a month already?!

24-27 september

back to the grind again on monday. luckily my class starts late in the day so i can take care of errands and take my time in the morning. i got to skype with ej because he happened to wake up really early and i was online so i got to talk to him for a bit which was lovely. i also had to meet with my group for one of my classes but other than that it was a rather chill day.

tuesday morning i had to make my way to the immigration office to pick up my residence permit. apparently americans are burgers. you are what you eat?

my residence permit card to study here. there is no way i'm showing the front of this card. my photo looks terrifying. 

speaking of americans. it is rather interesting to be one surrounded by so many people from so many places. my dear friend wrote a fantastic post about it and i don't think i could have said it better myself. so please do go read it.

the rest of the day was filled with classes and learning. but the evening was the big gathering for international students that happens every tuesday night. i met up with some friends before going and we all hung out at our friends apartment near my house before heading out. we got there by about 11.30 and had a total blast before going to bed *way* too late.

8.45 classes come way too early i'm telling ya. after 4 hours of listening to student presentations i was ready to be done! after a quick lunch i met up with two friends to go on a cultural activity and view the Panorama Mesdag!
wow.

it was stunning. basically it is a large dome shaped room that is painted to look like the beach and town back in 1880. there was even sand added to make one feel like you were actually there. out of the corner of my eye i was waiting for the flags on the ships to start moving in the wind that i could almost feel on my face. if you ever have the chance to go it would be well worth a visit.
the rest of the evening was spent doing homework and planning my trip to italy!! i am so excited for autumn break as the first couple of days will be spent in italy with good friends and then i will leave them to go to london to visit my dear Chandler who is studying there!
{side note it was also little bro's bday but i missed getting to skype him to sing him a terrible rendition of happy birthday}
thursday was a delightful day with only two classes. one seminar for accounting and then a lecture on water management in holland. after the lecture a few of us headed back to my place to make a light dinner and relax. a few more friends joined up and then we headed to the centre to a friends apartment to make pancakes! yum i'm so glad this is becoming more of a weekly tradition. we tried something new this time and added a cinnamon swirl to the center of the pancakes to make them like big cinnamon rolls. it was a good call! they were scrumptious to compliment the fun evening with good friends.
there was a big gathering of people in the same building as thursday nights tend to be student nights on the town. so we all headed down to chill with more people before heading out to Miller's, a higher class bar. even here good conversations abounded and it reminds me how lucky i am to come here to meet so many new people with such different backgrounds and views on life.
i can't believe i have been here for a month already!
{sorry for the lack of photos! look up the panorama - it was beautiful and they wouldn't let me take any photos inside}

nose to the grindstone

17-20 september

week two of classes! 

what could be more exciting! 

however that is the reason that i fly across the ocean for this whole grand adventure. 

so work i must. 

i ended up dropping a couple of classes because i was *way* over the recommended credit load. 

so my week looks like this

~monday~

dutch - 16.30-18.00

~tuesday~

dutch -12.15-13.00

ctrl, alt, del - 13.00-14.30

cost accounting - 15.30-16.15

~wednesday~

ctrl, alt, del - 8.45-12.45

~thursday~

cost accounting - 14.45-16.15

into to dutch culture - 16.30-18.00

you may notice that friday is missing. oh how very observant of you! i do not have classes on friday which is great because it gives me the chance to be caught up on homework.....or to travel and have some fun. same thing right? 

this last week i was able to skype with ej which was a great hour. i had a big presentation due tuesday that was worth 15% of my grade but our group rocked it. wednesday night i enjoyed mushroom soup at a friends house and went to a lecture after. thursday night was an incredibly fun time at a friends apartment just chilling and just having a ton of fun. 

it's fun when there is a network of people you can just call up and say 'hey what do you want to do?' knowing that whatever happens will be a good time :) 

it was certainly true of thursday night and i'm sure it will be for many more evenings!

class??

10-13 september

the last two weeks felt like a total vacation but on monday morning reality hit hard. 

i only had one class on monday but i was also coming down with some sort of cold. ya know the lovely running nose and hacking cough. not one to back down i went to my dutch class and learned to tell people, "Ik heet lindsey" or "Ik ben mevrow VD" and ask them "Hoe heet jij?/Wie bent u?" the best part was trying to go around the room asking people with a tissue clutched in my hand to use every 10 seconds. 

thank goodness that was my only class of the day so i proceeded to go home and drink 40 cups of tea with honey in an effort to feel a little better. 

the next day i went to the lecture for a class i had just picked on the day of registration. it was titled "Ctrl, Alt, Delete: The Digital Society" 

should be interesting. 

the first day was spent telling us about what the module consisted of and then going into some preliminary information on the cyberworld. the whole school is very international and there were plenty of opinions that were voiced throughout the class. i look forward to hearing more of the discussions that play out - i'm way out of my element in this field but hopefully i can learn lots of new viewpoints and information. 

from there was Cost Accounting. this class is immediately after the class for Financial Accounting {which i took last year at SPU so didn't need} and has many of the same students with the same teacher. it was the first day and many of the people had never been in accounting besides the financial acct. class they had just sat through so we covered the basics. 

after that i was done for the day so i headed to the store to pick up some ingredients for a home remedy i wanted to try, grapes, and chicken soup. i skipped on the big party that was going on in an effort to get some extra sleep.

wednesday started early at 8:45 with a 4 hour class for Ctrl, Alt, Del which was rather interesting as we discussed the digital revolution and all the mountains of work we will have to do for this part of the module. {my group had a 30 source paper and a 30 min presentation due next week!} but once we got to actually looking at the material it was rather interesting and fun to learn more about the world that we are living in. 

my only other class for that day was Dutch and we simply practiced more about our names and asked "Waar kom jij vamdaan?" {Ik kom uit de V.S.} we also listened to a dialoge in the book. two of the characters give their last names as Dikstra and de Vries. :) that was all i had to do that day and simply filled up on chicken soup and read my book for our group paper. 

thursday is the last day of the week i have class. i start with Multicultural Consumer Behavior {which i am trying to decide if i should drop. i am taking 37 credits and they recommend 24 to 30} then i have a break in which i simply went home to drink even more tea and try to rest. then comes the workshop for Cost Accounting which was actually great. we worked through some problems i hadn't done before and i was able to figure out what was going on even with most of the class sitting confused. it has nothing to do with the fact i have taken a whole course before and they have never seen it. nope. 

then i attended a lecture for Intro to Dutch Culture which was about Dutch politics with a focus on the elections that had just happened the day before. 

it was also the birthday of one of my good friends here! 

in an effort to celebrate we invited her back to my apartment and made a delicious salad and no-bake cake balls! they were delicious and we just enjoyed the evening together talking about everything/anything we could think of!

that was my first week of school here in Holland! looks like i have lots to learn but it should be a good time.