Almost 6 Months

Currently the sun is shinning in a way that makes me want to have a picnic, but unfortunately it is 31 degrees. This Dutch weather is tricking me, I now have the idea that when it is not raining or snowing it should not be freezing. But I will just enjoy the sun coming in the window of my heated unit! My new semester starts on Monday, I am excited to see how my classes turn out! I am currently enrolled in the second level of Dutch, Classics, World Literature in a European Perspective and Intro to Anthropology. I may try and get out of Anthropology to take a History or Philosophy class. It will be fun for everyone to come back to campus and have the bubble return to its normal state of busy students. This past week has been the introduction week for the new students. There are 63 students starting this semester, 24 of them are exchange students. And most of those are American. We seem to have stormed the school.

The second half of my break was also really nice. I had two of my best friends from Santa Cruz stay with me. Julia who is currently in Sweden studying stayed for about a week, and Kristen who just finished a semester in India and is traveling around until she starts her new program in Greece stayed for ten days. Lucky for all of us their visits overlapped!

We had a really nice time having lazy days around Utrecht and catching up on the last half year, and also visiting Dutch cities. (I will post pictures and details from our touristing later this week.) It worked out that they came to the Netherlands the same day I got home from Prague. Their visit kept me nice and busy, so that I did not really rest too much on this break. But I prefer spending time with all the people I missed so much that came to visit!

Also to be fair after Kristen left I did a lot of sleeping for two days, which was amazing.

Other than giving a general update on life, I also wanted to write about a gorgeous exhibition I went to at the Kunsthal in Rotterdam on Wednesday. The current exhibit there is one of Edvard Munch. It does not have his most famous works like The Scream and Madonna, but it has work from every single one of his periods. It was interesting to see the precursors to such well known paintings. It was also incredible to see how drastically he changed. I really liked the woodcuts and the later oil on canvas paintings. A lot of the time there would be blank spaces on the canvas, but I would not realize it when I looked at it from far away. Like in one of the paintings blank spaces made clouds. The colors were also incredible, especially where seemingly random colors made it look more realistic. I know I am gushing, but I just had the best feeling after I went. I went with my friend from this school, Julia. It was really nice going with her because we move through museums the same way, and we were equally excited.

Other than that I got a hair cut, and my hair is pretty short! I really like it. Also I just finished reading The Grapes of Wrath, which I really enjoyed. Apart from being a really good story to say the least, I really enjoyed reading about California. The landscape descriptions made me think of home so much. Also here are some pictures Erin and Shane took in Prague.

Checking Praha Off the List

Puns when in the Czech Republic are inevitable. We stayed at a place called the Czech Inn, I mean even they take part in the fun! Unfortunately I have no photos to post of Prague because I forgot my camera. Which is pretty sad because Prague is a breathtakingly beautiful city. However there is always google and the fact that Erin and Shane took quite a few pictures!

The Czech Republic is probably the most foreign place I have been, if only because the language and currency were so crazy. The language is beautiful to listen to, and some of the sounds impossible for me to figure out! Also pulling 1000 crowns out of an ATM feels very nice since it is only 50 euros!

Our hostel was really cool, it was a short tram ride from downtown. The nice part about that was the restaurants around it were really tasty and pretty cheap since they were not tourist traps. We tired some delicious traditional Czech meals, had amazing pizza and even caviar!

On our first full day in Prague we walked around a Christmas market and we went on a walking tour. It was freezing during the tour but it was nice to see the main sights and know why they were important. It is incredible how well persevered the city is after going through Nazi and Soviet occupation, but from what I learned that was no accident. The people of Prague love their city and did what they could to preserve it.

There is a beautiful clock that was voted the most disappointing tourist attraction in the world. This is because at every hour some of the statues on it become animated and people wait 45 minutes to see it. The little show is nice, but not if you have been waiting for it. On my last day in Prague I saw a protest in front of the clock of people who want to bring the monarchy back. It was pretty funny. My friend from school Annie who is from Prague said that they just do it because they can and they are all just having fun. They were singing old Czech songs and there was a guy who is always walking around Prague with a sign saying that he was tricked at his trial that joined them for the attention.

Annie took me and her friend from Germany around Prague on our last day there. It was fun to see it with a local, and she truly loves her city. We went to an exhibit called "Legends of the Czech." It was primarily geared towards children and told Czech legends about their cultural foundations. A lot of them were quite gory, but I really enjoyed it. There was even a skeleton that showed evidence of post-mortem anti-vampire measures. They were exactly what they people in the novel Dracula did. It was really interesting in perspective of the novel since I read it in one of my classes last semester. After the museum we went to Old Town Square to watch the clock and then we went to get some mulled wine and wait for dark. After dark we went to see Old Town Square again, this time lit up for night. It was beautiful.

On the days I spent with Erin and Shane before they left we explored the main sights. We saw the castle, which was huge. There is an amazing Gothic style cathedral in the middle of it. The coolest part about it is that the construction was completed in the 20th century so some of the statues are men in suits! It is the most uncanny thing because I automatically assume everything is so old! After seeing the castle Erin and I went across the Charles Bridge and rubbed a carving of a saint being martyred for good luck.

We also had some delicious street food. One of the things was these hollow dough rounds covered in almonds and sugar. We also had fantastic sausages on mini bread loaves. I had them two days in a row they were so good!

The best part about Prague was just wandering the city and seeing what we found. Every building looks important because so many of them have incredible architecture or bright colors!

We found some delcious spots on the neighborhood. The place we went to get traditional Czech food had a whole fictionalized back story of the people who founded the place finding artifacts and a diary under the floorboards. They also found a cooking pot full of food that was still good, and they ate it. The diary chronicled the lives of a family that all had horns, and how they became indebted to an evil man. There were pictures of people with horns all around the room as well as a case with the artifacts in it. We went there three nights!

We also went to a really cool wine bar in a park a few blocks from our hostel. We talked with the man who owned it and he explained how they grow their grapes vertically instead of horizontally. He used Erin's Czech-English phrasebook to talk with us and tell us about the place. The wine bar itself was really interesting. It was built into a hill. The room was long and had two picnic bench type of tables on one side. The ceiling had rocks built into it.There was a glass wall dividing the middle of the room and on the other side were the vats with the wine. People who came in all seemed to be from the neighborhood and many brought dogs and babies with them. When I ordered I even tried using a Czech phrase because it felt like such a local place. The people were pretty happy that we were trying to speak Czech.

There were a few varieties available and I really liked one called a Muller, which I had never heard of. We had a really nice time there. It was one of my favorite parts of Prague.

Overall my thoughts of Prague are of a general feeling it gave me, maybe because I currently have no pictures to refer back too and this last month has been so overwhelming. But the general feeling it gave me was one of excitement. Of a society that is so new, but has a strong cultural tradition. And the people were genuinly nice, not because they had to be but in a more realistic way. Not in a smiley way either, just the way they would treat you during interactions was much more genuine than other places I have been.

Prague is a wonderful city.

Haggis Balls

I arrived in Edinburgh at about 10pm, and immediately fell in love with the city. I wandered around with some directions that my very friendly bus driver had written down for me trying to find my hostel, and did not mind being lost at all. The city is dark and gloomy but in the best way. Looking around it is not surprising that writers like JK Rowling and Robert Burns came out of this place. When I finally found my hostel, I also found Erin and Shane! Despite their jet lag we decided to go out for the first of many pints together to begin to catch up on the last few months.

The next day we got up early and attempted to drive out of the city. Ask Erin and Shane and they will tell you: Never Drive in Edinburgh!! It is a terrifying experience. Once we were clear of the city we headed to the Scottish highlands. The drive was gorgeous, full of heaths and snow covered hills and sheep. Pretty much everything you would want out of the highlands, ruins and all! We stopped for lunch in a very adorable town next to the river Spey. Everyone we encountered was very friendly and our lunch was delicious! Once we finally reached Elgin we checked into our new hostel, the Thunderton House. We got our own room and had access to a kitchen and a fairly nice bathroom. After dropping off our luggage we decided to head to the coast since it was so close! We ended up in the beautiful town of Lossiemouth. I realized how much I have missed the smell of the ocean, but none of us missed it enough to attempt jumping into that water. We walked along to the harbor admiring the waves and wondering at anyone attempting to take a boat in that water. After the sun went down we decided to find some food. We ate and an inn and had our first taste of haggis in the form of an appetizer called, much to our amusement, haggis balls. They were pretty tasty, as was the rest of the meal apart from when Erin attempted to eat a mussel. As well as a wonderful dinner we had an amazing cask ale from the pub next door. Overall we were very impressed with the cask ales in Scotland.

The next day we went to Loch Ness, which I was pretty excited about. We also took a look at the castle Urquhart. Sadly there were no signs of Nessie, she must have been sleeping that day. The lake was absolutely incredible though. I never realized how beautiful it would be in person. On our way home we stopped in a town to check out some Pict ruins. It ended up being another gorgeous coastal town where we also got to see an old Pictish well. To get to the well we had to knock on the door of a house to get a key. It was a little odd at first but in the end the woman was very nice. It was lucky we had Shane around though because he could fill us in on all the history behind the Picts, which I did not really know at all. After heading back to Elgin we stopped off at a Cashmere factory and then went for dinner.

The next morning we woke up and headed out to check out some of the famous Speyside Whiskey. We took a tour of Glenfarcals' whiskey distillery. I had no idea how complicated making whiskey is. I also did not realize that even changing the water source changes all the character of the whiskey, so the amount of water in the river even effects whiskey production. At the end of our tour we were able to sample 10 year old, 15 year old and 25 year old whiskeys as well as one brand called 105. The distillery is a family owned business and has been run by the same family for the entirety of its existence. After our tour it was on to Edinburgh. On the drive home we saw a red deer, many pheasants (in fact it is quite common to see pheasants as road kill!) highland sheep and highland cattle! Once back into the city though we checked into our amazing bed and breakfast! The place was adorable and they even gave us all our own fuzzy robes to use! We went for dinner at a pub down the street which was pretty delicious. I had a steak pie that I loved.

The next morning we had an amazing breakfast and met some other Americans staying in B&B. Afterwards we went out to see the city, and I got us more than a little lost. In the end we got there and were at the castle in time to see them fire the cannon. We got to see the Stone of Destiny and the Crown Jewels. We also got to enjoy the beautiful view from the castle. After the castle we went to find the statue of Greyfriar's Bobby. Then we wandered in to the Natural History museum and saw and exhibit on lighthouses and some ancient Roman and Pictish artifacts.

After we were done sightseeing we ate an amazing dinner in a pub called The Last Drop, which had a symbol of a hangman's noose on it. We spent New Year's eve tasting delicious cask ales in various pubs, including a few of Robbie Burns' favorites! And at midnight we watched fireworks go off above the castle. Then we made the long trek back to our B&B to pick up our stuff and head to the airport for our VERY early flight to Amsterdam. On our way back through the city we met many friendly people and we even came across a fox running across the road! It was a wonderful Scottish Hogmanay!

A Real White Christmas

I feel like I have been running around nonstop since about the beginning of December, so I apologize for the massive lapse in blogs. In the beginning of December there was snow and finals. I am satisfied with the way my classes went this semester. It was hard to study some days on a snow covered campus, it was absolutely beautiful. Now that it is back to rain all the time I really miss the snow. During the snowy time I checked some new Dutch talents off my list. I can now bike in the snow and ice, very slowly of course, and I went ice skating!

After finals were over and I had caught up on some sleep I went with my friend Laura to her town of Raalte. It is a town much like Hollister, so I felt right at home. One of the nights I was there we went to ice skate on a rink that they made on a field. I borrowed her mom's skates and we skated in very slow circles for about two hours. We also took a hot chocolate break! It was really fun, but it was also interesting to see that everyone there owned their own skates and have clearly been skating since about the time they learned to bike. I am not sure I will ever be able to truly fit in with the Dutch because of their aptitude for activities that require excellent balance.

After my stay with Laura I went to my friend Shira's house in Amsterdam to spend Christmas there. Shira is my introweek sister (from the family's they put us in during orientation) and her family has adopted me. When I arrived in Amsterdam Shira met at the station and we took a ferry across to Amsterdam Noord where she lives. She drew me a bath and then left to go Christmas shopping. After a wonderful bath I got to sit around and read and drink tea for a few hours until everyone got home. The next day was Christmas Eve and Shira's dad got Shira her sister and I tickets to the ballet because he plays in the Orchestra at the opera. We saw a matinee of Sleeping Beauty. The costumes and music were beautiful and it made me really miss the days when we would go to San Francisco to see the Nutcracker ballet. That night we went to Zaandam to stay at Shira's mom Julie's house. We had a quiet dinner and made cookies and watched movies.

When we got up on Christmas morning there we fresh coffee and a stocking with my name on it! After exchanging gifts we put on Christmas Carols and spent the rest of the day cooking a delicious Christmas feast. We made turkey, two kinds of stuffing, gravy, stuffed vegetables, cranberry sauce and salad. A few friends of Shira's family came over and there was a nice group of people in the end. Frequently throughout the evening people would sit down at the piano and start playing Christmas Carols and people would start to sing. It was so nice being in such a musical happy place. And guess what?? It even snowed a little Christmas Day!!

The next day we went back to Amsteram Noord and made another Christmas feast, this one centered around a Lamb roast. Our friend from school Julia who also could not go home for Christmas joined us as well. All in all it was a beautiful Christmas and even though I was not home with my family, I did not get lonely because I was taken in by such a wonderful family!

After Christmas I went off to meet Erin and Shane in Edinburgh which I will write about in another blog.