This morning I woke up to find barrels of plump snowflakes tumbling from the sky. My little floating home is covered in blankets of the stuff, and the canal is a thick frozen slushy, as white as white can be. I could not wait to get out amongst it this morning, to feel the crunch of the snow beneath my rain boots. All this snow has lifted my spirits tremendously. The haze of exhaustion suddenly doesn’t seem as impenetrable, my body not as stiff. My camera though, is on its last legs – it’s been playing up for a few weeks but I have been willing it to work, desperately needing it to to get me through to the deadline. It will only work if I use the shutter release cable, and as awkward as that is to walk around with, it hasn’t stopped me taking these photos this morning, with clumsy gloved hands…

oh, I am a happy girl when it snows.

inside.

outside.

A couple of weeks ago, Romain and I had the pleasure of having lunch at my favourite Indonesian restaurant in Amsterdam with my great uncle Roel who I had not seen in 15 years. Oom Roel lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, but he is Dutch-Indonesian, and grew up both here in Holland and Indonesia. Over our long lunch of rijs tafel – a Dutch-Indonesian speciality – he shared stories from his childhood, and told me things about my Opa that I never knew.

Oom Roel’s mother – my great grandmother  – was half Indonesian, half Scottish. She spoke many languages and she traveled the world regularly, even in her nineties. As a child I was so inspired by her, and I felt somehow deeply connected, even though I’d only met her a handful of times. During lunch, oom Roel gave me a letter that his sister-in-law had been saving for me all these years. It was a letter that I had written to my great-grandmother when I was just 8 years old. As soon as I took the letter out of the envelope I had the most vivid memories of the paper. But the content of this letter is what captured my heart the most. To my delight I discovered that even “sometimes” wishes can come true…