Update: Sunday 21 Jul

Hi! I've been posting a lot this week, but that's because I've been doing a lot this week. 

First of all, happy birthday Aunt Leslie!

Okay. Good. Yesterday, I had to go downtown to try to get my phone account finally switched over to my own name and bank account. And I was successful. Or at least, that's what the guy at the store said. The general overview online has Jenn's mother's name, and her address, but my email address and client number, and when you click to get more details, it has her mother's full address, client number, etc. But it has my bank account. I'm confused. I don't know, maybe it will fully update later. I'm just happy it is switched to my bank account so I don't have to keep paying Jennifer so that she can pay her mother. Because that is confusing. Especially since her mother doesn't live with them anymore.

Another thing I did when I was downtown yesterday was visit the Bijenkorf. Bijenkorf means beehive, and I feel that it is very appropriately named. I had never been to one until yesterday, so I thought it was kind of cool to look at. De Bijenkorf (according to wikipedia) is a "chain of high-end department stores in the Netherlands" and there are 12 of them total. The oldest and largest ones are in Amsterdam, The Hague and Rotterdam. It is basically like a mall, except there is no divider between shops. They are all just one big shop. I think the one in The Hague that I went to yesterday is 5 or 6 storeys. It's right in the city center and I've walked past it a million times but I do know of it as a very expensive place to shop, which is why I never went in.

I took some pictures.

This, I just thought would interest my momma. There is a Nespresso store in the Bijenkorf. It's like any other Nespresso store I've been to. You take a number and wait for it to show up on the screen and then you tell them what kinds of coffee capsules you want and they punch the order into the computer for you and then pull the boxes out of the slots on the wall behind the counter. Most other Nespresso stores I've been to also have coffee tasting and machine demonstrations but I was too distracted by other things to pay it much mind.

Um, that was the floor I spent the most time on because it had the kitchenware and I love that stuff. 

Anyway, after that I went to Albert Heijn to get peas because I had a random craving and decided that I would have peas for dinner, and I just happened to glance at the Coke bottle display they had out. 

I have not purchased any soda-like beverage since December 30, 2012 but I have been looking so hard for my name on a bottle and had given up all hope of finding it. I almost cried.

Anyway, now I have to go. London is calling~

Update: Thursday 18 Jul

Hi. Like I said in my last post, yesterday was moving day. I thought I would introduce you to two of my new housemates.

This is Theory. He is… kind of stupid. But very cute. He followed me around all day yesterday. Every time I pet him he would start headbutting my leg and demanding more. He likes back scratches.

This is Gaddafi. I avoided him yesterday, he was in his cranky mood. Gaddafi has cancer. He's super friendly and super cuddly but sometimes (like yesterday) his cancer is really painful and all he does is hiss and bite (not hard, though).

As you can see, I couldn't avoid him for very long. I was trying to get some of the mess cleaned up in my room and get some things put away, and sat down on the bed with my laptop to take a break. Gaddafi comes wandering in, climbs in my lap and starts rolling around on my computer. He closed every program I had open, then opened a few new ones, and renamed all of the files on my desktop. He is apparently very skilled at computers. I wasn't sure how to get him off because I didn't want to hurt him but eventually he went off on his own.

Then he curled up next to me like this. I miss having cats around…

Update: Tuesday 16 Jul

Hi! I'm moving tomorrow. I'm not sure if you knew that. I have a key to a new place and when I picked it up, I told Amber "um, so I guess I'm moving in… tomorrow." Yeah, surprise! They didn't know that. It's strange though. I've mostly finished packing, and everything is so empty. Except the kitchen and living room and bathroom, because Alicia will be back. I just decided I don't want to be here when she comes back. I'm going to write her a letter and leave it on the table.

So, it's really hot. Not really. I think it got up to 75F today. I walked to the new apartment to get my key in that heat. It's a 40-45 minute walk, I was baking. When I came home I put on a dress, but I have to change back into my jeans to go to a movie tonight because I don't have any shoes to go with a dress… It's just that, I was trying to pack and stuff and it was impossible to do that while sweating in my clothing. You probably think I'm crazy, and exaggerating a lot. I'm just really not used to it being so humid and so warm at the same time. Plus, I think I was built for cold weather. It agrees with me.

Anyway, I'm kind of proud. I haven't gone food shopping since the beginning of the month, partly because I wanted to save money for London (leaving in five days, yay!) and partly because I didn't want to have to haul a bunch of food to my new apartment. The fridge is almost empty, it shouldn't be too bad.

Oh, yeah. I remembered that I was supposed to tell you about that grill-your-own barbecue thing we did. It's kind of a funny story, really. First they brought us the grill, which was this cute little table barbecue. I assumed it would be charcoal but it looked like there was wood in there as well… I said before that I wouldn't be able to tell you what kind of meats they had because we were going to be getting the vegetarian meal. Well, we told them a million times that we want the vegetarian version (including in the reservation email) but they still brought out a tray that was… well… Not vegetarian. It had these two sausages (one for each of us), two ground beef patties, two skewers of chicken, and two whole shrimps (legs, tails and heads included). Oh, and maybe 4 or 5 little chunks of bell pepper.

Jenn told them we had asked for the vegetarian meal and they tried to argue with us that we were supposed to have told them before, etc. But we did, so they have no excuse. They brought back the proper tray, which honestly would have looked a lot tastier even if I were still eating meat. It had two pumpkin burgers (they had onions and walnuts and maybe chickpeas in them? I don't know, delicious), two halves of corn, two giant portabellas with a spinach blue cheese mixture in them, a huge pile of eggplant, bell pepper and zucchini slices, and two tomatoes stuffed full of olive tapenade. Since Jenn and I are silly people, instead of separately cooking each of the things and eating our own, we split everything in half. And I guess Jennifer is even sillier because she wouldn't handle the tongs on the grill, she let me do all that. They also brought us some garlic in oil, with a grill brush. After the first portabello mushroom, we decided that the blue cheese was entirely unnecessary and got rid of it. Besides, we couldn't cook it on both sides when it had that stuff in it. I still don't like eggplant, but luckily we got an unfair share of eggplant (there was only one little slice) in comparison to the amount of peppers and zucchini. We did cook and taste the eggplant but neither of us cared for it… Everything else on that tray was delicious. Including the cole slaw that I forgot to mention. I always have hated cole slaw. This cole slaw was tolerable though.

That was our grill-your-own barbecue experience. It was pretty fun, and really good, but if it hadn't been for that special deal we got it would have been expensive (the menu said €19.90 for one person. We got it for €12.50 for two. Good deal).

Yesterday Jenn and I went to a movie, and after the movie we wandered around town a little. There is this kind of park called Lange Voorhout, and they tend to have exhibitions and host parties there. My school's start of the year party was there. Anyway, this week they are doing some kind of art exhibition, they have all of these sculptures that were done by Russian artists. We walked through and looked at everything, there were some that were very cool. I didn't get a lot of pictures but I did get a few. Sorry, I don't know the names of the artists or the pieces.

Okay. There were two gates and two arches by this guy. I don't remember exactly what it said, but it was something about how the artist likes to make gates and arches that aren't connected to a fence, just a gate that leads from nothing, to nothing, through nothing. It had something to do with the unknown. That was a very obscure description, sorry. In the background, you can barely see a big ball of what looks like paper scraps. They're strips of metal that are woven around to look like a giant senseless mess. They have words written on them, but since they're cut in strips you can't read any of them. The description said something about how the artist was criticizing the way people talk about art.

This artist apparently makes a lot of statues of people, animals and objects breaking through walls. I don't know why. It was the first one we looked at, I read a lot of descriptions after that.

My favorite was one I didn't get a picture of. It had a bunch of empty oil barrels stacked on top of each other. When you looked at it from the front, you could see that the five in the middle had no top or bottom, and they were the colors of the Olympic rings. Behind them, there was a really pretty landscape. It was meant to make a statement about the 1980 Olympics, which were hosted in Moscow. During those Olympics, the city looked beautiful. But as soon as all the foreign athletes and spectators left, the city fell back into its state of despair.

Anyway, I just looked it up and this website says the sculptures will be up in the park until September, and then they will go to the museum in Scheveningen (the beach section of The Hague) that is hosting the whole thing, until October. I'll have time to get more pictures later.

This is long, so let's just call it quits.

Update: Wednesday 10 Jul

Good evening! Uh, afternoon. Or is it morning? Well, whenever you are reading this. I don't have much to say. I'm hanging out in an empty apartment. My jalapeno seeds came up, but I planted a lot. Knowing that when they sprouted I'd have to pick which ones I want to pluck out of there. Now I don't know how long I should wait to start plucking… There are probably fifteen little sprouts. They are very cute. I would show you a picture but… wait, I think I can dig up a recent one.

Found one. You can pretend my floor isn't really dirty. I promise I vacuumed after I took that picture. Unfortunately when I watered the lettuce shoots, they fell over and the roots weren't deep enough to stay in. They all dried up and died… I cleaned them out and planted new ones—fewer, because I realized that they grow very well—deeper in the soil like they were supposed to be to begin with. Those jalapeno sprouts are so cute. I hope they don't die.

I made a mushroom soup for dinner tonight because all I had was a ton of mushrooms, plus some celery and onion. I'll have you know that I hate celery, but I eat it because I can.

It's a bit difficult to take a picture of steaming hot soup… The steam kind of gets in the way of the camera… This was extremely delicious. The recipe I followed (very, very loosely) suggested serving it with wild rice and I was very sad because that sounded like a great idea, but I haven't been able to find wild rice.

I emailed Ian several days ago to ask when I would be getting my keys. He didn't respond, so I intended to email his mother today. I want to move in on the 17th and that will be very hard to do if I don't have the keys because Ian and Amber are unavailable for whatever reason. I forgot to email her today, so I'll have to do it tomorrow if I don't forget again. 

Jenn and I are going to this fancy cook-your-own barbecue restaurant on the beach tomorrow for lunch. We payed for it months ago (it was half-price, and Jenn also had a €5-off coupon, so it was only €6 apiece instead of €17.50) and we have reservations. I guess they have little grills on each table and they bring you raw foods on skewers. Maybe they'd bring whole steaks and fish too, but that doesn't really apply to us so we may never truly know. I assume we'll just be getting veggie skewers, but I haven't been yet. I'll let you know later. ;)

Update: Friday 28 Jun

Hi. I just wanted you to know that Alicia leaves in two days (Margaux left a week ago) and since she is only here for a little longer, she has decided that she can be a bigger slob than she normally is. I am avoiding the kitchen as much as possible so I don't have to look at the disgusting state of the counter, stove and sink. I thought I would be lonely after the two of them left but… Ugh, can you leave sooner please? Good riddance.

I'm just kind of tired of feeling like I'm an unwanted guest in my own home. She acts like this is her apartment more than anyone else's apartment and therefore she can do whatever she wants, whenever she wants. Like, thanks for asking me if you could have a party until 2am when I have classes the next day at 8am (no wait, it wasn't supposed to be a party. It was "I'm having some friends for dinner tonight, just to let you know" but dinner doesn't start until 10pm, it involves a lot of alcohol and no cleaning up after yourself, and ends in a late visit to the club, after which you sleep in until 2pm and then go to class, still without cleaning your disaster in the kitchen). Or, no I don't mind if your brother comes to stay for two weeks in July, and I definitely don't mind that I don't get a choice in that matter, and that you didn't tell me about it until after it was a done deal. And I really appreciate that you leave your shampoo and soap bottles scattered all around the shower floor all of a sudden, when for the entire last 9 or 10 months we've all always put them back on the shelf after our shower. I also like it when you put on loud music in your bedroom and then leave the door open so you can hear it while you go across the hall and cook and eat dinner in the kitchen—yet when I'm in the kitchen with music on, you make it a point to come close the door so you can't hear it. Also, if it weren't for the huge pile of dirty dishes in and around the sink and the food caked onto the counter and stove, I'd probably forget you are here so thank you for the reminder.

I'm a little bitter. I don't know if you noticed that. I shouldn't be, because I should be just grateful that she leaves in two days and I don't have to deal with all of that anymore. But I'm not sure how I will even survive the next two days.

She is leaving in two days, but she is not turning in her keys. This is so that her brother can come crash here for two weeks in July, and then in August right before our lease ends she will come back to take the last of her stuff and make sure everything is clean. Since I'm hoping to be moving out on the 17th of July, I figured that I will throw out any dishes that she and I both don't want and just leave what she wants in the apartment for her to take in August. So I asked her yesterday if before she leaves she could put her things in a separate spot so that I know what not to throw out. By separate spot, I was kind of thinking "in your own cupboard space" but already yesterday afternoon she went and separated all of the dishes into two piles—what she wants and what she doesn't. Problem with that is that I don't know which is which. So I guess if she doesn't solve the problem before she leaves, after she leaves I'm going to scrub out her cupboard (it's kind of nasty… wait, really nasty) and then put what I assume is her stack of things in her cupboard. I'm thinking it'll be obvious which is hers, but in the event that it's not obvious she cannot go blaming me because she should have thought of that before she made it so ambiguous. I feel that she misunderstands me every time I try to talk to her about things, so I don't think there's really any point in asking her to do anything differently. Typically she either misunderstands, or gets really defensive. Mostly, I'm tired of having to deal with it and I don't feel like going to the trouble of trying to talk to her. She'll just have to suffer the consequences.

That's kind of all I had to say today. I just needed to let off a little steam. Sorry that my post wasn't more exciting, and I haven't been posting a lot lately. I guess I could come up with some things to talk about that don't involve Alicia.

Well, like I mentioned before, Margaux left last Saturday. She had quite a few things that wouldn't fit in her bags and she didn't want to throw them out, so I offered to keep some stuff. One of those things was a twin-sized duvet. I know, I just bought a queen-sized one that I will use when I move to my new apartment because it has a bigger bed. But it has a loft bed, and under the loft bed is an extra twin-sized bed, so now I have a blanket for it in case I have someone over, I guess. The only blanket I've had all this time is the really crappy one from DUWO and I intended to get rid of it because it's terrible. Now I have a replacement. Margaux also left me a bit of food; yesterday I had lentils for the first time in my life. Not bad. Unfortunately she left me a bag of flour, and Nora also gave me a bag of flour… Now I have four bags of flour. What am I going to do with four bags of flour?

I bought some seeds (loose-leaf lettuce and jalapeno) and I'm trying to grow things, I guess we'll see if that works. As it is, I have a very happy basil plant which I rarely use, a decently happy chive plant which I also never use, an orchid that I need to find food for, a mini-tree that belongs to Nora and I am plant-sitting for the summer, and a gerber daisy that I bought at IKEA. I think the daisy is pretty happy too but I can't tell. I've tried planting lettuce in my pots before and the roots always deteriorate. I'm not sure how that happens, but it's made me sad and it's happened three times now. So I decided to try seeds. Maybe they will be more successful. Maybe they won't… I guess I don't care. Maybe lettuce just can't grow in a pot. Maybe there are insects or something that is eating at the roots…

My grades aren't all in yet, but I think I have 45 out of 60 first year credits, and 65 out of 80 total credits. I think I'm okay. We will be getting our "non-binding study advice" next week and then if we don't like it, we can go argue it to the examination board. Then after that comes binding study advice. If binding study advice says you shouldn't continue with the program, then you aren't allowed to. Legally, if you have less than ⅔ of the first year credits, you will receive negative BSA. I have more than ⅔ so I think I will be getting provisional BSA, meaning that I have one additional year to make it positive. That just means I have to get those 15 extra first year credits that I missed out on. It means I didn't pass every class, and it means I screwed up… But I'm hoping it means I'll still have a chance to make it up to myself. I don't want to go home yet.

Update: Wednesday 5 Jun

Hi!

So today my hair was cooperating nicely, and it's so warm out (ha, ha. By that I mean 70F) that I wanted to wear this nice dress that Mommy bought me in Ocean City, Maryland. I decided I look nice today. But there are no roommates in the nearby vicinity, so I had to take pictures with my webcam… for you. Because you don't get to see my face often enough, I think. ;)

So I kind of still look terrible anyway, but I feel overwhelmingly happy sometimes about my weight-loss progress. Then I start feeling like I should cry or something. I love walking around downtown, or even walking to school, because I walk past all these massive store windows that are very reflective, and then I can't help but keep looking at my reflection and marvelling at how far I've come. That's probably not a healthy thing to keep focusing on, but it just feels good to know that I'm not overweight anymore. Really, my BMI is finally in the "healthy weight" range, although I know BMI is often terribly inaccurate. I haven't been this weight since I was 16 years old, maybe even before that. I wish I had some decent "before" pictures, but if you've known me all that time, maybe you don't need it. I think over the summer I am going to start going out for a few hours on my roller blades, or at least go jogging a bit, and see how much better we can do with that. It's hard to motivate myself to do even more when I've already had this much success just by eating better, but I do know that there's only so much that diet controls and it's probably time to step it up a bit.

So uh, anyway. Yesterday I made this terribly not-exciting meal that was very yummy regardless of its simplicity. It's just quinoa seasoned with only salt, and steamed veggies. They'd have been roasted veggies, but it's so hard to roast veggies without an oven… Margaux has two friends visiting from France and Alicia had told Margaux a while back that she wants to try ratatouille. I never really liked ratatouille (just because I really dislike eggplant) but she asked if I wanted to join them and I said sure, why not. So tonight we're having ratatouille, and I have leftover quinoa to eat with it. I'm going to be very sad when I run out of quinoa…

Hanna emailed me this morning and suggested that Amber and I come visit her some time in August while Ian is in the Middle East, so that we can complete the tax forms that she will need us to sign. But uh… I guess I have no reason to say no to that, I'm sure a weekend or something in Belgium would be nice. I guess one day I should tell these people I don't eat meat…

Update: Monday 3 Jun

Hello!

Okay. So I'm a silly person and I've already allotted all of this month's budget out so I have nothing left. Granted, I haven't actually spent it yet, I have just already planned where it's going. Well, I have €110 left. €30 is for the market later this month (I'll probably have a little of that left over), €40 is for IKEA (Yeah. Need a flowerpot. Flower pots are only a euro, I can afford it. Oh, and I need a Queen sized duvet for the duvet cover my Mommy bought me. They have one I like for €30. I also want a new pillow. Feather pillow. I'm so spoiled, eh?), and the last €40… Well, I lied. It's not all planned already. That last bit is for whatever I want to use it for. Or my phone bill. Whichever comes first. I also still have €50 of this month's budget that I didn't put in my account yet (it's in savings) because I'm hoping I can save €50 every month to have for… Well, did I mention I'm going to London in July? To save for special occasions or moments of need, I suppose.

I made fajitas for dinner. I really like fajitas. They had mushrooms and onion and red pepper, and also some avocado, green onions, lettuce and tomato as toppings. They were good fajitas. I bought an 18-pack of large tortillas at the Asian supermarket (who'da thunk it…) and they are much much better than the tortillas in the glorified "Mexican food" section of Albert Heijn. To be fair, the Asian supermarket does have a lot of "foreign" foods besides just Asian stuff. I can get worcestershire sauce and American cake mixes and big boxes of baking powder/soda. I don't know why, apparently those are not things one uses in the Netherlands. Typically if you want baking soda around here, you should probably look at the drug store or pharmacy. You can get baking powder in the stores, in little packets that contain about a tablespoon. Also, it took me forever to find cocoa powder. Hint: it's not in the baking section. It's in the coffee section. Next to the Nesquik.

I also bought a cantaloupe at the market last week. It's a cute cantaloupe… I know that makes no sense, but if it helps at all it's also tasty. Remind me not to buy Spanish strawberries at the market ever again. They were okay on day one (okay, but not delicious), but they got icky pretty quickly. Moldy strawberries. The Dutch strawberries I had were much sweeter. And just generally more yummy.

So I'm halfway done with the things that are due this week. One deadline was today, another is tomorrow so we spent all day working on it. Friday, the other two are due. That's for writing class and European Business Management Review. Writing class involves three essays (a summary, a news article and an argumentative paper, 500 words each) and a reflection on each essay (400 words each). If I wanted, I could be done with those tomorrow but I'm super lazy. I've already done the essays, I don't feel like doing reflections on my work. I really should work on things though, so I'll probably work on EBMR because that's a 25 page business management review… Which I'm halfway done with. It's group work, but I've done most of it… And Sabine did most of the research paper that is due tomorrow, so I guess we're even.