Giro d'Italia!

Hello! I need to someday write the recap of our last set of excursions, but today I'm just going to say that Turkish pizza is delicious. And I'm also going to tell a short story about the Giro d'Italia.

There are three Grand Tours of cycling: Tour de France (Tour of France), Vuelta a Espana (Tour of Spain), and Giro d'Italia (you guessed it -- Tour of Italy). And the Giro d'Italia was in Amsterdam this weekend.

WHAT????? You say. Amsterdam is not Italy! Well, the tour started here before jumping down to continue in Italy. And it went by the VU!

I was walking to class and couldn't help noticing the throngs of people that were lining the closed, police-lined streets.



















I thought, how many times does the Giro d'Italia go past my school? Probably only once. I knew I better stop and watch. For about 10 minutes, only cars and motorcycles went by:



















But after only about 10 minutes of waiting, the cyclists began to go by!



















For 30 seconds, they zoomed by. The cyclists still looked pretty fresh and happy!



















And just like that, they were off and gone!



















Followed by about fifty cars of extra bikes:



















It was awesome! Especially since I didn't know that the Giro would be riding right past the VU, or that they would be at the exact time that I was walking to lab. Got to love happy surprises! Including this sign that I found when I finally got to my lab only slightly late:



















Lab was postponed! I knew the Giro was worth it.

That Quiz was A) terrifying, B) surreal...

Never underestimate the multiple-choice quiz. At least not when you are in a foreign country. Here is a story for you that will illustrate my point exactly. The event I'm going to describe actually happened last week Wednesday, but I figure telling a story late is better than never, and this one fits nicely under the "cross-cultural experience" category.

On the third day of my shiny new Molecular Development class, we had a quiz over basic cell biology material that we reviewed the first two days of class. The quiz was going to be 16 questions long, multiple choice. No big deal, right?

Wrong.

The lab assistants came in to the classroom and distributed the quizzes to everyone. I put my name on the top without thinking, looked down at the first question, and realized I couldn't read any of it. While our lectures are given in English...

...this quiz was in Dutch.

Oops. Miscommunication there between the professor and the lab instructors who wrote the quiz. The rest of the Dutch students began to take the quiz with no problems (actually, it was probably and advantage for them to have the quiz in Dutch!), but Adam and I...well, what to do? This was a short quiz that we only had half an hour to take. There was no time for someone to go translate the quiz. Only one thing could be done. We were off to our professor's office.

Lucky for me, I didn't fully realize on the way to Prof. Koes' office what I was in store for, because I don't remember dreading the walk there. If I had known what was coming, I would have been waaaaaaay more nervous. Really.

We got to our prof's office, and the lab instructor yelled at him for a bit about the quiz-should-be-in-English confusion. Then she left. It was soon realized among Prof. Koes, Adam, and myself that Adam and I could not exactly take the quiz at the same time. Now Adam knows some Dutch, which was unfortunate for him at this moment because it meant he was sent to another room to fend for himself and try take the quiz as best he could. Not very fun. Meanwhile, I was going to take the quiz in Koes' office after he translated the questions for me.

He did get me some coffee at this point. That was nice. It helped a little.

But, really, let me explain this process to you. Koes would translate question X for me, all well and good. Then he would translate answer A. I would pause and not say anything (is that the right answer???), and then he would ask if I wanted to hear the next answer. Um, yes please. We'd make our way through all of the multiple choice options, and then there would be that waiting moment again...with me thinking something like this:

"answer the question...answer the question...GET THE RIGHT ANSWER...answer the question..."

Finally, I would circle an answer and wait. Hopefully (and thankfully, most of the time) I would hear:

"Good choice. That was the right one."

But some of the time, it would be:

"You shouldn't have chosen that one."

Drat. I guess that's one good thing about taking a quiz with the professor able to see everything you do. You get immediate results. I knew when I walked out of that office what my grade was.

But, boy, what a strange way to get through sixteen questions. I now fully appreciate taking a test at a desk by yourself, where you can mull over answers as long as you want and be unprepared for the test with the comfort that your professor won't find out that you were unprepared for at least a few hours, maybe days. And, thanks to the clarification this situation achieved between lab instructors and professor, I trust that our future exams in the class will all be in English, the only language that I, the poor foreign monolingual student, can understand. The prof-over-the-shoulder quiz will be a one-time occurrence, my friends.

At least I hope so.

Lovin those Caves

Yesterday I went on a field trip to another country.

...

I know, right? This tiny country thing never gets old. Actually, I guess it wouldn't be that rare for a class from Washington or Michigan to make a trip up to Canada, or even for people from California to...

Never mind. That isn't the point. The point will be this: here is the story of our field trip to the Scladina cave in Belgium. And by our I mean Adam, Chris, myself, and the other lovely people from our Human Evolution class.

Transportation story:
Depart at 6:45AM
30 minute tram ride to Centraal station
Find the train




















2.5 hour train ride to Maastricht:























Can you find it?

1.5 hour bus ride to Sclayn, Belgium, site of the Scladina Cave.






















(The tiny little place isn't on very many maps. We were east of Namur).

The trip down there was pretty uneventful and mostly just took a long time. Thankfully when we arrived, it was time for lunch, and we were treated to some fine Belgian hospitality! Our lunch consisted of giant baguettes with jambon et fromage (they speak French there, you know!), beer and other beverages to go around (beer on a field trip?! Oh yes), and about an hour in which to eat everything. If you ask me, not a bad way to spend your lunch hour after a morning of sitting on a tram/train/bus.

Then it was time for a lecture about the history of the cave. Archaeologists have been excavating there for 30 years now (wow!), the most important thing they've found in the cave was a neanderthal jaw (cool!), and about 98% of all the bones/teeth/what-have-you that they find in the cave are fossils of the cave bear:
























(yikes!)

Finally, it was time to go up to the cave!



















We walked up some stairs in the side of a cliff:

























The view from the top:




















Our guide, Dominic, giving us a bit of a peptalk before going in:



















Then, tada! We are in the cave! Watch out for the treacherous walkways:



















Ooh, stalactites!




















Excavations going on down below:



















We saw things sticking out of the dirt (excuse me - sediment) everywhere -- teeth, ribs, tiny little mouse bones. Dominic said the archaologists only remove items when they have the time to catalog everything correctly, including the layers of sediment, so many things are sitting there waiting to be "found." Look, a tooth! If it were from a neanderthal, we'd be famous right now. Probably only from a cave bear :(





















Dominic sheds light on another important cave topic:




















And, yes, I was really there:
























We emerged from the cave enlightened and in one piece (the cave didn't do so well, though; a few rocks fell victim to a wayward backpack. Dominic lamented the lost stratigraphy for a moment but then was fine). We had time for a quick group shot before it was back on the bus!

















Can you find anyone you recognize?

Then it was:
1.5 hour bus ride
2.5 hour train ride
30 minute tram ride

And like that, we were back at the wonderful VU by 7:30PM, just in time to make the end of STNL class and back into the normal swing of things.

But for a few hours, we were in Belgium, and it was wonderful...
I'm definitely going back!

the Office says hello

Welcome to Dunder Mifflin, everyone!



















Let me show you around. We have the accounting department: Kevin, Oscar, and Angela



















The "other" staff: Ryan, Kelly, Creed, Meredith, Toby



















The sales team: Dwight, Jim, Pam, Andy, Phyllis, Stanley



















And Michael Scott, Regional Manager!



















Aren't these pretty much the coolest ever one-of-a-kind Office character paper dolls? That's why they get a place of honor at the top of this blog post. Just admit it: you wish that my sister was your sister. Then maybe she would send you rockin hand-made paper dolls and other such exquisite crafts. But NO! She is my sister, and you will all just have to envy her artistic skills, and envy the fact that, through the magic of the mail, her crafts now decorate my room.

>>>

(segue)
Now, on to a few other things!

I know I'm expected to give a summary of Eva's birthday party here, so here it goes ;) The intricate Dutch/American cultural differences can be seen in the unique custom of...

You know what? Forget that. Our book of the title "Learning from the Stranger" told us to explore and enjoy the cultural differences around us in this *new* culture, and there is an appropriate time and place for that sort of thing. But I'm tired of always trying to find what's different about the things I do over here, and frankly after two months, nothing seems that much different to me.

So I don't have to say I went to a "Dutch" birthday party. I went to a birthday party. We ate pizza, we did crafts, we played a crazy game with the crafts, we played a more sophisticated version of the game Mafia, and we watched the Lion King. Eva blew out candles, we sang "Happy Birthday," and the pie and apple tart were out of this world delicious. It was fantastically fun, not because it was new or strange, but because it was familiar and normal.

My conclusions from this? Learning from the Stranger is good, but people very quickly cease to be strangers. Then you realize that some things -- friendliness, happiness, parties, Disney movies -- are not cultural, they're universal. And the things that make us different mean nothing compared to the things that keep us the same.

>>>

On that note, I went to the ZOO today!

(cue the song)

going to the zooooo, zooooo, zooooooo
how about youuuuu, youuuuuu, youuuu
going to the zooooo, zoooooo, zooooooo
you can come tooooo, tooooo, tooooooo

Every once in a while, you should take time to take time to re-discover your inner child. (Actually, for me this past week it's been more than every once in a while...) Going to the zoo is just such an activity. I can't remember the last time I went to the zoo for fun -- taking the kids you nanny doesn't quite count -- and, really, what's not to love about looking at animals?

Here are Anna, Bonnie, and Deborah, standing beneath the winged gates that serve as a portal to animalian adventure:



















Here's the niftiest part about the zoo: we got in for only 2.50! Being a VU student does get you some perks; the normal admission price was 18.50. But a quick flash of the VU student ID and our proof-of-registration cards, and we were in for 16 euros less than we might have been. How's that for a deal?

I could bore you with many pictures of animals, but that's what Facebook is for! Instead I will describe the zoo a bit for you. The zoo's full name is Natura Artis Magistra, but everyone calls it Artis. It was founded in 1838, and in 1883 the world's last quagga died there. Thank you, Wikipedia, for that information, and for teaching me that this is a quagga:



















As I mentioned in the previous story, cultural differences were not all that evident. In fact, I won't even use that phrase anymore. Artis was your typical zoo, with maybe the only strange thing being the slightly outdated cages (but that could just be because the zoo is old). But elephants and gorillas are not native to the U.S. or the Netherlands, so they will look about the same when you put them in either place.

Like the birthday party, the zoo was more about fun than necessarily learning something. I am okay with that, since I already do enough learning in class. Speaking of class, here are a few things coming up in the rest of my week:

Tuesday:
All-day field trip with the Human Evolution class to a neanderthal excavation site in Belgium. Fascinating, new country, long day.

Friday:
Human Evolution final exam. I started this class three weeks ago, and in four days it will be over. So between now and then, it's study, study, study!

Friday - Sunday:
The Calvin group has the excursion of all excursions. We're going down to Zeeland on Friday afternoon, staying with host families for two nights, learning plenty of things, and then returning on Sunday night.

Monday:
I start a new class! My last class at the VU :( It's called Molecular Development, and it's going to be a zinger.

Now I'm off to pack my backpack for Belgian adventures tomorrow. Talk to you later, and thanks for reading!

Volcanic ash, anyone?

Boy, oh boy. I have quite the week coming up. In an effort to keep the blog caught up with the times, I'm going to try write a massive catch-up post that brings together all the loose ends of LAST week. And what a week it was!

First of all, I must address the hot topic of the week: VOLCANIC ASH. It is EVERYWHERE, blocking out the sun, clogging the canals, killing innocent birds...

That was a lie. There is no visible ash anywhere to speak of, although someone at church today said he found a thin layer of dust on his car. We can see the effects of this exciting moment in natural/aviation history, though. A few of our fellow NL2010 students, Sarah, Willem, and Andrew, are currently stuck in Spain. They went down there last week to visit other Calvin students and will be there until...whenever it is they get back. So they are definitely getting to experience this first hand.

As for life on the ground, everything goes on as normal -- except much, much quieter. When you live in an apartment complex that lies under the flightpath to Schiphol and you normally hear planes flying overhead every three minutes, it is very strange to have not heard any for three days now. I can say I was in Europe for the Volcanic Ash Incident of 2010, though, and maybe someday get a few people to believe that it blocked out the sun...

Although this comes nowhere CLOSE to "I was in Chile for the earthquake of 2010." Elyse, you will forever have us all beat, whether you want to or not!?



Second thing -- this blog is famous!

Again, I exaggerate. I need to stop doing that. The truth: our Calvin group was featured in the latest issue of the VU newspaper, Ad Valvas. About two weeks ago a reporter came to our STNL class and asked Andrew, Willem, Anna, and me some questions. And --tada!-- we are featured in this article, titled "Hi, I am Andrew Dijkhuis."

The link to the pdf is here if you would like to look at the picture and translate some of the article (we're on page 4). It talks mostly about the differences we've noticed between Calvin and the VU, like the way people talk about religion and weather in the same sentence, or how students act in class (we think they are slightly more disruptive here -- sorry, VU students!).

And there's even a box about this little ol' blog! Now I really feel the pressure to make astute observations about the intersection of Dutch and American culture...
Nah, I'll just keep writing what I want. And if you're interested, you can keep reading. And if you do keep reading, I will love you forever and faithfully read your blog, if you have one. Sound good? Great.




Okay, moving right along now: Keukenhof! Last Wednesday I went with Anna and Deborah to the tulip garden of the world. Right away, know this: not all of the tulips were open yet. We were about a week or two too early.

That being said, the garden still did not disappoint. First of all, many other flowers, like daffodils and hyacinths, were out and coloring the fields:



















Second, there was an indoor exhibition greenhouse filled with thousands of tulips. Some were waist high, as Anna demonstrates here:

























Some had interesting names, like (my favorite) Spongebob:



















And everywhere you looked, you saw this:



















Another wonderful thing about Keukenhof was, well, the food! We had delicious poffertjes (made me think of the Lynden fair!)



















And ice cream!



















But the thing that made Keukenhof were all the unexpected thrills/fun spots. For example, these walking stones in the water:



















(Notice how both children and adults are enjoying the randomness)

Or, look over here -- a maze!



















And, best of all, a petting zoo! We spent quality time with some chickens, a pony, and a few goats, one of which was very unhappy...



Keukenhof: the Disneyland of flowers. It was huge, fun, probably overpriced, crowded with tourists, and worth every penny. And it is one of the main reasons why I'm glad this is a SPRING semester (the other is coming up in 12 days...)

Alright, I think that's enough of a post for now, don't you? I still have only recapped about half of last week, so I will put in another installment tomorrow morning before a new week starts again. But now I have an exam to study for, so until next time -- thanks for reading!

It takes a village

Normally I am very chronological and would not do what I am about to do, but I know if I don't write this story down now, I will forget all the details. So, here is a story from today -- more stories from the past few days will be written later. This is probably just an average story, but if I tell it right, I think it has the potential to amuse you. Here we go --

Printing at the VU

or, How I Needed the Help of Seven People to Print One Assignment, but with the Help of Those Seven People, I Got It Printed

Warning: Dialogue is not necessarily true to real life. I have simplified it somewhat.

The situation: I arrive at the VU to print the 11-page lab report that Adam, Chris, and I have slaved over. The report is due at the start of class -- 11:00 --- and I arrive a little after 10:00, so I should be fine. The plan is to go to the computer lab next to our classroom and print the report off. Simple, right? I hadn't actually used the VU printers yet, but how hard can it be?

Enter the computer lab. I see no printers. Huh. This is no time to wander aimlessly around the science building, so I approach guy #1

Me:
Where are the printers?

Guy #1:
The computers are here, but the printer is across the hall.

Got it. I sit down to log in to a computer and...the computer doesn't recognize my password. I try re-typing it, but that's not the problem. Thankfully, the Helpdesk is right across the hall. Time to find guy #2, Helpdesk Worker.

Me:
I cannot log in.

Guy #2, Helpdesk Worker:
Uh, are you a student?

Me:
Yes. Here is my student ID

Guy #2:
You are not a student in the Faculty of Earth and Life sciences.

Me:
???? (Confused because biology is a life science)

Guy #2:
OH! You are registered in the Faculty of Exact Sciences. Their Helpdesk is on the fourth floor.

The lesson I learn from this is that I can only log in to the computers near the faculty that I am registered in (which may not be the faculty I THINK I am registered in). I head up to the fourth floor, and find the correct Helpdesk.

Me:
Hello. I am a student in this faculty. Where can I find a computer?

Guy #3, also Helpdesk Worker:
The computers are on the third floor.

Me:
And the printers?

Guy #3:
You need a chipknip card for those.

Me:
?????

Guy #3:
Get one at the bookstore.

Chipknip cards are all the rage here. They can be loaded up with money and used just about everywhere. In fact, some things like printers accept only chipknip cards as payment. I head to the book store to acquire one. And it is now 10:35!!!

Me:
I would like to buy a chipknip card.

Guy #4, Bookstore employee:
Now where did I put those?

He eventually found them, and I headed back to the science building. I went to the third floor, as the Helpdesk Worker had suggested, and found the correct lab (meaning a Windows lab -- I accidentally wandered into a Linux lab first). I logged on, opened the report, quickly fixed the formatting since the computer was running on Windows '95 or something and messed up the pictures, and the clicked PRINT.

It is now 10:50. And, great, where did my report go?

I stick my head in a room across the hall.

Me:
Where is the printer for the lab over there?

Guy #5:
In the stairwell

I head over to the stairwell and find the printer/copier in use. From what I see the current user doing, I guess that I will never be able to navigate the machine alone.

Me:
Excuse me, I've never used one of these before. Could you help me?

Guy #6:
Of course.

As I watch him follow Dutch commands and press buttons, I KNOW that I would not have been able to navigate the machine alone. Thanks to a miracle, the report prints double-sided and stapled. I try to profusely thank guy #6.

He leaves, and I am left alone as I wait for the printer to charge my brand new chipknip card. It does, I go to take the chipknip card out of the machine, and IT GETS STUCK.

Now what do I do? I bought this card 15 minutes ago, I'm not going to leave it in the printer! But class starts in three minutes, and I have the report in my hand, so should I leave? Ahh!!!

Then guy #7 arrives, and partially out of goodwill, partially because he needs to use the printer, he helps me get the chipknip card unstuck. I thank him too and start off for class, a little disbelieving that it really took THAT many people to help me print something.

And I get to class, report in hand, at 10:59 and 30 seconds. Mission accomplished.

...

I want to go back and print something else at the VU, just so I can have a smoother experience the second time around. But the experience does make me want to say this -- If you have helped, or ever will help, a confused exchange student navigate their way around campus, THANK YOU! We appreciate it from the bottom of our hearts.

So, this week

This week I learned some stuff, did some things. It was fun.

What, that's not enough information? Okay, I AM sort of procrastinating until it's time to go do homework (on a Friday? what?), so I will go into more detail...

Sunday:
Happy Easter, everyone! I hope the day was wonderful for all of you. I had a great, relaxing day. A few of us went downtown to the English Reformed Church in the Begijnhof. We went there on Good Friday and it felt appropriate to complete the circle in the same place on Sunday. We got there early, as the pastor advised on Friday, and it was a good thing because he was right -- the place filled up. The service was great, but the weirdest part was walking out of the church to a courtyard filled with tourists talking pictures of the outside (I guess since they couldn't go in since the church was "in use"?). Anna and I also had quite a vocal tourist couple behind us on the way into the church ("Is this the church? Oh, it's so cute!"). Now, I have been to this church a grand total of four or five times, and I can't say that I even know anyone who goes there regularly, but...urg, the tourists got to me. Maybe because I never expected church to be a touristy place. I guess that's what you get when you go to a church built in 1607.

Am I turning into an Amsterdam snob? Maybe. But like to think I have a little bit of a reason to be.

Tourists aside, the service was great. Then that afternoon, the Aays graciously had all of us who could come over to their apartment for a delicious brunch. Easter was great!

Monday:
I honestly don't remember anything special from Monday. So sorry.

Tuesday:
Ahh, Tuesday. This was the day I got to spend quality time with some of my fossil friends:

























































Oh, and one (very sticky, nasty) foot:



















Yes, my Human Evolution biology class had a lab that met for EIGHT HOURS on Tuesday. To be fair, we did get a breaks for lunch and such, but we were in the same room from roughly 9am to 5pm. I came to the conclusion that, no matter how interesting something is, it begins to become uninteresting after eight hours. I remember sitting at the last of the twelve lab stations that we had to do, almost visually observing Chris and Adam's words bouncing off my head. Knowledge absorption at that stage is minimal.

But, hey, I got some pictures! (Nevermind the fact that they are for our lab report that we still need to type up...) I now could tell you the difference between a male and a female skull, or give a jaw an age based on what teeth it had come in. And I've seen enough "brow ridges" to last a lifetime.

What I'm saying is, this class is extremely interesting, but I'm coming off of two months of a history class that met for four hours a week. Now I go to lectures for sometimes five hours a day, and the lab...sigh. Not complaining! Just pointing out a difference for, you know, posterity.

Wednesday:
Something you should know -- the concert hall in Amsterdam, the Concertgebouw, holds free concerts at 12:30 every Wednesday. Something else you should know -- if you are ever in Amsterdam on a Wednesday, get to the concert hall at noon at least, because every retired person in Amsterdam will already be in line to beat you to a seat.

But Deborah, Anna, Bonnie, and I made it there early enough, and we got seats!





































The concert was short (30 minutes), FREE, and much, much different than I expected. Well, I expected Mozart, or something. The Nieuw Ensemble played three new pieces written by...university students? (It was hard to tell, the program was in Dutch). The pieces can best be described as experimental, and described worst as strictly melodic. Some of the new things were kind of cool! For example, in the piece called "Mice," the instrumentalists scratched on boxes with pencils at one point to make the sound of scurrying mice. Then they all sang "Three Blind Mice." But other times, I would kind of zone out. Experimental music doesn't always hold one's attention well.

I experienced a bit of "culture," though, instead of just spending my time reading TV recaps on Entertainment Weekly.com like I sometimes do. And - bonus! - we emerged from the concert to find that it was a beautiful sunny day in Amsterdam.

We had to photographically take advantage of the sun, the blue sky, and the fact that they finally took down the tent in front of the Rijksmuseum, meaning you don't have to stand three feet away from the I amsterdam letters to get a picture with them.



















Now if only they would finish up with that scaffolding...

We also took a walk through the Albert Cuyp market, rumored (whisper, whisper) to be the largest daytime market in Europe. But don't tell the other countries, they'd be jealous.




















We found things there both good and bad.

Good: the fresh stroopwafel that I had.

Bad: these harem pant-jeans.




















Thursday:
We experienced a classroom landmark, namely an AMAZING guest lecturer. Meet Jan van Hooff.
























I admit, the picture is not mine. I took it from a website I found a link to on his WIKIPEDIA PAGE! And one of his former students, Frans de Waal, is now slightly famous among some biology circles. You could say I was starstruck in a biological-academia sense.

Like all good professors I've known, he was a great lecturer mainly because he was slightly crazy. He talked about the social groups that primates live in, which naturally includes acting like a chimpanzee from time to time. He would also start speaking in Dutch whenever he got very excited/distracted. Most of the time he would notice. But once:

Prof. van Hooff: Dutch, dutch, dutch

Student: Professor? You're speaking in Dutch again.

Prof. van Hooff: I can switch to German, too, if you'd like.

(hehe)

Overall, one of the best lectures I've had at the VU!

Friday:
That is today, which means I can't write about it yet since it isn't over! I can tell you, though, that writing a lab report is in my near future.

And Saturday/Sunday bring another round of our group excursions with Prof. Aay. Let's hope for no stomach flu/traffic jams on this one! Honestly, though, I think this weekend will be pretty fun. We are going on a biking trip on Sunday around Amsterdam's largest park, the Amsterdamse Bos, and the trip may or may not include goat's milk ice cream and Scottish Highlander cows. Saturday -- I still don't know exactly where we're going. You and I will just have to find out, won't we?

Until next time, thanks for reading!

Time for a(nother) study break....

Hello, blog readers! I'm still here! I feel bad for not updating lately, but truthfully I haven't been doing that much except studying for exams and feeling guilty when I'm not studying for exams. Study breaks are a necessary thing, though, which is why I am taking one right now to update the blog.

Maybe I'll use this post to talk about another "study break" I went on with Anna last Friday, which was a visit to the Amsterdam Historical Museum. Not really a mental break in some aspects, but whatever. Here it is:




































All of my pictures of the inside turned out blurry, so please use your imaginations. This museum came highly recommended by both Rick Steves and Nomadic Matt, so we figured we'd give it a shot. First, the perks:
-It was not crowded at all.
-A cool video in the beginning showed the city's growth since, well, the beginning of the city until now.
-All signs were in Dutch and English.
-There were a couple galleries of HUGE paintings, some of which were hung on the ceiling so you could literally stand under them.
-Admittance was free on our museum cards!

And some not-such-perks:
-The huge groups of teens on field trips who would temporarily swarm a gallery or room or stairwell. I think these kids might have been from the middle school next to Super deBoer. They were in that vein, anyway.
-The museum seemed pretty big, and I admit that by the end of it I was walking through the rooms pretty fast.

Placement: below the Dutch Resistance Museum for me, but still above the Bijbels Museum. (Nothing can beat the Bijbels Museum, though, for memorability). It was a good study break.

Plus, afterward, Anna and I went to a bakery and had delicious treats! I had a chocolate croissant and Anna had a mini pizza. With dozens of options that we didn't get to try, that bakery is worth a return visit.

Soooo, there is one thing that I did. Many of my other methods of procrastination do not even deserve space on this blog (One of those may or may not have been going outside to look for a creepy stray cat that my sister and mom want a picture of. Yeah). And now I've spent about 20 minutes writing this post, so it's probably time to get back to democracy in Greece and the pre-historic Netherlands...

It will all be worth it, though, since I'm only three days away from ROME!

Beware the Ides of March

Not only is today Hug an Engineer Day and the day after Pi Day, it is also the dreaded Ides of March (dreaded for Caesar anyway). March 15, 44 B.C., did not turn out to be one of his better days.

Fortunately March 15, 2010 is not turning out so bad for me. I am mostly just stuck in the long, slow crawl towards SpRiNg BrEaK! Let me explain...

The VU does not have one organized spring break that spans all majors. In fact, all departments run on whatever schedule they think is best. My biology classes meet for only four weeks in all, which is why I haven't started them yet, and my history class lasts for eight weeks. So my "spring break" is whatever time I can squeak out between the end of my history class and the start of the biology classes.

And the end of the history class is near. I had my last normal lecture this afternoon, and will have one last guest lecturer on Wednesday. Then I have an ENTIRE WEEK to study for my history exam on Wednesday, March 24.
Thursday...Friday...Saturday...Sunday...Monday...see what I mean by a long, slow crawl?

We will also be taking a mid-term for our STNL class next week Tuesday, so I feel I should include that in the mix. Two exams to take is sadly going to be the most homework I have done yet this semester.

Ok, so we have two exams, ten days to go, and then (and here comes the seamlessly-worked-in-Ides-of-March-reference) ROME!

Yep, three days in Rome will be my spring break, and what a whirlwind those three days will be. It's getting very close now...and I am getting antsy...10 days...10 days...



And now for something completely different, a story from my day:

I managed to run out of all my food at one time, so after class today, at about 3:15 or so, I made a much-needed trek to Aldi. The only thing is, Aldi was strangely closed (I'm sure the sign on the door explained it all, but I didn't understand it). I turned around and headed back towards Uilenstede to go to Super deBoer. By now it was about 3:30. About a block away from Super deBoer, walking by the local junior high, I realized that 3:30 must be the time that the junior high lets out school for the day.

Great.

Let me explain to you the cultural differences I've observed between junior highers in the Netherlands and those in the United States:

THERE ARE NONE

You see, these junior highers think, and I'm sure all U.S. junior highers would agree, that it is absolutely the coolest of cool things to go hang out at Super deBoer after class. They clog up the aisles and check-outs buying energy drinks and candy bars, and then hang out in super-cool groups right outside the door to laugh and make generally snide comments about the other junior highers who are hanging out on the other side of Super deBoer (trust me, I don't need to know Dutch to know that this is what's going on). When there was snow last month, I even witnessed a few snowball fights across the tram tracks. And absolutely all of them wear black. Boy, these kids are the coolest of cool.

So after getting stuck in a slow-moving mob of them on the last block between the school and Super deBoer, I spent some quality time this afternoon shopping with Amsterdam's coolest bunch. The kid in the check-out line behind me was even buying -- no joke -- a Red Bull and a carton of ice cream. I had to laugh at how predictable my little tween friends turned out to be, and how universal I've learned the junior high attitude really is.

Don't worry, kids, you'll make it out of junior high soon enough! We all did!

Weekend Excursions Part II is coming up tomorrow!

What you remember

Oh my gravy, it's been a long time since I posted. First of all, bonus points to anyone who can accurately attribute the phrase "oh my gravy." Second, what better way to fix the lack of updates than by updating?

This post is going to try to be an all-encompassing post that draws elements from different things I've done over the past four...five...six days. Sorry if it doesn't work. Bear with me.

We had a guest lecturer in Democratization yesterday, as we do on all Wednesdays, and I will be honest in saying that it was extremely boring. I did not do very well paying attention. At all. I think it is mostly because:

-These guest speakers are speaking in English, which is not the easiest thing for them. It's a hard thing, and I couldn't do it. I give them props for that. But...

-The speakers do not have the best organization for their lectures, as in main points of any kind. That makes it hard to jump back into the lecture after zoning out for a second or five.

-The guest lecturers are not inclined to speak very loudly. Maybe that is a cultural difference between the Netherlands and the U.S.? Calvin profs do a good job of giving animated lectures, and I think that goes a long way towards helping students pay attention.

All three of those are valid reasons why I had a hard time listening yesterday. But as I listened to "in the 18th century, the Netherlands did this" and "in 1918 women did that," I realized that maybe I could barely pay attention because the lecture was so stinkin' generalized. I like hearing stories of actual people, like the Mayor of Leiden who offered to cut off his arm to feed people. That's what I actually remember!

(impeccably appropriate segue to...)

On Saturday I went to the Dutch Resistance Museum.



















It was a good one. It definitely does not receive the Bijbels museum rating, which is "Go only if you have four months to waste." No, the Dutch Resistance Museum gets the rating of "After hitting the Rijks, Anne Frank Huis, and Red Light District, make this the fourth thing you do in Amsterdam." That might be extreme, but I really liked it. Can you guess why? The stories!

Keep in mind that the museum covered the reactions of Dutch people to German occupation in WWII, including people who resisted the Germans and people who collaborated with them. The stories of resistance were my favorite. I had to take pictures of a few signs so I could remember them and share them with y'all :)

So here you go:

"In April 1941, Jacoba Maria Blom-Schuh of The Hague tells a Winter Help collector, 'I won't contribute to Winter Help until our queen comes back. The proceeds from Winter Help are for the Germans and the NSB members, and they're a gang of thieves, just like Adolf Hitler.' The collector files a report and Maria Schuh is put into prison for three months. The experience does not soften her temperament. The SS guards giver her their socks to darn and she sews them shut, supposedly out of ignorance."

"The Hague, early 1941. Father and mother Niehot want to name their newborn baby Nelia after the midwife, Nelia Epker. But she suggests they give their child an 'Orange' name. The result is announce in the newspaper in a birth advertisement: Irene Beatrix Juliana Wilhelmina Niehot. ...Perfect strangers send cards, flowers, cakes and even money. When Nelia Epker places a thank-you advertisement in March 1941, so that all the names appear in the newspaper once again, she is arrested. She does not return until August 1945, a survivor of Camp Ravensbruck."

"Nico de Graaf is a senior officer at the Department of Social Services in The Hague. When faced with signing the Aryan Declaration he hands in his resignation. Ever since the first day of the occupation he has insisted 'You've got to stick to your guns' and 'Watch out for slippery slopes.' In a statement made to his co-workers he writes, 'Any partiality shown to one human being over another on account of his belonging to a particular race or nation is contrary to the deepest foundations of faith in Jesus Christ."

This is the history that I will remember, and people in the Dutch Resistance are my new heroes!

On a final note, I bought tulips earlier this week and they looked like this:


















And look at them now!


















I knew they continue to grow after you cut them, but wow! Tulips are my new friend :)