After walking home from another busy day. We were all hungry and wanted to take away Sushi. When we put one foot inside Steven, Mieke & I changed our minds and sat down to eat instead. It was not just a restaurant with waiters, but it was a moving buffet with all the dishes going around.... take a look at the movie. Everyone was sitting around a bar and in the middle was a belt with all kinds of sushi on plates passing by. You could choose out of loads of different things. Some of them where gold plates which meant that it was the most expensive dish; white plates was the cheapest and red was in between. You could just take your food from the belt and eat it. It was soooooo cool (and delicious)!!

Lex and I were invited to go to another hockey game with friends of my aunt (Mieke) and uncle (Lex).
Belgium  VS  China =  0-0  / with umbrella
UK          VS  Korea = 5-3 /  with sunglasses on

I thought the Belgium vs China was very boring, UK vs Korea was fun. My favorite hockey match remained the one from last week; China vs Korea! GO CHINA!!!!!.

Ping Pong

As you all have read Steven and I had professional table tennis (ping-pong) lessons from Ms Chen in Beijing. We wanted to see how the professionals played ping-pong, so we went to the Olympic quarter finals table Tennis. We did not see the Chinese play but saw Germany vs Denmark. Dimitri vs Michael. IT WAS SO EXCITING!! They were on the same level and had to play 5 games to get a winner. So much excitement on such a small table. We were all for Denmark- Michael!!!! except for Lex. He was for neither of them since we could just hear him snore. He was already up at 5 that morning to work so he could come to the match. As a surprise we also had a SMS (Short Message Service) from a friends of us from Monaco, the Piket-jes. What a coincidence that they also had tickets for the same Table Tennis games that evening. We saw them sitting at the other side of the stands in the Arena. Afterwards we went to the Belgium House were we had crispy Belgian fries and could chat and relax.

                                                    Island

This week we also went to Essex, on the coast of England near London. We went with the train to Witham to see the Harreman-netjes. Robert, Annemarie and Floor and Kiki were on holiday on an island there - Osea Island. We could only go to the island at 5.00pm when it was low tide. We swam, played ping-pong, boxed, made fish nets, read, drawed and had a braai. After the dinner we walked to the edge of the island and saw the high tide coming up which flooded the road to the mainland. No where to go !!. The next morning we woke up early to catch the low tide again and went to have a traditional English breakfast. Toast with tea, please!!. We were in a rush to go to the train station. We quickly said good bye and caught the 10 o'clock train just in time....we made it "phew".

The present from the houses of  Lords and Commons
to Queen Elizabeth for her 60th jubelee

We are staying in Notting Hill near the Portobello Market and Steven and dad went shopping and met a nice woman -Elizabeth- who was born and lived in Zimbabwe and who was now living here in London and worked as an event organizer at the Westminster Palace - Houses of Parliament. In school we were learning about democracy, monarchy and government. Elizabeth offered to show us around in Westminster Palace and parliament. We met her and her daughter Cloe and she knew so much about all the rooms. Amazing stories about Westminster Hall where only special people are allowed to speak. We saw the name of Nelson Mandela, where the Queen dresses and uses the toilet when she opens Parliament every year in May, about the 6 wives of Henry the VIII (divorced-beheaded-died-divorced-beheaded-survived), about the Black Rod and why the Queen cannot go into the House of Commons and of course the House of Lords and the House of Commons. We had seen the Prime Minister - David Cameron walking the first day in London and now we saw where he sits and we touched the beautiful box from where he speaks in Parliament (a gift from New Zealand). Elizabeth gave us an amazing tour. We also saw the Big Ben which is part of the Westminster Palace and the Westminster Abby, the cathedral where Kate and William got married last year. Afterwards we went to see Jan Krekel at the Dutch Embassy where we had drinks and bitterballen.

THE BIG BEN!!!! With Elizabeth and her daughter Cloe

Loes