Quick update before I go to bed:
Went to Emmen Saturday afternoon, and then a phone call came that Martin’s football (Americans: I mean soccer) game for Sunday got called off. That was a good thing because we could sleep in later and swim longer. We were at the pool for close to four hours. There were too many little kids to do much ‘real’ swimming, but I got to dive a few times and we went on the slide a couple times and there was a wave pool and stuff. I’m noticing that these Dutch indoor pools are way more elaborate than anything we have. At first I just thought the one in Raalte was really really nice (that was the first one I ever saw), but no, they’re all that way.
And our tickets for Spain came in the mail, too – and our flight leaves at 6.00! That’s SIX O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING! And of course we have to be there 2 hours ahead (the ticket packet says 2.5 hours ahead) and we have to go with a night train anyway… bottom line is, we have to leave here at 2 AM. There’s not even any real point in sleeping. Bah. Oh well, it’ll work out – jet lag is nothing new by this point.
Anyway, after swimming we went to the centrum in Emmen and just walked around a bit and looked in a few sports stores – and guess what I found?! Mom can answer this one… what treasured article of clothing did I have five years ago which (we strongly suspect) was stolen by Elizabeth Scoville at camp and which I have never been able to find again? Yes, that’s correct… a sports bikini!!! It’s red and pretty. :) It’s not TYR, my old standby, but Adidas… and here comes the real shocker… in the land of expensive clothing, a bathing suit which would have been around $65 in Sports Authority was FORTY BUCKS! Awesome! Anyway, nice to have that for Spain.
And I did my homework – printed the translations and finished the essay. She never specified how long the essay had to be – I suspect 1500 words, because that’s how long the last one was, but she never said so… so I just wrote until I couldn’t think of anything else, which was somewhere between 650 and 700 words. My first sentence was something like, “Honestly, if it were an option, I’d just retype the same essay I wrote at the beginning of the course.” But anyway, it’s done, and I did actually have some real thought in there, like the Dutch prejudice towards Moroccans and Turks and blacks. I’ve never come across one Dutch person who doesn’t hold at least a little bit of an ‘attitude’ towards those groups, particularly people who have jobs where they have to interact with all kinds of people every day. (Example: Peter, a security guard, absolutely hated those ethnic groups, especially Moroccans, and Martin, a train conductor, is the same.) From what I’ve seen of those minority groups here, the prejudice is not unjustified, but after being raised in the land of “all men are created equal” and being taught that racism is something only uneducated people subscribe to… well, it offends me, whether I want it to or not.
So those things are done, and then I got on the train and came back to Utrecht. For some reason, I got a headache as soon as I stepped out the front door of Martin’s house and it lingered. In the first train, from Emmen to Zwolle, I was incredibly sleepy and nodded off a couple of times even though I was uncomfortable (sleeping on top of my backpack, haha). I woke up a bit in Zwolle if only because my headache returned with a vengeance once I got out of the train. I got a candy bar to try to push it off with the caffeine (Mom’s trick) and then I remembered I had my Excedrin with me (I’ve gotten in the habit of taking it with me; I tend to get headaches when away from home for longer than a day, not sure why) so I took two of those. The train to Utrecht finally arrived and I got in, and since it was a sneltrein it was actually comfortable enough that I could sort of twist onto my side and rest. I moved my head very, very slowly when I had to change positions, and the Excedrin finally kicked in. Whew.
So here I sit in Utrecht once again. And I have an exam tomorrow and it’s 0.07. So I’m going to go and shower now and hope that my internet connection reappears while I’m in there. Ciao!
Went to Emmen Saturday afternoon, and then a phone call came that Martin’s football (Americans: I mean soccer) game for Sunday got called off. That was a good thing because we could sleep in later and swim longer. We were at the pool for close to four hours. There were too many little kids to do much ‘real’ swimming, but I got to dive a few times and we went on the slide a couple times and there was a wave pool and stuff. I’m noticing that these Dutch indoor pools are way more elaborate than anything we have. At first I just thought the one in Raalte was really really nice (that was the first one I ever saw), but no, they’re all that way.
And our tickets for Spain came in the mail, too – and our flight leaves at 6.00! That’s SIX O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING! And of course we have to be there 2 hours ahead (the ticket packet says 2.5 hours ahead) and we have to go with a night train anyway… bottom line is, we have to leave here at 2 AM. There’s not even any real point in sleeping. Bah. Oh well, it’ll work out – jet lag is nothing new by this point.
Anyway, after swimming we went to the centrum in Emmen and just walked around a bit and looked in a few sports stores – and guess what I found?! Mom can answer this one… what treasured article of clothing did I have five years ago which (we strongly suspect) was stolen by Elizabeth Scoville at camp and which I have never been able to find again? Yes, that’s correct… a sports bikini!!! It’s red and pretty. :) It’s not TYR, my old standby, but Adidas… and here comes the real shocker… in the land of expensive clothing, a bathing suit which would have been around $65 in Sports Authority was FORTY BUCKS! Awesome! Anyway, nice to have that for Spain.
And I did my homework – printed the translations and finished the essay. She never specified how long the essay had to be – I suspect 1500 words, because that’s how long the last one was, but she never said so… so I just wrote until I couldn’t think of anything else, which was somewhere between 650 and 700 words. My first sentence was something like, “Honestly, if it were an option, I’d just retype the same essay I wrote at the beginning of the course.” But anyway, it’s done, and I did actually have some real thought in there, like the Dutch prejudice towards Moroccans and Turks and blacks. I’ve never come across one Dutch person who doesn’t hold at least a little bit of an ‘attitude’ towards those groups, particularly people who have jobs where they have to interact with all kinds of people every day. (Example: Peter, a security guard, absolutely hated those ethnic groups, especially Moroccans, and Martin, a train conductor, is the same.) From what I’ve seen of those minority groups here, the prejudice is not unjustified, but after being raised in the land of “all men are created equal” and being taught that racism is something only uneducated people subscribe to… well, it offends me, whether I want it to or not.
So those things are done, and then I got on the train and came back to Utrecht. For some reason, I got a headache as soon as I stepped out the front door of Martin’s house and it lingered. In the first train, from Emmen to Zwolle, I was incredibly sleepy and nodded off a couple of times even though I was uncomfortable (sleeping on top of my backpack, haha). I woke up a bit in Zwolle if only because my headache returned with a vengeance once I got out of the train. I got a candy bar to try to push it off with the caffeine (Mom’s trick) and then I remembered I had my Excedrin with me (I’ve gotten in the habit of taking it with me; I tend to get headaches when away from home for longer than a day, not sure why) so I took two of those. The train to Utrecht finally arrived and I got in, and since it was a sneltrein it was actually comfortable enough that I could sort of twist onto my side and rest. I moved my head very, very slowly when I had to change positions, and the Excedrin finally kicked in. Whew.
So here I sit in Utrecht once again. And I have an exam tomorrow and it’s 0.07. So I’m going to go and shower now and hope that my internet connection reappears while I’m in there. Ciao!
stormed at 04:20
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