Ed,  Daday,  Anjulie van den Berg

De Achtkant 25

1852 BV  Heiloo

Netherlands

Tel: 31-(0)72 – 532 2818

E-mail:   edberg51@planet.nl

29 December 2005

Dear family and friends,

 

The trees held on to their leaves quite long this year. In fact the trees across our house only lost them two weeks ago during a storm. In the Netherlands, 2005 is one of the warmest years on record. The ten warmest years since 1901 all occurred after 1988. Worldwide 2005 is one of the 4 warmest years since 1861.  You see, the major themes at the annual Dutch physics teacher conference last week were climate and energy, about ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland, ocean currents, etc. Fascinating physics and increasing precision of models, but let’s turn to our life in Heiloo.

 

Anjulie broke her leg during a soccer game and took her final Dutch national exams for secondary schools with her leg in a cast two weeks later. She passed her exams but has not been able to play soccer for eight months now. She will have to wait until the screws are taken out early January but afterwards she might opt for another sport (basketball?) anyway. She chose to study cultural anthropology at the University of Amsterdam but is now considering switching to health sciences (not medicine) at the Free University (Ed’s Alma Mater).

 

While Anjulie had a forced vacation from sports, Daday was the most active sports person in the family with aerobics twice a week and much bicycling to get around in Heiloo and sometimes in Alkmaar. She continued volunteering in the third world store but also misses physics teaching. She still loves cooking so there’s always ready dinner when Ed and Anjulie arrive home. Our garden also gets enough attention from her.

 

As you might remember, Ed shifted to Utrecht University in 2004 amongst others to assist in setting up a new program for gifted 11th and 12th graders. The students take all science courses in their curriculum at the university 2 days per week and all other subjects are taken at their own secondary school (3 days/week). An exciting program, however, the commuting (1 hr 50 minutes one way) turned out to be very taxing. For various reasons we decided to stay in Heiloo and so the job had to move. Luckily Ed could shift to the University of Amsterdam to work in other interesting national projects such as involvement in the development and field trials of a new national physics curriculum and the organization of an international physics education conference in 2006.

 

Our colleagues in the Philippines continued their inspiring work. Another batch of 35 students graduated. The characteristic features of our teacher education program there continue such as Science Exhibitions and Science Theater. Over 160 alumni are now teaching in the Philippines and about 5 abroad. The PhD work of our Philippine colleagues Joy Locaylocay and Malou Gallos was published internationally this year, showing that locally relevant work can get to top journals and that our colleagues are up to that.

 

Once again it was possible to combine vacation with a conference visit. We went to Vancouver, Canada , stayed with Daday’s sister and family, met Ed’s cousins and  94-year young Aunt,  and traveled in scenic BC. We went up Whistler Mountain by cable car, site of the 2010 winter Olympics. One of our memorable experiences during the trip was our 10-km walk and climb to a glacier lake. One of the photos we made is now the background on our computer screen. A magnificent view. Anjulie was so happy to have completed the walk on her barely recovered leg. (Actually Ed and Daday were more worried than her.) Did we hope to meet a bear along the way? It could have been a nice story to tell you, but it could also have been very scary and deadly experience, too. So, no! The only wild life we encountered was black flies. Also beautiful rock formations. However, we were able to hug one stuffy bear in Capilano Park in Vancouver and walked on its spectacular suspension bridge. Of course we did not miss Stanley Park and the Totem Poles. And we were lucky to have witnessed the annual fireworks during the so-called Celebration of Lights, a sort of competition among four countries. (The rest we will tell when you come to visit us.) After two weeks we proceeded to Seattle and had a one night visit with Daday’s Uncle and family she had not seen for 18 years. Then to Salt Lake City for the physics teachers’ conference with side trips to the copper mine and dinosaur park. Beautiful! We were also able to attend the practice of the Mormon Tabernacle choir in their impressive concert hall. We very much enjoyed the warm friendliness of both Americans and Canadians.

 

The Salt Lake City Physics Teaching conference was at the beautiful University of Utah Campus with quite a variety of activities including three lectures by Nobel Prize winners. Daday and Anjulie were able to explore the city but also participated in some conference events.

 

At the end of the year we celebrated the 90th birthday of Ed’s father with a family weekend. Ed’s mother is well on her way to 90 herself (now 86).

We wish all of you a healthy and peaceful 2006. We pray for the many innocent victims of the continuing wars and disasters in several parts of this world. We feel very frustrated that there seem to be no solutions to these problems in sight.

 

Warm greetings from a now cold and snowy (!) Netherlands!

 

Ed, Daday, Anjulie

The Van den Bergs in front of the Blyde Poort Canyon in South Africa 2004. (All our 2005 pictures were always taken by one of us who was then missing in the picture.)