Oddity

Rode my bike to school today. School really isn't that far, riding my bike to school shouldn't be a big deal. It kind of is though, I'm not accustomed to riding a bike... My legs were already tired halfway there and old people on bicycles were passing me. Cool stuff. And I tried to get hit by a few cars. On the way home was much better. Didn't jump in front of any cars. Didn't get passed by any old people.  Really the only reason I took my bike today is because I woke up at the exact time class was starting, so I felt the need to hurry. I've guess I've been finding excuses to avoid my bike all week... Riding a bike around here is scary stuff, give me a break.

So oddly enough, I think my favorite two classes for this 6 weeks are going to be Intercultural Communications and Oral Presentations.  Those were the ones I was dreading most (along with intro to research skills, but that one turns out to be just as bad as it sounds).  My intercultural communications teacher is from New Zealand, she's very amusing, it's a huge class (I think a combination of several classes) and apparently we're just going to spend the term talking about cultural differences in communication habits (I guess maybe you can get that from the name of the class). Does not sound too bad to me.  Oral presentations... That one sounded horrible to me. We have to come up with a thing to research and give a presentation about, like a business presentation type of thing, on a product, company or research. I'm not sure why that class sounds so interesting to me but it does.

I can't wait for winter. I like cold weather.  Well, I like sweaters and hot chocolate and coming in from the cold and snuggling up in bed at night with a big blanket.  Too bad the weather here is so mild. Mild summers, mild winters, you don't see much of the extremes. During my introduction week, we had a little seminar to learn about the Netherlands (it was nothing I didn't already know though) and the teacher for that told us that if ever, during our stay here, they actually host the elfstedentocht (eleven cities tour) we have to skip school and go. The elfstedentocht is this thing they have in the northern part of the country, when all the rivers, canals and lakes freeze over enough that the ice is suitable for skating. They have a speed skating match and a leisure skating tour both of which follow the same course which goes through eleven cities in Friesland. The course itself is about 120 miles long. The last time the ice was suitable enough was 1997. Who knows if I could afford to miss school anyway, but I just thought it was funny that one of our teachers even, was telling us to skip school for it.

Today I am going to the post office to mail round one of post cards, and then I'm going to go to the store and buy instant noodles because even if they're not the same as the ramen noodles that I love, they're still noodles and noodles sound so good right now.