After Mexico comes Costa Rica.....

Today we watched the game Holland - Mexico outside on the patio of restaurant MT Bellies in Welland. It was an exciting game all the way till the final minutes and the boys in orange moved on to the quarter finals. Costa Rica here we come....

Inside the restaurant there were about 40-50 Dutch Canadians cheering....

Ready for coming Sunday...

Somewhere in Canada this house has the colors showing.....

We are ready for Sunday's show-time with Mexico. May the best team win! Go "oranje"!!

Canadians cheering the Dutch team

The family of my wife Mary got together last weekend to celebrate the graduation of our daughter Hilary from McMaster University. We had some photos taken of all of us and we started off with all  of us in orange to support the Dutch team at the World Cup.....

Mary's younger brother Joe wearing one of the Holland shirts.....

Mary's parents Joe (Jos) and Mary (Marie) who emigrated to Canada from Holland in the early fifties from two small villages in the province of Brabant. They grew up about 10 kilometers from each other in Holland but only met when they both lived in Oakville, Ontario in Canada.....

Their five grand-children including our Hilary and Mark.

World Cup fever at Niagara College Canada

Today the World Cup (soccer/football) started in Brazil and the 40 or so Brazilian students at Niagara College were ready for the game! Among the audience at the college not a single Canadian......

The game started off not so good for the Brazilians when Croatia scored the first goal.....

But when the Brazilian start player Neymar equaled the game, there was lots of noise....

And across the country in British Columbia at the College of the Rockies a similar scene.....

Tomorrow three games and one of them is Holland versus Spain. It was the final game of the World Cup in South Africa in 2010. I am hoping for the reverse score this time....

So proud.....

What a proud day today. Hilary walked on stage to be "hooded" during the graduation ceremony of the 2014 class of the McMaster University School of Nursing. She now holds a Bachelor Degree of Sciences in Nursing, and she worked hard to get it. As parents you hope that you steer them in the right direction and then you coach & mentor when possible. I look forward to see what Hilary will do with her career from here. On Monday June 16 she starts a 5 month full-time contract at the hospital in Niagara Falls in the emergency room. Good luck, girl!

Not super clear, but there she is on the stage being welcomed in the esteemed group  of people who can call themselves nurses. And here is the amazing woman without whom none of this would ever have happened: Mary Georgina Nolle Vandenboom.  Way to go, Mom!

Colombia project update

Sandra Castaneda - with whom I worked closely together during all of 2013 in Colombia - attends our annual ACCC conference (note: ACCC = Association of Canadian Community Colleges is as of today renamed to "Colleges & Institutes Canada). Today all EFE (Education for Employment) programs that are administered by ACCC/CIC in Senegal, Mozambique, Tanzania, 12 Caribbean island states, Bolivia, Peru and Colombia were presented today during one of the work sessions at the conference.

When it was time to present the work we are doing with SENA in Colombia it was time for Sandra and one of  her Canadian colleagues to give an update. A few photos of what was presented:

By now three of the four sub-projects in Colombia are started by College of the Rockies (BC), the Saskatchewan Institute for Technology SIAST and College Montmorency (Quebec). It is great to see the progress being made since I left in December....

So nice to have some time together again, Sandra! Un abrazo!!

Sunshine in Ottawa

Greetings from Ottawa where I am for five days around the annual ACCC conference (Association of Canadian Community Colleges). Started today with a nice morning walk past Parliament Hill where the Canadian government has its headquarters. It is located on the hill side overlooking the Ottawa river.

Across the river is the Civilization Museum, one of my favorites in the world. To the right one of the old bridges across the river connection Ottawa in Ontario with Hull in Quebec. It is a beautiful area.

As a pre-conference session I  attended a presentation on distance education offered from Canada at partner institutions and organizations in India. Very interesting developments with today's technology. The coming three days will be the conference...