Since Thanksgiving is officially over, it's now time to start getting into the Christmas spirit. Time for christmas cookies, eggnog, gingerbread houses, christmas lights, the christmas tree, carols, wreaths, snow, a crackling fire.....I could go on and on and on...
ps. I am listening to Christmas tunes as I write this, just to get into the holiday mood.
So much has happened in this weekend, and only so much space to write it all! Once again, I have thought of more exciting and delightful events that have occurred over the past few weeks that I have failed to mention in previous entries. Again, my apologies for backtracking and the lack of consistency. But hey, I guess this blog somewhat can define a bit of who I am as a person: random, disorganized, goofy, sometimes irrelevant, full of EXCITEMENT!
Anywho...
I'll start with this past weekend, which happened to be Thanksgiving weekend.
Thursday afternoon, the nifty-ily fabulous Sinclair Post Miller (otherwise known as Clair to the Baltimore/GFS homies) flew in from Copenhagen, Denmark to stay with me for the weekend. She arrived just in time to help me boil and mash a large quantity of potatoes to make some scrumptious mashed potatoes for dinner. Since I don't have an oven, and I also have very limited cooking skills, I thought it would be best and safer for my fellow diners if I stuck with something simple and something that it is difficult to screw up. They actually turned out okay!
The vast majority of our program, along with our program leaders and various professors joined us at a cool bar/restaurant that CIEE rented out just for the occasion. Among the special guests were the one and only Bonny Wassing, Vreer (our trans* guest speaker, wearing an impeccably sharp kilt of some sort), Hannah's husband and baby Noor. Noor is by far the cutest and happiest Dutch/American baby I've ever seen.
I was honestly terrified that no one was going to bring food for our epic Thanksgiving feast- I was under the assumption that the rest of our group was going to forget to bring food. Boy was I wrong! There were so many different dishes of potatoes (sweet and regular), corn, cranberry sauce, turkey, bacon-wrapped dates, Russian beet salad, other miscellaneous salads, a plethora of breads and spreads, and this isn't even including the vast amounts of pies! I was initially really upset that I could not be in Baltimore to spend Thanksgiving with my family. However, I couldn't have asked for a more warming and lovely Thanksgiving with a group of people that I love and truly cherish. It made me so thankful for everyone in my life, from California to Maryland to Amsterdam to everywhere else in the rest of the world. I feel so blessed ( and I don't use that word much- not much of a religious person!) to have been able to spend Thanksgiving with all of the people in my study abroad group. They have truly become family to me now, which I definitely didn't expect to find when I came abroad.
food and friends
our epic feast
Clair and I!
Sorry Liza, had to put it up
we LOVE thanksgiving!
The boys with the one and only Bonny Wassing! Doesn't he look sharp in his bow-tie?After stuffing ourselves silly with food and drink, we participated in one activity that is only appropriate for Thanksgiving: Karaoke. Most of our posse joined us at a glorious Karaoke bar. Well actually we attended not one but Two different Karaoke bars. The first we re-opened because so many of us were so enthusiastic about karaoke, and then various other Dutchies followed us. They did an intriguing job of the actual Karaoke part. Example A: the song "I'll sing a little prayer for you" or whatever the title is, had these lyrics instead, which I thought were sort of amusing. After this karaoke bar proved to be sub-par, due to their lack of truly groovy tunes, we migrated to Casablanca, another karaoke bar that is well known and loved by people here. (by people I mean the kids in my program...) We boogied and jived to the melodious sounds of tipsy kids of all ages belting out to various tunes from all different genres. It was a truly delightful way to end Thanksgiving.
tee hee.
John Henry and Nori singing their hearts out.
just a trio of soul sistazz! Note Jeanine's (girl in middle) turkey hat. A work of art.Friday was a lazy day for Clair and I. After a rousing night before, we decided to take it easy. We rode by bike (I dinked Clair- she's a great dinkee, fyi!) to Waterlooplein, where we perused through the random assortment of clothing, antiques, and random junk. We also mingled and wandered down a few shopping streets full of thrift stores and stores with other miscellaneous stuff. There's a store called "Knuffels" which translates to "Hugs" that was chock FULL of stuffed animals and other silly trinkets. We ended the afternoon with lounging, Planet Earth and perpetual napping. Friday night another dorm building, Plantage Muidergracht, had a mini fiesta appropriately named "Lekker Studies", aka delicious studies. Someone brought red solo cups (a friend had brought them from California) so we played the traditional American drinking games- flip cup, beirut (beer pong), etc. It was such an American moment: at one point it was the Europeans (A Dutchie and actually an Australian? not sure where guy #2 was from) versus two Americans. The Euros had no freaking clue what beirut was, and the Americans were getting a wee bit too competitive over the rules and regulations. Such a typical American thing to do. I may or may not be guilty of getting overly competitive at some point during the game as well....
It was a lekker night indeed!
Saturday Clair, Steph and I ventured to Sara's Pancake Bakery, where Clair got to taste a yummy Dutch pancake. After we stuffed our faces full (this seems to be a theme for this weekend), we wandered down the street to the Electric LadyLand, otherwise known as the fluorescent art museum. It was basically just a room in this hippy man's basement that was full of fluorescent minerals, paintings, and other random objects. It was small, but actually a really cool museum. The pictures turned out pretty nifty as well, as you will see.
our groovy host and tour guideThis was followed by hot cocoa, and- wait for it- more food. This time it was nachos. Quite a strange dish to pair with warm chocolademelk (warm chocolate milk, literally), but delish nonetheless!
Sadly Clair had to leave early this am (6:00 am!) for the train station. On our walk to the station we saw bikes and the bridges dusted with snow and ice. It was a lovely zero degrees Celsius, or 32 degrees Fahrenheit, and boy was it chilly! brrrrrrrrrrrr! There was sprinklings of snow all weekend, but most of it melted by noon. Still, it is promising to see that there can actually be snow in Amsterdam, in a city that is 10 meters below sea level, a city that should in theory be covered in water. The weather forecast says that there is supposed to be snow Tuesday and Thursday also, which should be fun. I wonder if Dutch professors give out snow days.... I also am wondering about how easy / difficult / dangerous it will be to bike in the snow. Even worse, what will it be like to bike when the snow has melted and re-frozen over, creating a maze of black ice? I'll let you know about the wintery adventures soon!
Fun Dutch words for the day:
lol=fun (not kidding...)
uitstaande=outstanding
gambas=shrimp
No comments:
Post a Comment