Back on the continent and back to blogging: a review of Christmas

I’d like to first and foremostly apologise for my absence of blogging towards the end of last semester, and the somewhat sporadic nature of my posts before that. The truth is I didn’t feel like I had anything to write about and was too busy just getting on with the mundane day-to-day of life – a year abroad sounds so exciting, but a lot of the time, it is little different to life at home (except you don’t understand the language). This semester I have decided to be more proactive and take every opportunity (and hopefully, maybe, become better at blogging). We’ll see – but I do have a lot of plans in the making.

I got to spend 3.5 glorious weeks at home over the Christmas break, the perks of doing December exams meant I had so much free time to just relax – so I spent lots of time reading, sleeping and watching Netflix. I went to the ballet twice and fel;t very cultured, the Nutcracker (English National Ballet) and Matthew Bourne’s Edward Scissorhands (Sadler’s Wells, but a touring company). I much preferred the latter, but then generally I have a preference for more contemporary ballet and also Edward Scissorhands is one of my favourite films – really anything with Johnny Depp, Winona Ryder or directed by Tim Burton and you are onto a winner with me. It really was incredible though – so much to see you did not know where to look, I would happily go again. The set was fantastic and the music, really can’t fault it – plus got to go with my best friend Anna so the company was alright. Really just brilliant.

London with Anna

I had quite a few opportunities to go into London and completely reignited my love affair with that city – as a man in Brussels said “when you are bored with London, you are bored with life”. I spent a lot of time just wandering around – Spitalfields, the south bank, Covent Garden, never happier than when I am exploring a city by foot. I caught up with a few friends from Leeds and even more from home – one of my friends is doing an internship in Parliament so whilst waiting for her I got to take some touristy shots of Parliament and the London Eye. Obviously whilst doing this I pretended to be Dutch, because who wants to expose themselves as a (somewhat) local whilst engaging is such touristy behaviour – but being a tourist in your own city should definitely be encouraged and I intend to do that this year in Utrecht.

Currently the Wellcome Institute/Collection has an exhibition called the institute of sexology which I went to, and honestly I would say it is the best museum exhibition I have ever been to. This says something because I go to quite a lot of museums. Absolutely fascinating, engaging and thought-provoking. I must have spent about 2 hours in this reasonably small exhibition because I wanted to absorb everything – my only complaint would be is that I felt that it ended quite suddenly, but it would have been hard to top the documentary that was showing which almost everyone had stooped for and watched the entire 40 minutes of. Really made you question constructions of sexuality and dialogues about sex. It is open until September and I cannot urge you enough to go if you have even the slightest interest in the subject, and let’s face it, who isn’t at least somewhat interested in sex?

I got some really lovely gifts for Christmas (thank you if you are reading this) and ate an obscene, but impressive and delicious, amount of food and drank vats of Baileys. I think it is definitely good I am back in the Netherlands though, not riding your bike for 4 weeks really impacts your fitness – currently nursing some slightly sore thighs after getting back on my bike and braving the cold Dutch weather.

I’m glad to be back in Utrecht (after a short detour via Brussels), although I am very set on things being different this semester because looking back towards the end of the semester campus got a bit claustrophobic, so definitely going to do more stuff of campus and travel a bit more. I think doing an off-campus course will really help with this, especially since it looks so interesting.

This week is going to be a busy one, but plenty to write about as it will be Spring introweek and I am parenting, get to take all the new first years under my wing!