Update: Saturday 31 Aug

Hi. I have some things to tell you. Or show you. I was going to post a second time yesterday, but I don't like posting twice in one day because of the way I title my posts. It's too confusing. Plus, I don't want people who check daily to not realize that there are two, and miss one.

Anyway. Yesterday I was browsing a food page on the internet, I really like to look at pictures of food. I spend a lot of time doing it. Anyway, yesterday someone posted this picture:

And I thought, it would be fun to make pickles, I should try it… Then I started looking at recipes for pickled vegetables (not just cucumbers but many different things) and I got myself really excited to make pickles. So now there's no avoiding it. Monday when I have money I am going to go to the market and find a bunch of vegetables that can be pickled and I'm going to dump them all in some jars and pickle them. Maybe I can take stuff like that to school for lunch or something. I always have trouble figuring out what to do for lunch.

Anyway, Item Number Two on the list of things to write about today is my bedroom.

I moved in a month and a half ago, but I was gone for a month and lazy for the other two weeks so I didn't really do any arranging or unpacking. When I came home from my vacation, there was cat hair everywhere because Ian and Amber seemed to think that it would be better to let the cat shed all over the place in MY room than in their room. It seemed like it would be a huge pain to deal with, so I just left it for another week.

Today I decided to clean and organize a bit. Now, it's not perfect. I need to buy some things to further organize (Jenn suggested a trip to IKEA but I don't know) but it's as good as it gets for now.

This is my guest bed, I suppose. Along with the washing machine, that table there which is half-full of washing detergents and half-full of my things that need something to organize. That little table where my printer is used to be over by the closet, where it was absolutely no use to me. So I moved it here. Also, I'm very happy that my windowsill is big enough for my plants. I want to also note that I thought for sure that my basil was dead and it is not, in fact, dead. I'll show you that later. Now, it seems to me that it would have made more sense to put a desk underneath the loft bed, because as it is right now I have a guest bed but no desk. That's okay too, I will learn to live without a desk.

My card string and posters, seems that my string is almost full. If anyone wants to send me post cards, I'd be happy to put them up there. I love post cards. :) Even though the birthday and Christmas cards are lovely, I would like to replace them with post cards.

Umm, I don't know why I took a picture of my bed but I did. I also took a picture of my closet area but apparently my phone didn't think it needed to upload that one to my computer, so I can't show it to you because it's not here. Featured on my bed are the nice duvet cover and pillow cases that my mother bought me for Christmas 2011. The bed is very sensitive to movement and squeaks a lot but I pushed it against the wall when I was cleaning today, so I guess we'll see if that made a difference.

Last but not least, Theory the hallway guard. He was a little offended that I was in his face taking a picture…

And I almost forgot to tell you about my basil plant. A week ago, this thing was completely brown. I was going to throw it out and plant a new one now that I am back in town. Imagine my surprise, it starts leafing again. I didn't know it would do that! I am very grateful though, because I was so sad that in leaving for a month I killed the plant I was most proud of. It was so full and green, and now it's struggling to survive. I will remedy the situation though, and next time I leave I will make sure someone will water it. I didn't bother to ask last time…

Amber seems super excited that I am here, and she wants us all to eat dinner together some nights. She is very enthusiastic about making vegetarian meals, last night she dug up a recipe for these zucchini boats stuffed with tomato, onion, garlic, mushroom and cheese, and I helped her make them. They were pretty good, actually. She doesn't really know how to cook and Ian has been teaching her but I guess it's hard for him to teach her because they just end up arguing a lot. So whenever she comes up with a recipe, I supervise while she makes it and last night she asked Ian, "Why is everything so much more complicated when you teach me? I'm learning so much right now!" Anyway, Ian is much less enthusiastic about vegetarian cooking. He snapped at her about it last night, he said he's not ready to make vegetarian food. Oh well. I like cooking and I don't want to eat together every night… Then I'd never have time to make my own things.

Update: Friday 30 Aug

I came home to a new roommate.

This is… Um, well. Not-yet-named Bearded Dragon. She doesn't have a name yet. Amber got her while Ian is gone and she's supposed to be a surprise. It doesn't seem like an appropriate kind of surprise but I guess we'll see what happens. He gets home today or tomorrow.

Anyway, she's a cool dude. She snacks on crickets and grasshoppers and vegetables. Not my kind of meal, but I don't have to eat it so I guess that's okay. She has helped me reaffirm my hatred for bugs. When you take her out of the cage she turns orange and red and yellow. I read that she does that when she is stressed, so I guess it's not a good thing, but it's pretty. Her previous owners didn't care for her very well, so she's not used to being handled so much.

Bearded dragons are expensive pets. Luckily, I don't have to pay for any of it. She's not my pet. I just get the benefits of having her without having to buy tons of crickets. And then take care of those crickets as long they're still alive…

(I know, you probably don't think there are any benefits to having a big lizard in your house.)

ROAR! We should just name her Godzilla.

So… I don't want to sound ungrateful or anything, but I'm really tired of all the attention I've been getting lately… I want to be able to sit at a tram stop or walk down the street without some creeper making kissy noises at me or trying to talk to me. I'm not really sure there's anything I can do about it… I could gain back a ton of weight, and shave my head, and destroy my face? Surely no one could find that attractive. I don't even know how to gain weight… When I got back to The Hague from Jenn's, I was waiting at the tram stop by Centraal Station and this guy starts talking to me. I was trying to act disinterested and stuff but I guess he didn't get it. He kept asking me questions. Then I decided enough was enough when he mentioned my boyfriend, and started ignoring him. Well, I don't have a boyfriend, creepy guy. But I'm sure you are just waiting for me to say so. I should have just told him my boyfriend is on his way, or waiting for me somewhere… Ugh, leave me alone people. Then a couple days ago I was walking to town and there was this guy standing in a doorway, a really old guy too. When I walked by he made kissy noises at me. Most people are a little more subtle with their kissy noises, but not this guy… Leavemealoneleavemealone… Guess I have to adopt a better poker face and ignore them better. Not sure there is any other option.

Update: Tuesday 20 Aug

I don't really know what to write about today, but I thought I'd write anyway because I haven't in a while.

You know, seven years ago when I was an 8th grader trying to decide between taking French or Spanish the next year, you probably never could have convinced me that one day I'd be sitting at a table in a campground in the south of the Netherlands with my Dutch best friend and her Dutch family, listening to them converse in a language that I would never have given a second thought even two years ago, and… understanding. I mean, I don't understand everything but I understand the majority of what is said, and I've learned a lot of new words and phrases in the last three weeks since I've been here.

I guess it just feels strange to me. I never would have imagined that I would be doing what I am doing. I took French because I couldn't take Spanish that first year. I took Spanish because I realized how much I liked to learn languages. I didn't initially plan on taking it much further than just learning them for fun… And I think I take it for granted, because it rarely occurs to me that the fact that not everyone can listen to and understand conversations in not only English but also Spanish, French and Dutch, and sometimes German, and sometimes Italian. And when I read the ingredient labels on food packages (which is something that I do often anyway) and have the option to choose between French or Dutch, it doesn't matter which one I choose because I understand them both just as well.

I start classes again on the 9th of September. I guess it's about time, I guess I'm ready for classes to start.  I have to go tomorrow to Tilburg to meet up with Hanna and sign my apartment contract and some tax forms for her. She works in Tilburg, lives in Poppel. Amber says Ian grew up in Tilburg, so I guess they're actually Dutch. They just choose to live in Belgium. Sure, I guess. Why not.

Umm. That's it. Have a nice week! Bye.

Update: Thursday 1 Aug

Hello!  I just wanted to come here and tell you about my trip to London. Because Jenn and I had an awesome trip to London. We had this goal, before we left, to use the Underground rail system as little as possible. So we walked. A lot. Then after we got there, we made another goal, to eat lunch for no more than £3 a day and dinner for no more than £10 a day.

So we went to London via bus, and it was the most interesting trip. Our bus left Amsterdam at 9:30pm and drove all night. It had two stops (okay, technically three) in Brussels and Gent, where some passengers got off and new ones got on, and in Calais, France where we all had to pile off the bus, go through France's border control, and then through the UK border control for passport checks, and then they shuffled us all onto a ferry for a 90-minute trip across the Channel. Then we got back on our bus and continued on to London from Dover. We arrived in London around 7 or 7:30 in the morning.

Then more fun stuff. We hadn't gotten much sleep all night because, well, sleeping on buses is hard. Our hostel check-in wasn't until one in the afternoon, so we went to the hostel to drop things off and then we wandered all over the place. It was exhausting, but during this week in London we learned just how small London really is when you are willing to walk. We walked from our hostel, about half an hour to King's Cross station, then another 10 minutes to Euston station, and then another half hour to Camden Town. Then we took the Underground (we had a three-times-a-day limit, because one trip on the Tube in central London is about £2 and a full day Underground pass is £7.30) to Covent Garden, and then to Leicester Square, then Picadilly and finally to Green Park and St. James Park around Buckingham Palace. I realize that none of that will make much sense to you if you are not familiar with London, but if you were you would know that on that first day, with less than an hour of sleep, we walked a very long way. And it felt great.

Anyway, that's just an example. Other days we walked from Covent Garden to the far end of Oxford Street and back, from the London Bridge to Westminster to Leicester Square, etc. We did a lot of walking and slept very well every night.

Then there's food. We saw so many places and things that neither of us had ever seen before because we had only ever spent our time taking the Tube from place to place. I didn't know that London had a Chipotle restaurant. What's more, I didn't know that London had… like, 10 Chipotles. We were going to go there, but then we found a local Mexican grill of a similar style and decided to eat local instead. You see, on the first night we went to Pizza Hut (because all-you-can-eat salad bars are not something that are cheap or easily-found in the Netherlands) and the second night we went to Five Guys. I had discovered just a couple weeks before we left that Five Guys opened their first ever restaurant in the UK in London, and told Jenn about it. We decided we had to go… And then we went back another day for lunch (just for cajun fries. Sandwiches don't fall under £3).

So… Yeah. We found this restaurant one night that had delicious portobella burgers. Another night, we found a London chain restaurant that had a really big salad bar (I was craving vegetables, it seemed like the best way to solve the problem). The Mexican grill restaurant that we found was called Benito's Hat, and we went back there another day for lunch as well. When we went for dinner we got burritos… And watermelon martinis, because it was happy hour. And of course, they carded me. Legal drinking age in the UK is 18. I have never been carded in the Netherlands… When we went back for lunch, we got nachos because they were only £3.

As for what we did all week, we mainly did a lot of exploring. Like I said, avoiding the Underground meant that we saw so many things that we had never thought to look for before. We explored the market at Covent Garden. I never even knew there was a market there. We found a Moomin store and bought thermoses, one of the few purchases I made in London. Oh, and on day one in Camden we both bought bags. I had come with a goal to go home with a new bag because my old one was tired. We found Hamley's, an enormous toy store between Picadilly Circus and Oxford Street.

That's my bag. And my thermos. In case you were wondering.

Let's see. We got 2-day London passes and on the first day with the pass we went to… The Garden Museum, the Churchill War Rooms, the Guards Museum, and the Royal Mews, and then we met up with one of our UK friends and his brother to go to the zoo. I love zoos. We dragged them to an vegetarian Indian buffet that night. On the second day with the pass we went to the Kew Gardens because those are beautiful and then the London Bridge Experience & Tombs, which was pretty creepy. The last two days we were in London were scheduled as the free museum days because we're not a big fan of museums anyway and we knew we'd be exhausted. On those two days, we went to the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum.

So… We had a pretty awesome week. On the last day, our bus was meant to leave at 9:30pm again, so we checked out of the hostel early and paid to store our luggage at the Victoria Coach Station (that's where our bus left from) and then at 9pm we happily climbed in the bus to go home. We arrived in Amsterdam at 9 the next morning, took the train to Jenn's where her dad picked us up and brought us to their camping home in the south of the country. So that's where I've been since Monday morning. Yesterday we went into Breda to do some shopping and other than that we've just been hanging out. And… well I would say we've been chilling but it's so hot. It was hot in London too. We thought we would die. Get this: it was between 75 and 85 all week! See? So hot! :P Right now it's approximately 87.8 degrees (I don't know, 31C) and I'm trying to decide how to turn off the sun.

So I think this weekend we are going to Belgium for a day, and some time next week I guess I'll have to go home. I have an apartment key to turn in before the 9th of August. There are seven of us here at the camping house, Jenn, her two brothers, her father, myself, the youngest brother's friend, and Jenn's cousin. Tomorrow Jenn and I are making burritos for dinner. Burritos for seven, yay.