Visit to the Big City

Finally made it up to Boston today, to apply for a new Dutch passport. We used to be able to do that by mail, but the Dutch government decided that that was too easy, so now have to go to embassy in person. What a pain. Had been wanting to do it for only two years or so, and now finally did it!

I went together with a geocaching friend, took us about two hours to get to Boston, and then almost another hour to find a place to park...

Found out that my pictures weren't good, my head was one degree too much turned to the left. Also, couldn't just use forms from their website, had to redo them on their forms... We got it all taken care off, and then it was time to go caching!

Did a cache at a historical cemetery. One of the signers of the declaration of independence was buried there, as was the first victim of the Boston Massacre. Very interesting. Sylvia found that one. Later we went to the Commons, where we saw a red tailed hawk bully the local squirrels. He would sit in a tree, ignoring all the humans passing by, waiting for a squirrel to be brave enough to run over the grass. He would slowly get up, make a lazy swoop over the squirrel, laughing when the squirrel ran into a tree and froze. Sat down in the next tree and waited for more brave squirrels. All around these happenings, there would be ten frozen squirrels in trees. So cool!

Highlights for Sylvia:

• Riding in an elevator with real elevator music. She wasn't sure what to think of it
• Seeing a statue of a 'horsey!'
• Noticing all the geese at the commons
• Even better: all the pigeons!
• Enjoying someone throwing peanuts at her feet, so seeing the pigeons very up close.
• Wondering whether she really wanted to be surrounded by 50 pigeons when he threw down even more of them
• Seeing and experiencing LOUD firetrucks trying to get through a backed up street. Cars madly scrambling to get out of their way
• Seeing doggies and doggies and more doggies
• Seeing all the HUGE building

Sylvia was a bit overwhelmed by it all, so was I ^^

Now I can start working on my naturalization, will have to deal with yet another set of bureaucratic procedures.