23-24 January 2009
On Friday the 23rd we (finally!) finished up all of our ‘introduction’ activities. It was a long day because the night before, there was an ESN sponsored pub crawl throughout Maastricht. I drank my fair share (hey! I bought the ticket….might as well use it…) and was up way too late when I had somewhere to be at 8:30am. It was a pretty fun pub crawl though. The last day of intro activities was by far the driest, though. We had to go through a LONG lecture on Problem Based Learning and how it differs from the traditional system. It was not very exciting. Then we had to go through a two-hour practice session of PBL to acquaint ourselves with the process. It was painful, especially on 3 hours of sleep. Finally, the end of the day arrived and Monique brought us our schedules. Unfortunately my Maastricht University (UM) course meets Mondays and Thursdays from 8:30-10:30 am! Ugh. I have never had an 8 am before and I will do my best to never have one again. It’s ugly. It’s not all bad, though, because that means I’m done and free to travel at 10:30 am on Thursdays for the weekend. So that’s pretty sweet.
After we got our schedules Nick, Drew, Kyle, and I walked back to the Guesthouse to pack and get ready for our trip to Amsterdam! I tossed a couple of things in my backpack, grabbed my copy of Let’s Go and headed over to Nick’s room where we ironed out some details. Kyle found this hostel called Hotel Trianon for 16 euro a night and we booked it. It was a little scary because the approval rating of this place online was only 67%, but we figured it would probably be okay. Plus, I just got my nifty sleep sack thing from mom in the mail, so I felt fairly confident that I would remain hostel disease free. We didn’t really have any solid plans beyond that, but after we booked the hostel we jumped on a bus for the train station. After figuring out which train to take, we were pretty much golden. It’s really easy to get to Amsterdam from Maastricht. It’s only one train, so we just found some seats and settled in. I immediately passed out, since I’d only had 3 hours of sleep the night before and soon the ticket taker was asking for my ticket. As it turns out the seats we were in really were too good to be true as the conductor booted us out of first class to find some nonexistent seats in second class. Haha…
When we got to the train station, we followed the directions from the website on how to get to the hostel via tram. Drew bought a strippenkaart (bus pass thingy) so we wouldn’t have to pay so much each ride. We got off where it told us to get off, but unfortunately the street that the hostel was on was nowhere to be found. So we stopped at this pub to have dinner and relax a little after the trip. Our w
aitress pointed us in the right direction to get to our hostel after dinner, but her instructions were sort of vague. We eventually found the little back street we were looking for and followed it to our hostel. I was awfully proud of us for making it there. ☺ I was pleasantly surprised by the room. It was basically a hotel room with four bunk beds in it. There were only four of us, so we were expecting four other roommates to show up eventually, but they never did. The four of us played a couple of rounds of circle of death and then headed out to find some places to hang out in Amsterdam. We went back to this area we had passed on the tram where there were a bunch of bars around. We went into one pub and had a pint and then went out exploring again. As we passed this bar called Boom Chicago, an American girl stopped us
and asked if we wanted to enter a beer pong tournament (they call it bierbal). The guys were pretty stoked about it, so we told her we’d be back. We wandered a little bit more around the area and made it back to Boom Chicago for the start of the tournament. We each got a free pint with our registration and we picked teams. I’m TERRIBLE at beer pong (my theory is that it’s because I’m so short….I can’t see into the cups!!!) but Drew registered me as his teammate anyway. He called our team “the Tarheels” and I was okay with it only because I don’t mind representing someone else’s team badly. Kyle and Nick’s team was Indiana and they represented pretty well. Needless to say, Drew and
I lost three matches miserably (I made four cups, though! A record for me I think…) and Kyle and Nick ended up in third place I think. They ended up losing in the game before the finals to an IU alum, which I don’t really count as a loss. While we were there we met a pair of Aussies who were just there to watch the tournament. They were really funny and kept yelling the “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi” thing randomly.
After the tournament we went for a walk down to the red light district. It was everything I expected it to be except that I didn’t expect it to make me quite so sad. I mean, those girls are making crazy good money and it’s regulated and taxed and all that. Theoretically it’s not so bad. But my stomach just turned when we saw the one guy get let into the window by the girl. The other thing is that the girls are actually REALLY pretty. I did not expect that, but for the most part they were gorgeous. Crazy. Apparently the boys kept getting offered cocaine by some sneaky guys while we were down there. I guess I just didn’t look like the type because no one approached me about that. Haha… Finally after all of this, we jumped (jumped…stumbled…what’s the difference?) in a cab and headed back to Trianon for bed.
We got up in the morning all set to see the Van Gogh and Rembrandt museums. We packed up all our junk and set out. The Van Gogh museum was AMAZING. I didn’t realize how much I actually liked his art until I saw a whole bunch of it together, but I just love it. It’s just so unique and interesting to look at. It’s cool to find something
new to love like that. They didn’t let us take pictures inside so that was sort of a bummer, but I don’t think I’ll be able to forget quickly. My favorite was this one that Van Gogh painted for his new nephew called Almond Blossoms. It’s just gorgeous. I really like the ones of flowers or trees or landscapes or cityscapes that use lots of color. Actually, I like them all…..it’s so crazy! It’s really interesting to watch the way his art developed over his life. After Van Gogh we had these crepe-like pancakes that were to die for and then went to what we thought was the Rembrandt museum. It turned out to be the Rijksmuseum. It was basically a history of the Netherlands. It does have a huge Rembrandt wing though. We saw a whole bunch of his art, and it’s just astonishing how precise and realistic the Rembrandts are. There was one painting that featured an old lady and her hand is painted so realistically it’s almost scary. The Rembrandts are amazing, but the Van Goghs I would want in my house. That’s the distinction for me if that makes sense to anyone else. ☺ We weren’t allowed to take pictures in the Rijksmuseum either unfortunately.
After that last museum, we were exhausted (again, very little sleep the night before) and so we headed to the trains. It’s much more difficult to get back to Maastricht from Amsterdam as we learned. You have to take three different trains and navigate all the train station
stops in under five minutes. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be initially, though. We made all our switches and then I passed out hard on the last train and slept until Maastricht. Thank goodness the boys were a bit more alert than I was and were able to wake me up to get off the train. I hung out with the girls when we got home Saturday and we ended up at the Highlander later that night. I punked out by 1, though, because I was SO exhausted.
25 January 2009
I slept in until 11 Sunday morning and then got some stuff done. I went for a long, awesome run through Maastricht which really helped me get my bearings better and then I joined the gym and worked out a bit. It’s a nice little gym—all life fitness equipment. It’s going to be good to have that. Later I tried to find some boots to buy (everyone here wears boots and they’re so cute!) but I couldn’t find any that fit and were in my price range. The Superbowl was set to start at midnight, so around that time we headed over to the Highlander to watch the game on the big screen. They had the sound off (grr!) and they weren’t going to stay open for the whole game, so we relocated to The Shamrock and hung out there for a while. I was for the Cardinals, and they were getting killed the first three-ish quarters so Wade, Kyle, and I headed home near the end of the third quarter. As I read today, it got really exciting there at the end, but it was already 3:30 am and I had class at 8:30 the next morning. Also, there weren’t any commercials here!!! Can you imagine that? A Superbowl without the commercials? It was sad for me. Plus the sound didn’t work on the TVs at The Shamrock, so we couldn’t really hear anything there either. The bartender made a valiant effort during half-time, though, and played a Springsteen CD, but it just wasn’t the same. Hahah… It was weird to watch the Superbowl where no one really cares about the Superbowl.
26 January 2009
Classes started today! Actually, according to my schedule classes were supposed to not happen today, but the syllabus had a topic for today so I went anyway. (Again on less than five hours’ sleep.) Kyle and I have the same class at the same time but with a different teacher, so we made a VERY successful attempt to find FEBA (the business building). I was so surprised that we made it, but we definitely did. We even found our classrooms in plenty of time. Unfortunately when I went into mine and set up shop at 8:25 am, I realized that I was in the wrong class somehow. I showed the teacher my schedule and he said that I was in the right room according to my print-out, but that Organization Design (my class) was not the class that was going on. So I waited out in the hall. Kyle’s class was out there, too, because his teacher was late and so we all just milled around. Finally his teacher showed up and we all headed into that classroom. Eventually we figured it all out and my teaching, Johanna Martinez, found us an empty classroom across the hall.
It turns out that there was some new scheduling system that had double booked our room and that had also given Johanna the wrong list of students so none of us were even on her list. Also, the system had told all the students that there wouldn’t be class during week 6 (that’s this week) and so only four kids showed up because no one else had checked the syllabus I guess. It was quite a mess, but from the introduction today, I think I’m going to enjoy the class. Johanna seems really nice and laid back and I met a nice girl from Dusseldorf that I hung out with for a while after class as we waited in line for our books. By the way, books in Europe are just as expensive as they are at home, but there’s no buy back here!! Miserable! I’m not sure what I’m doing yet this weekend, but hopefully it’ll be something crazy fun! The girls are going to Amsterdam this weekend, but I’m not sure I want to go again so soon. We shall have to see…
at the jazz club last night! I thought there was like a 20% chance that they would let me sing without having ever heard me, but as soon as I walked in the guys from the previous week recognized me and asked if I was singing. I sang “Summertime,” and did just fine until the solos. Coen, the pianist, did his solo and I came back in just fine but I botched the words at the end. It wasn’t too big a deal, though. They had my back, and we just ended the song. Then, a few glasses of wine later, they asked me to sing again and I had the lyrics for “Fever” with me, so I sang that one. It was awesome. So fun. They all asked if I'd be back, and I think if you know me you know the answer to that question.....I’ll be singing regularly....haha! I just have to find a music store where I can buy the music for other songs. ☺ SO awesome.
