I can't sleep

I should be sleeping right now because it is two in the morning and I intended to get up fairly early tomorrow. I took an hour and a half long nap earlier, big mistake because now I can't sleep.

I really like this apartment that I'm living in. I like the sound of the cars on the street below, and the trams that go by every 15 minutes or so. I like that the sun shines into my window in the morning. I also kind of liked how at 10pm today it was still bright as day out. I definitely liked the fact that even though by noon it was very hot in my room, when I opened the window the nice cool air came in and I didn't have to worry about the heat.

I met the two girls I'm sharing my apartment with today. One of them is from Spain, her name is Isa. I had met her the first day I was here but only for a brief moment. I regret to say that I can't remember the name of the girl from England but she was nice. They were both studying European studies as well, though I think the English girl was only here for the one year. Isa, I'm not really sure about. The English girl offered to give me some clothes hangers and little organization bins that she won't be taking home with her, and those will be nice to have. She is actually leaving Tuesday, so I guess her time as my roommate is particularly short.

While this is a very nice apartment and they are very nice people, I can't wait til August when I get a more permanent apartment with roommates who are new to the town as well. I'm interested in finding out where they are from. There are 3 apartments near mine and I know there are a couple French girls living in one. They were at the little dinner party that they had in my apartment last night.

I should really force myself to sleep. Maybe eventually I'll get tired.

Nederland!

Okay!  16 hours of planes and airports, and a day later, here I am!

I got in to Amsterdam yesterday around 13:30, Jennifer and Tessa and Simona came to pick me up.  So nice of them.  Too bad they had to stand around and wait for me while I tried to find my baggage, I have never seen that many people in the baggage claim area at that airport.  You know, in all the two times I've been there.  Well, it is the summer. I suppose it makes sense.

So, with it being the summer and all, the first day I was here, Friday, it was cold and rainy all day. Tessa cursed at the rain a lot but hey, I like rain. So it's fine by me.  We kind of just did a bit of running around on Friday, nothing horribly important.  They were going to just take me to my apartment that I am sub-renting but since it took so long to get my bags we were behind schedule a bit, and after driving around The Hague we made an about-face and accompanied Tessa to the place where she needed to teach children how to swim.  Yay, swimming lessons!  Eventually I did get to my apartment though, and everything seemed pretty straight-forward about that.  I have very good internet here, too.  This will definitely work well for the next few months.

I was so exhausted last night that I fell asleep at about 9:30, then woke at half past midnight, freaking out. I'm not sure why I was freaking out.  I can't remember. There is really something strange about taking off from Seattle at 4:30 in the afternoon and landing seven and a half hours later at 7:00 in the morning without the sun ever having gone down (I know this because I am pretty sure that the woman across from me on the plane was the only person in the entire plane to leave her window open for the entire flight, and the sun was shining bright and clear through it the entire way.)  Anyway, during those 16 hours of travel I got maybe 10 minutes of sleep, on the very last flight, and only because the cute little boy next to me put his head between his knees and fell asleep and I thought that it looked like it would be nice to sleep too, so I closed my windows for him and then tried to take a little nap myself, but then the flight attendant came over the speakers saying we would be landing in Amsterdam soon and that woke me up right away.  I couldn't help but smile so big as we were landing, I was so excited. I had been waiting patiently to return to Europe for six months!

So today the weather was much nicer, so Simona's boyfriend drove Jenn, Tess and Simona to pick me up, and then took us to Scheveningen, the beach.  And we had a great day!  We went to see 21 Jump Street, which was probably one of the stupidest movies I've seen in quite a while.  It was also enormously hilarious though, so it all paid out.  After that we walked on the beach trying to find somewhere to eat (which we eventually did), ate delicious food, watched Tess and Moon play a couple arcade games, and then we were picked up to go back home. A great day, really! I think in the future it would be useful to have days like this, but that don't involve spending a lot of money.

When I got back to my apartment, my roommates were having a little party.  Not a big deal there, they are a bit noisy but it's not like I'm sleeping at the moment. I can hear a million different languages out there, it's too bad I'm afraid of people or I'd go out there. They did all say hi to me when I came in.  It's okay, I don't want to interrupt their meal.  I think they are all saying goodbye, because the school year is almost over and they are all heading back to their home countries.

I am so happy to be back here. I think I will have a great summer.

Moving Forward

I don't really know what to think right now.  I've got less than two weeks before I leave and I'm ready, but I'm not ready.

I still haven't packed up my room.  I don't really know where to start.  I know, the best place to start is probably in my room, but I don't know where to go after that.  Where do I start?  Or more importantly, where do I end?  Because the last things I pack into boxes here in this bedroom that I've lived in for the last four years, in this house that I've lived in for the past twenty years, will basically be the last things I'll see of the way my life was up until the point that I walk out the door on June 14th.

I'm not scared, or worried, about going to the Netherlands, and living there on my own for a while.  Truthfully, I'm very excited.  The part that gets to me is knowing that I'm leaving my old self, and my old life behind. I can't go back now. I'm not saying that I'm going to want to go back.  Just knowing that I can't is a more difficult concept than I think a lot of people want to accept.  Honestly, I don't see many people who do a whole lot to dramatically change their lives.  I can understand it.  It's not easy to accept that there is really no turning point.  Your experiences make you who you are. You can't take back the experiences that changed your life. All you can do is move forward.

As soon as I can make it through the packing of this dang room, I'll be ready. I'll be ready to move forward and let my life change.  As I said, I'm very excited, and I can't wait.

Priorities.  Before you can change your life, you must pack your bedroom.

This post can title itself.

I have nothing exciting to post about my upcoming move to the Netherlands, so I thought I'd stray from the recent topic a bit...

I was talking to my new friend Taylor (he says he's my friend now) on the subject of... Well, talking to people.

I'm not sure what's wrong with my generation.  I mean, I know there's that popular rumor going around detailing how the current generation is killing the English language with their text speak and horrible grammar.  (Though you can't really say that the older generations have perfect grammar either.)

The thing I don't understand is why every conversation has to start out along the lines of this: "hey whats up?" "nothing much you?" "same." Then if you stray from that even a little, the response is typically in the fashion of: "uhh... right... okay." I don't know, I guess when I ask "what's up?" I literally want to know what is up.  "Nothing much" doesn't really mean anything. Either nothing is up, or something is up.  And I'm willing to bet that something is up, because hardly anyone does absolutely nothing at all.  You would think that maybe if you just ask a more specific question, you'll get a better answer, but even if you were to ask "So what have you been up to today?" you would still get a "nothing much" as a response.

Maybe this is why I have a hard time starting conversations with people.  After the whole "what's up" exchange is finished, people expect you to actually then start in with whatever it was that you originally wanted to talk about with them.  Well, maybe I didn't even have anything in mind.  Maybe I'm just bored and felt like talking to someone, and maybe I was looking forward to your response about what's up to find something to discuss from there.

My friends only talk to me when they want something, maybe this is where the problem lies... They expect me to want something when I go to talk to them, just like they do in talking to me.  I can't just talk to them for the sake of talking to them, the notion of that alone is crazy.  Well, who needs friends like that, anyway?

I gave them my blog link when I first made it.  The blog was intended for family and friends. I thought maybe they'd like to keep up with me or something.  Every single one of them opened the link, told me it looked good, and then never went back.  

Some friends.

The countdown begins...

I was going to wait until tomorrow morning to do this post (after all, it is two in the morning right now) but I decided to open my email program before I went to bed and I had an email from the housing place saying my apartment choice was approved.  Then I randomly became super excited and I'm not sure I can ever go to bed now.

The email says I have to transfer an initial payment to them within one week of receiving the email.  So I guess it's back to the bank for me!  I just finished transferring my package fee (tuition, health insurance, immigration fees and such) last week.  A lot of money.  I've been watching the exchange rate and then became angry at myself because it's lower today than it was when I transferred the money (I transferred it last week because it was the lowest I'd seen in quite a long time. Something about Greece tanking the euro economy and considering pulling out).  I wish I could go back to the same bank I went to before to transfer the package fee because the lady that helped me was very nice, and she was German.  That bank was in Boise though, and I just don't go to Boise too often. Especially when there's a branch here in town.  It was just convenient because we were already in Boise picking Mom up from the airport.

Also, earlier this afternoon I mailed out my immigration forms. They are due on June 15th, so as long as they aren't lost in the mail, and as long as it doesn't take a whole month for registered priority mail to get to the Netherlands, I think I'm good on my time.

So, now I have a place to live. I have my tuition fully paid.  I have a place to stay the two months over the summer, though I'm hoping to find somewhere more ideal. I have a hostel booked for 2 months but I haven't made any initial payments and it's going to be about €400 a month, which is a little on the high end for a room I have to share with 25 other people.  My friend added me to a university buy/trade/sell facebook group though, and I've seen quite a few people offering to rent out their apartments for the summer. I might look into that.  It seems like a much better deal.

I'm leaving in exactly one month!  I am so excited, I can't even contain it.  I'm really looking forward to this.  Now if only my room would pack itself up so I don't have to...

I want my life to be spectacular.

WAKE UP!

I hope people are ready for me to start posting all the time again. At least, I hope I'll be posting all the time when I go back to Europe.

I'm trying to think of what my options will be, when I'm done with school.  I'd like to get a job in Europe so I can stay there long-term.  I think New York or Washington DC would also be interesting options.  I kind of think the UN is looking like the best option for me... I guess I'll see where things go.  I don't really mind taking a bit of extra time to figure this stuff out. I was supposed to be halfway done with college by now but it's okay with me.  I feel a lot better about what I'm doing now than I ever did about my classes at Boise State.

I love spring.  We went to Boise today, dress shopping because Alyssa has prom on Saturday. Last minute, I know. She had a dress, but they dyed it and then washed it and then dried it too long and then rhinestones fell off and then...  Well, they just gave up.  Fine by me, I really didn't like the color they dyed it. Her new dress is purple!  I got a few cute dresses too.  Not expensive prom dresses though. I don't need one of those. I never even went to prom!  Anyway, it rained today. A bit of distant lightning. I love it.

Also, it's weird to think that I'm looking at Mountain Home and Boise for the last time in a very long time over these next couple of months.  Even if I come back to visit in a year, none of my family will be in Mountain Home anymore. Most of my friends are off at random universities.  I'd be up in northern Idaho, where Mom and Dad will be.  I've been thinking that maybe I'll start taking a walk into town every day.  With a dog, a blanket and a book.  And maybe an umbrella, since it's spring.  I can go find a park to lay down and read a book for a while. After all, it only takes about an hour to walk into town...  I could use the exercise and the time out of the house, as could my dog.

I have to start packing up my bedroom. In boxes. Labeling them so they can be put away.  I've lived in this house my entire life. It's very sad to be leaving. I can't really stay forever though, and it will be nice for my parents to have a new house.

The End.  (Not really. More like the beginning.  Stay tuned?)