going dutch

So, I have a lot to talk about from before and after my last post. Right now, I am sitting in my room, with the window wide open because it is warm and sunny outside. It’s days like this that make me glad that some of my classes are in the morning, so I can enjoy the few hours of afternoon sun. Although I said it was warm (I’m literally sweating, and I’m only wearing one layer which is super rare), it is only actually 43 degrees. I’m officially used to the weather here.

Last week, I celebrated my 21st birthday. Technically I celebrated the night before my birthday, a little unintentionally. I drank a lot of wine without eating equally a lot of dinner. To make a long story short, I went to my 9:00am class on my birthday, hung over, with a lot of bruises that I still haven’t quite figured out the story on. But, hey, I had fun. For my actual birthday celebration, m some of my new best friends and I went out to all-you-can-eat sushi dinner. We ate SO MUCH FOOD. I was still full the next day. After dinner, we biked the long way home in an attempt to ride off some of the extra sushi rice in order to make room for “gin and titonics.” Earlier, in Brighton, Alex bought this cute little silicone ice cube tray that had icebergs and titanics. Get it? We played catchphrase, because it was my birthday, and I’m glad that other people are almost as enthusiastic about the game as I am. The teams were the Marlee’s and the tough Sara’s. Then everyone headed off to 1-euro beer night, while Justin and I stayed home watching Mad Men (my new favorite addiction?).

I think I might spend too much time watching television shows on the internet when I should be exploring Europe…. I think that my saving grace is the fact that megavideo, the website that hosts much of streaming television, has a 72 minute limit on watching content for free, so I can’t spend all day online.

Although I’m loving Amsterdam, the weather, my bike, wearing so many layers of colorful clothing, I also really miss LA. I eat enough food here, but I constantly find myself fantasizing about eating Eagle Rock food when I’m falling asleep at night. I even have a mental appointment list of all my meals when I get back to LA. When I do leave Amsterdam, I will have a few new friends at various schools in LA or across the country, so hopefully we will all still hang out?

I’m slowly making travel plans, which I should be doing much more quickly. My instructors are already asking questions about our final papers and projects, and I don’t have any travel plans finalized. Right now, I think I am going to Belgium the weekend of March 13th. Easter weekend in the Netherlands is a four day weekend, and I’d like to go somewhere in Spain. Barcelona is the town that most people on my program are going to, but I don’t think I would really enjoy it. I want to go to Valencia, a town on the south-eastern coast of Spain. Unfortunately, my high school Spanish teacher made us memorize the map of Spain with capitals and all the provinces, so I know a lot of places in Spain, but not which ones are fun or nice or weekend travel-friendly. I also want to go to Prague, Italy, Germany, and France. There is a long break in classes at the end of April, so I will hopefully get some of those places then. Germany could also be a weekend trip because it is soooo close. If anyone has suggestions, leave a comment please!? I also don’t know what traveling my Dad and Sami want to do when they visit in June, so hopefully I can plan around that. By the time they visit, I will be an expert on Amsterdam (comparatively at least…)

Speaking of which, this weekend, CIEE is taking us on a day-trip to Groningen, a small university town north of Amsterdam. I am excited to visit another part of the country and do a bit of warm up traveling. We are just going for the day, although there was an overnight option, because Alex’s mom, who so graciously hosted Alex, Justin, and me in London last month, is visiting! It will be good to see her and to be able to show her around a city instead of the other way around.

I really feel like I’ve gained a lot of independence so far on this trip. I’ve officially been in the Netherlands for four weeks. That doesn’t sound like that long, but it feels like forever. I think it’s funny that I feel more independent here, because I rarely do anything on my own. About seven or eight people and I regularly make dinner for each other every night. Last night we joked about how when no one has a plan for when and where dinner will be that night, we feel lost. It’s something that I enjoy because we take turns and it makes every night feel like a dinner party. As a side note, it seems that every night we have a bottle of wine or two with dinner. I don’t know if it’s because we can all legally buy alcohol, or the aforementioned special occasion-ness, but I don’t think this will continue when I get back to the states.

I bought a ten euro coffee grinder about two weeks after getting here, and my friend Anya gave me a French press that had been left to her (she was here last semester as well). It’s been really nice to make myself a fresh batch of coffee on a leisurely weekend morning (read: early afternoon). I feel homey and sophisticated all at the same time.

As a final note for this update, Yesterday, I had a very fruitful trip to the post office. I bought stamps (so if you haven’t received a postcard from me yet, I’ll be able to finally send it out) and a concert ticket to see Girl Talk. Apparently concerts in Europe are way cheaper than in the US. This ticket was only 12 euro instead of like 50 dollars, and I’ve seen festival concerts in the UK for only like 25 Euro instead of more than 100 dollars at home. That concert is on donderdag 19 maart (Thursday, March 18th, for those of you who don’t know Dutch). On the following Monday (23rd), I’m going to a Dutch cultural event put on by CIEE, a concert of the Dutch band Room eleven. Their songs are in English, which is a relief. I’ve searched for them on youtube, and a song hey, hey, hey or something like that sounded cute. They are supposedly popular among Dutch students, but unscientific research has put those claims in doubt.

In addition to all of these exciting happenings, I still have to worry about school. Boo! It takes up more of my time than I was led to believe it would, but it’s pretty interesting. So far, it’s been a lot of reading and then writing about the reading each week. Quite boring, but I’ve actually noticeably improved at the task in the three weeks I’ve been doing it. Oh well, so is life. Also, we had our first Dutch quiz yesterday, and while studying for it, we realized how much we’ve actually learned, but we haven’t really been taught any of it? I’m not sure if that makes sense, but I think I did alright on the quiz.