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.