Sorry!

I haven’t blogged for so long – and I’m really sorry. I will hopefully try and catch up over Christmas. But I’ve just been so busy and really settling into day-to-day life, and everything feels normal now – there is much less ‘exciting’ stuff to write about, plus I have had a hideous amount of school work the second half of this semester. But I will do a quick run-down of stuff I have done since I last blogged which is ages!

• Dad came to visit at the end of mid-term break which I may have blogged about(?) – we went to the Heineken factory, and a speciality beer place in Utrecht that sells hundreds of vareities of beer – including one called Raging Bitch IPA which every time I go I ask for to no avail. (This was actually all before Prague, so I probably have written about it)
• Went to see Swan Lake at the Dutch National Ballet in Amsterdam which was really good even if we were in the cheap seats. In all honesty though I much prefer the Matthew Bourne interpretation, contemporary ballet is far more dynamic.
• Went to Eindhoven to a light festival – Eindhoven is the technology capital of the country so it made sense for this to be here. I took a few photos which I will post soon. But really incredible, a lot of it was done by arts and engineering students and included light shows projected on churches and houses and installations in trees. Really lovely way to see Eindhoven (even if it was dark) as it took you outside of the main city centre.
• Had lots of dinners with friends
• My Mum came to visit which was lovely and I should really do a full blog post on – but it mainly consisted of eating, drinking and wandering around somewhat aimlessly. We went to the Stedelijk contemporary art museum in Amsterdam which is fantastic and I can highly recommend – even if half the art work we could definitely do, but half the fun was laughing at the art and forming your own interpretations (us uncultured, what?). In Utrecht we went up to the top of the V&D which I will also post photos of and you get see all across the city – but still not as high up as the Dom.
• Saw the new Hunger Games film – it’s good, but didn’t wow me.
• Went to Den Haag (The Hague) for an afternoon to see Shirin Ebadi speak. She is an Iranian nobel peace prize winner and gave a fascinating talk on women and Islam and the incredibly false perceptions of Islam as anti-women. Plus The Hague is beautiful – definitely need to go back and spend more time there.
• Went on a pub crawl around Utrecht with some of the teachers and the dean – nice to get to speak to them outside of the classroom. The hangover the next day was not so nice – why is the beer here so strong? Also became convinced I could speak Dutch whilst drunk which resulted in me insisting on order fries in a mix of Dutch, German and English. Well done Emma.
• Celebrated Becca’s (one of the other Leed’s girls) 21st birthday!!!
• Got Sinterklaas presents!!! Yay, thank you Sint & Piet xoxoxo
• Got accepted to be introweek parents next semester – so I get my own family!!!

So that’s a quick update might post some photos and such soon, but for now back to essay writing – Rape as a weapon of war, cheery topic for a cold Tuesday afternoon!