June 21, 2007: special photo for Bruce, Melissa and Josh

Bruce, Melissa and Josh - thought you guys would appreciate this...

The current excitement on Texel is that the island is being taken over by catamarans (and more tourists than usual) for the Round Texel race, which will be held this weekend (more info at www.roundtexel.com). Basically, the boats will go around Texel while everyone else parties on the beach. The festivities start this evening with some live music and a 70s/80s party on the beach. Tomorrow night there is more live music and a Caribbean party.

June 16, 2007: nothing to do with Texel

Having absolutely nothing to do with Texel, here are a few random photos from OC's graduation last weekend.


It was raining quite heavily the day of the graduation so I didn't take many photos. Besides, the only thing I could see during the ceremony was the water dripping off of the umbrella in front of me.

June 14th, 2007: sprinkles for bread

I know some of you guys have seen these already... but if you haven't, it's true - sprinkles are put on bread here! Just take some white bread, butter it, and pour some sprinkles on and you have a Dutch sandwich.
Note the variety of flavors that the sprinkles are available in.

These sprinkles are actually quite good - they are made with real chocolate and they are not as waxy as the ones in the US. However, I think they would go better with ice cream than with bread...

June 7th, 2007: volleyball

This past weekend there was a big volleyball tournament on Texel. NIOZ had a team so I went to support them (and sometimes laugh at them). I think there were 30 teams in the tournament and there were 15 games being played at once. The tournament lasted all day Sat. and for part of the day on Sun. - so many games were played. Some of the teams were better than others... the NIOZ team was just playing for fun. The weather was actually nice and sunny (and almost hot)!

After the games a few of us found a BBQ spot in the forest and cooked some food. The bag of "Cool American" chips was consumed...

June 4th, 2004: Rainbow

On Texel there are sheep at the end of the rainbow...

June 4th, 2007: Texel livestock

Here are some more images of the various animals on Texel. I found these strange hairy cows the other day... Someone told me that they're Scottish highland cows and that they are there to eat the vegetation to preserve the dunes (prevent them from being overgrown by the surrounding forest).



Some miniture horses...

And of course, more sheep!


I biked by this field of sheep a few days ago and as I approached ALL of the sheep turned towards me and started baahhhh-ing. It was creepy!
Some llamas that are in a field near my apartment.