Thomas was born on the 7th of April at 11.25h. We went home as a new family on the 8th of April, but unfortunately late at night Thomas developed a fever and we had to take him back to the hospital. Since the doctors didn’t want to take any chances they immediately started a seven day course of antibiotics. After three days however they found no evidence of an infection in Thomas blood and blood cultures. Antibiotics were stopped and after another day of observation we were allowed to go home.
It was not the start we hoped for and seeing the only two days old Thomas hooked up to all the monitors and an IV in his tiny hand made us feel quite helpless. Luckily all is well now and Thomas is doing great!

The last year was a year filled with different experiences. The year started with Adrienne leaving for an internship at Philips Hong Kong for almost five months. During that time I went to Orlando Florida for a conference followed by a month long visit to Bremen Germany at Fraunhofer MEVIS, my employer. Towards the end of Adrienne’s stay in Hong Kong I went to visit her there, and we went for a trip around Malaysia together.
After Adrienne came back from Hong Kong I left for a survival trip in Kloten, Sweden with Arjen and his brother in law. I finished my PADI open water course in July in Zeeland and a few weeks after that me and Adrienne went together with Thorsten on a diving trip in Egypt, I completed my PADI advanced open water course there and saw an amazing underwater world. Right after that trip we found out that Adrienne was pregnant!
Somewhat later I spent a weekend in the Ardennes in Belgium with my colleagues. Adrienne and me moved to ‘s-Hertogenbosch in September and in the middle of the mess I had to go to Toronto for another conference and I visited the Niagara falls. In November I went to Chicago to present my research at the RSNA conference, the biggest conference in the world. And as you could have read in the previous post on my blog, we ended the year with a trip to the enchanting Marrakech, Morocco.

It has been an incredible year, with many travels and experiences. For sure even bigger adventures are ahead of us, with Adrienne due in the beginning of April, I am sure it will be a year with even greater adventures… I’ll keep you updated!

We found a nice hotel in the Medina (the old city center) of Marrakech. The city center is a maze of narrow alleys filled with shops that are almost as small as the bathroom on our RyanAir flight. Each shop packed to the ceiling with colorful goods, smelly herbs, metal lamps, or wooden boxes and viscously overseen by an obtrusive salesman. The street scenes in Marrakech bear an uncanny resemblance to the Fata Morgana in the Efteling, well, apart from the big ugly giant in his underwear.

Marrakech is a great place for taking pictures, the scenes in the streets are incredibly interesting, but unfortunately most of the inhabitants don’t want to be on the pictures. They cover their faces with magazines, scarfs, dishes or anything they can find. It is also not unlikely that they get mad and shout some insults at you. Some harassed me for money after I took their picture. I even saw a person run after a woman demanding that she delete the picture she took of him from her camera. Luckily a small number of people didn’t seem to mind the camera and continued their work.

If you are not bothered too much by aggressive salesmen, if you don’t mind being led astray if you ask for the way and if you drive a hard bargain and are keen on haggling I can very much recommend Marrakech. We had a great time there, and I took some incredible photographs there as well. I hope you enjoy them.

PS a few of the pictures are taken in Essaouira, a place at the coast where we spent one day.