Tuesday, May 19

We had same breakfast (yes!) and got picked up at 8:45. We always have a new driver and never know where we are because all of the homes and cities look the same, they just have different names and were small villages that have grown into each other. We went to the Thermen Museum where Elsbeth Raedt, from the Netherlands team that visited the states last month, organized a FANTASTIC morning. The museum has roman bath remains! I just thought these were in Italy (susie and hugh know these), but the city of Herleen was a cross road in 4 AD where the romans had expanded. They have preserved this, but again, in order to develop toursim, they will tear the building down because its 30 years old, has bad humidity for the remains, and is ugly (they said) and will build a more romanesque building to attract and educate the locals and be more energy efficient. We got to go inside the old baths (my first time touching something 4 AD in age. I always get nervous in places not as high quality in restoration and preservation as Rome..Guatemala, ahem...take care of this stuff!). The local farmers who found these remains are celebrated in an exibit in another part of the museum. I shared that in the US private land with native american remains can just develop over them. On our land we try to keep the areas quiet so we don't have to preserve them, or the Seminole and MIckosukee dictate what we can do with them, and we don't celebrate the locals who find them because this may cause work, and the public steals stuff. They said they have similar issues. We had and AMAZING talk by a famous NEtherlands artist, a man named Michelle Huismond, who was born here and does art that makes you think or heals serial killers, or traditional art. He does not like the modern, quickly built and poorly planned city that Herleen now is, as the locals say. He is now getting involved with planning through art instead of by math architects and this was a really interesting concept to us. I got his autograph and took an artistic photo with him that he designed. HEre are some of his quotes all related to how we should think about planning: -Mediocrity is accepted because it is not bad or good and it has the highest profit of margin.-History is what defines us.-Thinking is moving.-There are solutions, but not answers.-We have been educated to separate art from science so we can only base decisions on research and facts.-We don't live to comfort our ratio (she cooks good, she is smart, she has a good job), we live to comfort our soul (I love her!)-Entrance to your mind is emotion.-Our strength and weakness is defined by the choices we make.-Hit them emotionally and not with ratio (science based decisions)-Buildings could be based on poetry and art-Our history is our story and it has communication, it says something, it is not a ratio.-Art is the highest form of empathy possible in material form.-Humans destroy their own nest, no other animal does that. I asked them if there was a city in the US that he though was based on art. He said he is a starving artist (until he began working with the city to plan this last year, but he doesn't like to have money), but he likes NY. I asked him how he would suggest to plan with nature like we still have in the states. He said we must cluster and not only keep open space on the outside, but also have a city center with natural space on the inside. I got his auto graph that is art too. We also had a talk from a policeman about operation heart beat for Jason. He said they had many drug addicts so they build shelters for them, allow them to do drugs in the shelter, allow them to work by cleaning the city, they have put up cameras in the streets, and made longer sentences for them and since word travels fast in that community, they get scared and behave. We also met a lady who adopted an african american from Jacksonville in 2007. He is a year and a half and she came to see the presentation just to meet us. I always meet people I know adopting children when I'm traveling! We then went to a housing building that has incorporated thermal cooling and heating from the old mine shafts-completely energy efficient and probably carbon neutral. They put pipes in the old tunnels and as the heat rises as you go further underground, the water heats, they harness the energy, and provide heating and cooling-oil independent. Wow! We always have to explain that the states doesn't really do these things yet. At the District this is too expensive and will not recoup costs for 60 years. Sean explains that Alachua County is working on this, but they are very unique and not representative of the US. They say that the US wouldn't sign the kyoto protocol and won't do these things, but in europe, they are responsible for energy efficiency due to the kyoto protocol, to help the world, and because energy is expensive here. These investments are expensive up front, but they have a social responsibility and they hope Obama will help with this. They like him! We went to our first Rotary Club meeting tonight-ALL MALE, ahhhh! We all did a good job on our presentations which we had to wing because SOMEONE (we won't name any names Sean) forgot our presentation on his jump drive. Jon helped me translate my presentation into Dutch. Let's just say that we hope it will get better over time It started with, "Whar zijn het mevrowen?" Where are all the women? They still don't believe that Oprah has a better marathon time than me... I didn't think I was pronouncing clearly so I said the dutch sentence then said it in English. They interrupted and said, "Why are you translating dutch, we are dutch!" We had a new driver take us home in our stick shift rental vehicle. He was over 70 and has an automatic car. Our GPS was not working well (karen...) (everyone has a GPS!) and we ended up going around in circles in this city that looks the same as the last city as the last city... So he decided to back up on these small roads. There was a car coming so he went forward. When the car left he went backwards, onto the curb. We were stuck for a minute there and Shane, Jason and I just died laughing and didn't know where we were and didn't know if this old man was going to get us home and if some small european pugeot was going to come around the car and hit us. We asked directions and it turns out JAson's family home was just around the corner.. Up at 6:30 am for fitness at the gym and breakfast there. Tot ziens (see you later), Terri Keeping record:How many times we have had koffee:Sunday May 17-3Monday-May 18-5Tuesday-May 19-4Total-12 How many times I have walked into the herlen bathroom (men's)2 Dutch mistake of the day (THis was actually from today):Ik bedonkt neit.Should have said "ik begriept neit"-I don't understand. Instead I said something similar to bedonka donk (or in the country song big country butt"".) Not only did the dutch man laugh at me, but so did Sarah, Jason and I!