magazine about boarding schools, which will be published in December. I’m helping out at school at the Boosters club and sometimes I help out at evening-events too.
I’m doing an online course to become an ESL teacher. This is teaching English as a foreign language for children or adults. I finished it, only 20 hours of practicum are left to do. I’m playing tennis in an international women group every week two hours.Although I speak German, I still go to my private lessons every week to further improve it. Overall Vienna is very easy to live in, we are happy here!
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Rob & Viv, Robin, Jack, Noa, Hugo en Sammy