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.

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. ;)