turns out I kind of suck at blogging

There was a time several years ago when I blogged daily. Things would happen throughout the day or a thought would occur to me and I would think, "I can't wait to blog about this!" That was back in the days of xanga. Then I moved to myspace for my blogs...then I quit blogging. I would go back through old xanga entries and be so disgusted with some of the whiny crap I put up but other entries would have me rolling with laughter. When I deleted my xanga and myspace blogs, I read all my old entries to see if anything was worth saving. Survey says: No! In the name of privacy, I rarely used real names so there were events which were so crucial to my life at that time that were complete memory blanks a year of three later. And those clever nicknames meant NOTHING to me. So what the hell was I writing about?

And now, it's been two months and a day with no entry here. :-)

The Reader's Digest version: I went to Belgium for a field trip in the Ardennes, visited Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, Enkhuizen, Volendam, Aalsmeer, and Den Haag in the Netherlands, and have survived two months of lectures. I have tried many different Dutch foods (raw herring, eel, various fried things, and döner) and haven't found one I didn't like. My alcohol tolerance is up to a level more befitting a student and I now wear jeans at least 5 or 6 days before I wash them. I've also learned to type on a keyboard with US International settings. That means I can easily make symbols like € and throw down umlauts like they're going out of style.

ÄËÏÖÜ -- see?

I have an exam on the 1st of November that finishes out a class. I've been studying for that exam for about 5 hours today and only made it through the first two days of lectures. Yeowch, it's going to be an unpleasant few days for me between now and the exam.

I like it in the Netherlands. I have some friends outside of school whose company I greatly enjoy. I also like life here. I like that I get by with less clothing, food, and general possessions here. Television? I've watched it about 5 times since I've been here; ridden in a car about a half-dozen times. I also go entire weeks without my cellphone notifying me of a call or text. Cool.

The seasons are rapidly changing here. Many things are still green but several of the trees have already shed their leaves. Each day gets noticeably shorter, too. Okay, that might be a bit of an exaggeration but sunset is now an hour earlier than it was less than a month ago. Yeah, short days but there's an easy explanation: Delft is further north than any part of the contiguous United States. I would hate to be in Europe if the Gulf Stream ever breaks down. Talk about a cold and dreary place (think of Canada...I know, it's horrifying).

A small view of Rotterdam...it's a very American city in appearance (hello, skyscrapers). You can thank the Third Reich for that.

A street-scene in Amsterdam. I was lost when I took this picture so  I have no idea if there's anything special about the buildings other than looking typically Dutch.

Delft is still my favorite city here.

I'm almost halfway through my time in Netherlands. Last week, I submitted my application for a Swiss student visa. It wasn't much fun and the process reminded me that though I feel European, I am not at all. Mostly because I was the only "white" classmate that had to apply for a visa to study there. They also scared me because the Swiss government thinks it takes about 1750 CHF per month to live in Switzerland. The CHF is about equivalent in value to the USD. That's no small amount of money when you consider I will be in the country for at least 6 months. Fortunately, my scholarship was deemed sufficient financial means...or at least I think it will be.

There's a t-shirt in shops in Rotterdam that says "Ich Liebe Rotterdam". It's German for "I love Rotterdam" and if you know your World War 2 history, you'll see the humor. I want one.

Necessities

I had a pretty nasty experience on my first attempt to buy milk...and grocery shopping in general. Food was recognizable but the details failed me. The hardest part was picking milk. The packaging is similar to the USA in that there are various shades of blue used to show different kinds of milk but there's also a red package. Growing up, in Texas, red milk was whole milk. In The Netherlands, red milk is butter milk. In my first run for groceries, I bought red milk.

I didn't find out about the hazards of red milk until I got a drink the next morning. Yep, sour milk, first thing in the morning. Blegh. It wasn't just trouble with the milk, though. I didn't know what kind of cheese was what, sandwich meat is even more perplexing, there's no grape jelly on the shelves, peanut butter is hit-or-miss, and on top of all that, my "kitchen" has neither oven or freezer. Thankfully, first thing Friday morning (August 20, 2010) a group to show the new international students "how to shop at a Dutch supermarket" and of course, I was first in line. It was there that I learned the right milk to buy.

I'm eating like a student, again. Sandwiches, snacks (they have really fun flavors of Lays like pepperoni pizza, just paprika, spicy thai, etc), pasta, and ramen. Oh, and soda. They have Dr Pepper here. Goet! Funny circumstance: I ate the first Big Mac of my life here in The Netherlands. I only did so because I needed wireless internet and felt guilty about stealing the wifi from McDonalds...so I got a Big Mac. Meh.

There were other activities available to us during that first weekend and the beginning part of this week. I went on a tour of the second-hand shops in town. They were interesting...nothing like the Salvation Army store in the USA. These were, for the most part, literal junk stores. And tiny, can't forget that part. My group for touring the shops was small. Our guide was a student from India, there was a girl from Finland named Nasti, a guy from Czech Republic named Tomas, and me. Yes, her name is pronounced "nasty". Sweet girl, though. The first store we went to had a bigger bowl like I was looking for. The bowl given to my by the housing authority is about an inch deep...useless, basically. The other two stores were larger than that first one and packed to the gills. The largest one is called "de Flinstones" but there were no cavemen loitering anywhere in the vicinity. That shop had a few second-hand bikes starting at 75 Euros and that was more than any of us wanted to pay. Little did we know that those would be the cheapest bikes we'd see. Unfortunately, the big bike-buying expedition wasn't on my schedule until the next day.

The journey begins

Brought to you by Royal Dutch Shell and Technische Universiteit Delf (TU Delft) from The Netherlands!

I'm here in Holland (Zuid Holland, to be exact) at the oldest and largest technical university in The Netherlands. There are 897 international students attending TU Delft this year and I'm one of them. Over a year ago, I was laid off and found that I had neither enough education or experience to get another job in my field. Buying more education was the far easier option. Fortunately, I don't have to pay for this schooling (that's why this is brought to you in part by Royal Dutch Shell).

I didn't do much photographic chronicling of my leaving Tulsa for a temporary stay at my parents' house in Texas. Nor did I close the shutter on much of my time in Texas. However, I did snap a few important pics...like my last plate of Mexican food. All of the following took place on August 18, 2010.

Thanks to the Wednesday buffet at My Friends Grill in Crane, Texas, I got a good gut-full before embarking on a 16-hour trip to The Netherlands. I didn't leave Texas empty-handed, either. My sister prepared some cookies (and I still have a few left...not bad considering I got them 5 days ago) to send with me and my family, both chosen and assigned (except my brother, he was in Utah) were on hand to wish me a tearful goodbye. I teared up, too. Riding that escalator up to the security checkpoint, it finally dawned on me how drastically I was changing my life.

The flight from Midland to Houston was surprisingly interesting. There was a rather strong weather front blocking the normal flight path so we diverted south and west a bit...which meant I had a pretty awesome birds-eye view of Crane and all that. The plane itself wasn't much fun...but commuter flights rarely are. The next flight, though, was almost heaven. It was on a British Airways jumbo jet (747-400) and it was only a quarter-full. That meant that I had three seats to myself in coach. Sleep was a possibility though I didn't get much more than 2 hours of it. The plane was new enough that each seat had its own individual TV screen and the British Airways onboard entertainment system has about 45 movies available to watch on-demand. There were also episodes of major TV shows from both sides of the Atlantic, sports, kids, and educational programming, and 30 music channels to tune to. I watched "Date Night", "Dr. No", and an episode of "Glee" in flight.

My layover in London-Heathrow was pretty uneventful. I don't really understand why they do this but I landed at the B-gates of Terminal 5 at Heathrow and my flight to Amsterdam departed from the A-gates of Terminal 5, in another building. Transferring buildings, even though we rode an automated train, required going back through security screening. It's obnoxious. I may have found it less annoying if I'd had more sleep but we won't know about that until I fly back through before Christmas.

I landed in Amsterdam, collected luggage (checked one bag @ 54 lbs, and carried on two others @ ~60 lbs combined weight), went through customs (Nothing to declare!) and found an ambassador from TU Delft. Despite sending them my travel notification information twice, they still weren't expecting me. It was better than I feared, though, because I was afraid that there would be no one there to meet me at all and I would have to find my way to the Amsterdam Central train station and get to Delft on my own...all while lugging 100+ lbs of luggage. Thankfully, that wasn't the case. Files were shuffled through and Dutch words muttered and all was well...except that we left Amsterdam in the middle of rush hour...the 30 mile drive took over an hour. I did see a classic Dutch windmill on the way :)

The Dutch prepare things well so I was dropped off outside of my dorm/tiny apartment with keys in hand. I was the only one to figure out that room numbers do not directly equate to floor numbers. My room is 491 and in the USA, one would expect that to mean that is in the 91st room on the 4th floor. Well, in Holland, it's a room on the 12th floor (but since the ground floor is called the 0 floor, I'm on the 13th floor by American standards). The room is better than I expected. I have a private bathroom and kitchenette with sink, hot-plate, and refrigerator. The housing authority I used provided a very basic kitchen outfit (1 cup, 1 bowl, 1 spoon, etc.), two sets of linens for the bed, a shower-curtain, several chairs, dresser, shelving, desk and lamps, but no towel. Why all of that an no towel? I wish I knew the answer.

The welcoming committee from TU Delft was kind enough to throw a survival gift-bag in the rooms so I ate the ramen they gave me and then ventured down to the Albert Heijn supermarket for a few essentials. I also learned the hard way that milk in the red package in The Netherlands is butter-milk. I was too pooped to see the city after an 18 hour journey prefaced with 10 hours of packing, running final errands, and going to the airport. Too bad the bed is crap...but it works.