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!

3 day weekends are great

On Monday, Abbie and I made our way into Amsterdam for a day of museums and tourism. Having a three day weekend is so good! Touch wood, I have such a good timetable next semester… a girl can dream.

We went to the first museum, Body worlds, with Abbie’s housemate from York, who completely coincidentally was in Utrecht at the same time. The museum sounded really interesting, it was called the happiness project and I’m super interested in how emotions work and how they affect the body and such, so it sounded like it would be right up my street. I definitely had not realised it would be real-life dead bodies that had been like plastinated. So creepy, especially how you could actually tell what a lot of the full body ones would have looked like alive. It was actually really interesting though, even if some of it went over my head a bit. Abbie and Gillian were very into it though, and as two nurses probably understood a bit more of it. Definitely worth seeing though, even if it is a bit pricey.

I sampled “holland’s number one fries” for lunch, and I must admit I was disappointed, definitely had better chips. It is very odd, everyone seems to have an opinion on who does the best chips and everyone claims theirs are best. I don’t feel like we have that as much in the UK. Either way, I’m still a McDonald’s girl – with fritessaus.

I am Amsterdam

That afternoon we went to the Rijksmuseum, which is predominantly a huge dutch art gallery, but it does have a few pots and clothes and guns, etc. It’s an absolute maze in there, we kept ending up back in the main foyer somehow and having to re-enter the museum. Without sounding hideously uncultured, a lot of the art wasn’t really to my tastes, it was more just looking at it and walking on. The architecture was beautiful though, such an incredible building – especially the library which is really what I went to see, so pretty! Some of the more modern stuff I really enjoyed as well, although because it closed quite early, we only got to see half of this and missed the side that I really wanted to see, with Yves Saint Laurent and Appel. But I am here for a whole year – next time I’ll just see if I can borrow a Museum card though instead of having to pay again!

Bibliotheek

We went to Wok and Walk for dinner, which is probably one of my favourite fast food places – you get to choose what noodles you want, what sauce and what toppings and then they cook it all for you in a wok in front of you, and it just tastes soooo good! They only have them in Amsterdam here, but also in London in the UK, so if you’re passing, I would recommend it.

When we got home, we were celebrating my flatmate Bart’s 18th birthday so we got loads of chocolate cake which was so good. In my mind starting uni at 17 is so young, I mean it’s my sisters year at school, but it’s so common here. It’s probably partially because skipping (or being held back) grades isn’t really a thing at home, and everyone tends to be the same age if you are in the same academic year. I don’t think you really notice the age difference most of the time anyway, even if I am two years older than a lot of my friends.

Tuesday was back to class so I sent Abbie off exploring Amsterdam by herself. In the afternoon we had the study abroad fair where Abi, Becca and I (3 of the Leeds exchanges) tried to convince people to go to Leeds, which is slightly hard to do when you are competing against the USA and Australia and far more ‘exciting’ locations. I think we repeated the same conversation at least 20 times: “everyone in Leeds is always up for a good time”, “You’ll barely have any class and never have to buy books”, “You’ll be taught by people who are experts in their field”, “We have one of the best Student Unions in the UK, look at how much there is to do”. We also may have attempted to deter people from going to the other UK destinations (sorry guys!) but people should go to Leeds, especially if they’ll be going whilst I’m still there.

Abi, me and Becca

That evening we went to the best burger bar in town, Meneer Smakers. I had a goats cheese burger and it is potentially the best burger I have ever eaten – absolutely incredible. It’s such a nice atmosphere as well, really cute decoration. I will definitely be going again, even if I have already now sampled both the vegetarian burgers they sell – maybe I will have to try a meat burger next time and take a break from vegetarianism, or maybe I’ll just have the goats cheese one again because that was heavenly.

Geitenkaas burger

The weather has been a mixture this week, but on Friday it was absolutely beautiful and campus looked so pretty in the sun! I love living here, I am seriously never coming home.

More soon – especially on the incredible 1975 gig I went to last night, but I should definitely be revising as I have my first mid-term on Tuesday for Linguistics and I have no idea what a phoneme is… Wish me luck!