today, paula, wencke, and i were going to go shopping far away in the snow. we all decided we'd much rather go on a tropical island vacation. so, we did the next best thing and went to a zwembad instead. more specifically, we went to AQUADROOM. which, in english, is AquaDream.
it was lovely lovely. we went in the wave pool, and the hot tub, and the water slide. with the giant plastic palm trees, it almost felt real.
though, my favorite part of our trip was definitely the turkish steam bath we got. it was mentholated, so the whole thing was piping hot, and made my entire face and esophagus feel minty fresh. though, it did get in my eyes, which sort of felt like chopping an onion. nevertheless it was toasty warm, finally >w<
santa clause also made an appearance. just like we don't really understand sinterklaas, i am not fully convinced that the dutch understand santa clause. like, at all. anyway, he was wandering around the zwembad, ringing his bell, and passing out buttered pieces of almond-filled raison bread. which, i guess is a dutch christmas thing. i am okay with that, since bread filled with almond paste is DELICIOUS. if not slightly out of place in that situation.
sure, skinny and questionable aquadroom santa, i'd love a piece of kerststol.
anyway, after 3 hours chilling in our faux tropische paradise, we headed back home. what followed was a lovely day full of nothing and computering and television <3
we also hooked up the deep fryer and made some bitterballen. cos thats what you do on your day off, you deep fry shit. i decided that if thats where this day was headed, i was going to make cookies.
my grandma sent me a giant box of krusteaz chocolate crinkles mix for my birthday, which was perfect, since i wanted a cookie really badly, but didnt want to commit to actually putting in the effort to properly concoct cookies. i just mixed in the eggs and oil, stirred it all together, rolled some dough balls in powdered sugar, n baked for 12 minutes. what resulted was the brownie-y, cake-y glory i'd been craving for days.
thank you, grandma, for making my life oh so easy.
i ate 3 and then went the extra mile and made an ice cream sandwich. it was a good choice.
besides relaxing and my baking expeditions, the rest of the day was devoid of anything. i facebooked a little, tumblred a little, ate a burrito, did my nails. yknow. chillin. i also obsessively cleaned my piercing like 5 times, because i love it and never want it to leave me.
tomorrow, christophe, amy, jacque, and i are going out for the night C: which will be funfun. toodles!
but it really needs time to marinate. y'know, it needs to soak in its own juices in the queue for a lil while longer, to soak up some extra... er... coherency. AKA its super long and i dont feel like finishing it just now.
this will be one of those popcorn posts i think, because i've been up to quite a bit but don't really feel like giving this the fuidity it deserves. so sue me.
last week i went to the school musical, called we want it all. it was an adaptation of the queen musical, we will rock you. because that exists, and it is apparently a high tech, magical and surreal experience. obviously the perfect candidate to be turned into a low budget school production.
looks do-able.
let me explain the plot to you a wee bit, if i may. so, it takes place far in the future on planet mall [earth], when lady gaga has taken over the world and real music is outlawed, and everyone is a brainwashed clone. BUT, this one crazy chick, galileo figaro, has crazy classic rock related halucinations and breaks away with this other rebel chick, who she names scaramouche, to have an intense lesbianic quest for musical instruments and rock and roll. also featuring punk/metal rebels named britney spears and meat loaf, complete in corsets, kilts, and viking hats. they are then chased across the freaky futureworld by the killer queen, and must rely on galileo figaro's insanity and inexplicable knowledge of the "sacred texts" [lyrics to queen songs, etc] to guide them to the mythical musical instruments that are hidden somewhere in the universe. yeah, i know it sounds like a winner.
actually though, it was not bad. granted, it was a little thin on plot, even with all that... well.. plot. it still felt pretty empty between lively musical numbers. probably because half of it was in english, since the play was in english, but then half of it was in dutch, so that it could be understood by dutch people. the result was an odd mish-mash of people speaking in one language and getting a response in another. sort of remeniscent of my real life conversations, actually. idk, i found the text a little too latent with queen references to take seriously. the resistance is called the bohemians, the time of real music is the rhapsody, and the amount of lines that are just directly quoted song lyrics is sort of ridiculous.
but, i did think it was completely radical how SCANDELOUS the play was. the punkers wore lingerie and called each other "bitch" throughout the whole play, and it featured a lesbian romance scene, after which scaramouch called galileo "gali-LAY-o gigolo". i am so not making this up. the dutch are chill as hell.
not to mention, for a school play, the set, music, and costumes were FANTASTIC. they had a fully grafitti-d car, stellar scaffolding and lights, a flawless student rock band, and a 3-pane movie screen for a background, instead of switching sets. it was just fully animated. I KNOW, high tech.
so although the actual dialogue was a little dry, and it was kinda mostly just a fancy themed concert, it was still pretty entertaining :D it was worth my 2.50, anyway. plus, i'm giving it leeway because it is a DUTCH MUSICAL BASED ON QUEEN AND SCIFI. so already it's at a bit of a disadvantage, only because of how completely ridiculous that is.
anyway, it's been snowing a crapton all the time. let me just tell you, my potato-esque outerwear has yet to become more endearing. THOUGH, eline got me this amazing hat for my birthday that is a polarbear, and it is huge and obnoxious and made of white fur. i love it, and i wear it to detract from my roundness in my winter garments.
i thought "oh, maybe this isnt such a good garment to wear outside my house. you know... in public. where there's other people."
but then i remembered,
this is what i look like anyway. the hat wasn't gonna make it so much worse. and it so doesnt, if anything it's an improvement.
anyhow, back to the snow. so, on friday i was sposed to go to see only seven left in hilversum with debby, annemiek [spelling?], and bente. we were in the grocery store buying munchies and drinks when bente's dad called and said there was way too much snow to drive there, so we couldnt go. it was very sad :C
but, we decided to buy some food, rent some movies, and have a depressive evening sleepover instead. and then went well :D we had "stroopwafelfeest" ice cream, which was heavenly. did you know they even made that? because i sure didn't. and i am so very glad they do. its by a brand called hertog, who makes all the good ice cream. they have some specialty dutch flavors, also including bitterkoek and advocaat royaal. personally, i prefer it to actual stroopwafels.
i know i'm excited.
and some red fizzy alcohol-y stuff, which i'm pretty sure was legitimately "red" flavored. it was either that or "blue", and blue looked a little questionable.
it admittedly made me, personally, feel a lil better about havin' to stay in hengelo for the night. i dunno about the rest of the girls. also, they gave me 6 chocolate letters for my birthday, one for each letter of my name. so basically, i have enough chocolate to last me forever now :D
we also watched some pretty dope movies, including this one dutch film about rich ladies who get plastic surgery and murder their cheating husbands? a comedy, of course. i thought it was funny :P but i was more excited about being able to understand any of it.
but anyway, night well spent. then, the next morning i had to wake up sssssssuper early and get my ass over to the train station to go to DICKENS FESTIJN DEVENTER. cos remember how sometimes i do that weird thing in america where i dress up in period attire and act like a freak? yeah, well i do that here too. i showed up at the train station, changed into my seven layers of dickens era dresses and shawls, slapped a bonnet over my hair, and i was so ready to rumble. and by rumble, i mean spend 5 hours out in the freezing cold singing christmas carols with my choir. it was real good.
in between episodes of singing "here we come a wassailing", we went inside to drink tea, regain feeling in our toes, and eat broodjes. okay, a thing about broodjes. how come, when you're at home, the idea of eating a buttered roll with cheese on it is like "ehhhh" to the max, but then when you're out somewhere and they give you a buttered roll with cheese on it you're like "OHGHGMMMNOMNOMNOM THIS IS GOOD."
"meh" to the nth degree, or godly gift from heaven?
anyway, we got a long break to go explore, which was cool. we saw some kids doing songs from oliver twist, which is much better in dutch. and a bunch of people dressed up as townspeople/ prostitutes/ also this one guy with a herd of sheep. he was pretty cool.
though most of the chorus, myself included, just beelined for the hot wafel stand. because um, HOT WAFELS. in -5 weather, i can barely think of anything i'd like more. i got mine with blanketbakkersroom [the stuff in eclairs], dark chocolate, and powdered sugar.
but actually it was sooo much better than that.
it came on a pretty insufficient and unecessary paper plate, which i just threw out. basically, i decided for simplicity's sake to forgo the use of a utensil, and to just shove the sugar-y chocolate-y mass into my mouth. really, i'm sure i looked like such a lady in my fluffy skirts, face covered in chocolate.
anyway, after that i also got a warm grilled ham sandwhich with some kind of lovely sauce, because i was hungry and oh so cold. and it smelled nice. that also made my stomach happy.
i promised to come back the next day and get chestnuts with sam, because she said they're really good and sort of like sweet potatoes. but the next day, there was no train that went to hengelo on time, and i was on the brink of illness, so i just stayed home and chilled. which is pretty much what i've been doing non-stop since then.
today was pretty ehh, i found out that jacque is going home. which is really the biggest bummer ever... like... i'm not exactly sure what i'm going to do without her. like... i know that its to finish school n all, and that i guess she didnt really like it here.... but still. i'm not sure what to say except that i'm really, really sad.
but yeah, so today i just kinda oscillated between my bed and the couch, drank a lot of tea, and ate my feelings in the form of m&m's and ice cream. dayyyy well spent.
anyway, the rest of the week is just bursting with life! tomorrow jelle is coming over, and then wednesday my family and i are going to aquadroom [a place that i'm assuming has to do with water idk but they have a hot tub so whatever], and thursday christophe, amy, and jacque and i are going out. and then christmas and stuff!
this guy.
it's a party and all, and i figured that it couldnt hurt to have a stockpiled amount of personal pizzas, bitterballen assortment, cookies, and chips. also that bread with stuff in it, that shit's delish.
also 2 crates of beer and a bazillion bottles of carbonated drinkmatter.
also there is another home-made chocolate cake sitting in my fridge. i kind of want to eat the entire thing by myself. but y'know, i'll refrain.
[i'd also like to add that this time i did not obtain a giant blisterburn! because i wasn't a STUPID JERK who doesn't wear oven mits when she touches stuff in the oven. :D ]
anyway. throwing parties is hard. wish me luck.
this morning i couldnt find the frying pan i wanted to make an omelette in, and i had to settle with bran flakes. which normally would make me pretty souped, cos we know i'm all about unprocessed bran. today though, i wanted to add some spice to my life. anyway, i couldnt, because i am terrible at trying hard to do anything at 6.15 in the morning, even if it is find the pan to make breakfast in. :C
but twisting flapping ear dog made me feel better. i keep him perched on the arm of the couch for convinience.
zingende hond met bewegende oren, if you're feeling particularly up for a challange.
anyhow,
sunday was muh burfday. as is the norm in nederland, we had a little feestje :D
may i just say, the dutch have family birthday parties down to an exact science. they are all exactly the same, simply because it is such a good formula for low-commital celebration. my party had all the things that are required (possibly by law) to be present, such as festive triangular streamers!
yup, this variety right here. a must have item if you might want to celebrate anything ever.
vlaai assortment!
my particular stuk of vlaai was "ski kersen" flavored
i need to stop this party train in its tracks for a little while to talk about vlaai. google vertalen translates vlaai as "flan", but i feel that that is not giving vlaai enough credit.
this is flan.
those raspberries really do a lot for you, flan.
this is vlaai
just to clarify.
i personally define vlaai as "cakepie", but it is sorta the dutch celebratory pastry, and its good. really good. ski vlaai, as i have come to understand through first hand experience, is normal vlaai topped with copious amounts of sugar. like straight up, inches of sugar. i know, what an amazing idea. i thought so too.
technically, it's not clumps of sugar, it's "schuimvlokken", which literally translates as "foam flakes" and is something i cannot find the exact ingredient list for but i'm pretty sure its meringue? maybe? we'll never know.
anyway, i was super excited to have a vlaai of my own :)
koffie + tea + snackies!
we had a cozy afternoon pow-wow full of refreshments and smalltalk. it was lovely c:
and oh, oh, we even broke out the deep fryer. i know, it was a really big deal. we not only had bitterballen, (which, as we know, are the little, ??? filled, deep fried balls of ultimate beer food), we also had sate sauce bitterballen, deep fried balls filled with actual distinguishable meat-matter, and mozerella sticks.
mozeralla sticks are such a bad idea. because you eat one and you're like
"i am totally feelin' this whoever first decided to deep fry cheese was really onto something"
but then you decide you want another.
and only after eating another do you realize that one was more than enough. like, for your entire life.
why... were you created...?
[i want you to know that in browsing pictures of mozzerella sticks, i found a picture of grilled cheese filled with mozzerella sticks. oh denny's, you always know just what the people want.]
cheese enduced death aside, i fully enjoyed my verjaardag :D
then, on tuesday, jelle and i went to go see harry potter!
since the first show of the day is at 7:30 though, we also had to putz around hengelo for six and a half hours. which was fun, 'cept for the fact that it was butt-ass freezing.
hengelo has begun looking particularly festive these days, probably due to the gratuitously sized kerstboom and ice skating rink they've set up in the centrum. it turns the space from cold and depressing to frosty and christmas-y!
anyhow, i wanted to get my ears pierced that day with some of my birthday money, but fate didn't want to let that happen. both the piercing places told us to come back the next day, so instead we spent our time wandering and looking for somewhere that sells tea cheaper than 2 euros a cup like la place, because that is criminal.
so, that would be 20 cents for the teabag, 90 cents for the hot water, and 90 cents for use of cup and saucer. gotcha.
we found a place, called cherry's, that sold it for 1.75 and reminded me of friendly's. it was a nice place. :D
also! i had my first oliebol. the stands have already been up for a few weeks, but i hadn't gotten one until now. an oliebol is pretty much exactly what it sounds like, if you think about it. it's a fluffy, oily dough ball that is deep fried and then coated in powdered sugar. sort of like a dough boy, but ball shaped. and better. you can get them plain, but they also fill them with things like raisins, apple, and banana. apparently they're a winter/new years food. it was pretty fantastic, not gonna lie. though admittedly something i probably wont be eating too often. :p
nothing warms your soul on a cold night quite like sugar-coated oildough.
they are sold in big truck-cart things that are popping up all over everywhere. they're kind of wonderful, and they smell like sugardough C:
tis the season
with krokets, bitterballen, oliebollen, patat oorlog, and frikandel broodjes, and hagelslag, i think maybe the netherlands should consider stopping making fun of americans for mcdonalds and fast food. just sayin'. you are just as deep fried as we are, and don't even lie i know you guys sell chocolate covored oreos too. come to terms with it. don't try to pass off a hamburger bun filled with butter and sprinkles as having nutritional value, let's be serious here, holland :P
i'm sorry, but as much as you want it to, this doesn't count as real food.
anyway, harry potter [the original topic of this section of blog, if you recall] was good. i thought i was gonna make it through the whole thing without crying, and i was going really well, but then dobby. dobby fucking got me. dobby is totally my hero.
the only thing i didnt like about it was that since it was only half a movie, it felt [appropriately] like only half a movie. so waiting the year to see the other half is going to be painful.
AREN'T WE JUST LUCKY WE HAVE NEW KIDS TURBO TO HOLD US OVER UNTIL THEN?
i think we all know the answer to that.
guys, i plan to single-handedly spread this film to the US. i mean it, they need to know about it.
today, besides my omelette and other things, was pretty stellar. i had double art study hour last period, which usually causes me physical pain due to the sheer boredom. but today i actually made myself useful and poorly inked a drawing of en edo period lady. i obviously have not mastered the use of india ink yet, as made clear by my creatively uneven and blotchy linework. its artistic!
then after school i went back to hengelo to get my ears pierced. decided on claire's, cos its the cheapest place. after struggling to place the two studs on one ear correctly, we were all ready to pierce my ears with pretty light pink crystal studs. 'cept first, i needed to fill out a form. no big deal. except that all of the forms had evaporated from existance, so i couldn't sign them. since they couldnt continue without, i have to come back again another day to get my piercing.
but then, they told me that they'd give me a 20% discount on said piercing. which is great! cos extra money i was bummed about spending for the pink studs [as opposed to the ugly metal bobbles] makes up exactly 20% of the price, actually. everybody wins!
so i'm thinking i'll go back on saturday n try to do it then. but i'll call first.
a sidenote, i'm beginning to pick up the questionable grammatical and punctuational choices of my peers. like, today i actually justified the use of the commallipse,..
because to be fair, that's how i talk,.. i like to be non-committal about when my sentence is over.
i also seriously considered saying "i'm not sure how much beds we are going to have," as if it was the appropriate choice of wording. WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME.
okay this was a lot of words. i'm going to go to sleep now in hopes that the omelette pan i want magically appears in the kitchen tomorrow morning. fingers crossed.
i didn't actually have much reason to post today besides the description of copious amounts of food and the fact that today is my last day of being sixteen ever. i wanted to savor it, and mark it with a blog post.
oh, the good old days. thank amy for the photo
shall i start off with a brief description of today? yes, i shall. today feels like the coziest day that ever was. it is warm, and i got to sleep in 'till 11, i have absolutely no obligations except finishing my sinterklaas surprise, and i am currently surrounded by cats. there's snow outside, warm tea and sweaters inside, and i could not *possibly* be more content. this, dear friends, is what i was born to do. what life was made for. it's like watching a blizzard with a cup of hot cocoa whilst wrapped in a blanket, but the blanket is wrapped in baby kittens.
i think *everyone* needs a kitten-pile.
also, for some reason, the heating unit in my room decided to turn on today, for the first time. ever. what once was a frosty cave of terror and dread is now deliciously tosty. seriously, i avoided going to my room because it was so chilly. but i woke up this morning and i could take off the covers without wanting to curl up and die! huge occassion, volgens mij. i am taking it as a birthday present from the house. it was so cozy and nice in my room that after i woke up i decided to stay in bed and just lie there play jewelquest on my phone for an hour.
don't judge me. jewelquest is physically addictive. when i first got my phone, i was like
"what a crap game. never gonna play this." but, necesity forced me to eventually play it to keep the unbearable boredom at bay. at first i only played it in geography class, and i was like "ehhh this game is lame."
but now, i cannot stop. i am on level 25, get at me. i need to keep playing, just to see how many levels there are. not like they are particularly interesting levels, but the mindless droning actions one must perform to succeed are what make my world spin 'round. you may say my brain is melting, it's plausible. but I say i'm just developing the area of one's brain set aside for being unforgivably good at jewelquest. MY BRAIN IS THRIVING THANKS TO JEWELQUEST.
you don't know my life.
ahem, anyway. yesterday was paula's birthday, and to celebrate we went out for a fancy dinner. it was in this super gezellig stable-turned-restaurant. i was gonna order off the menu, but i couldnt actually read any of it. i barely get by on menu's that aren't full of super exotic, pretentious food descriptions, so this was obviously just too much for me to handle. luckily, paula told me that everyone else was going to get a 5 course chef's choice suprise meal. i was like HELL YEAH now i dont have to put any thought into this, i just get to eat. sign me up.
it was so, so yummy. i love fancy eating @w@
the first thing we got was a shot glass full of pumpkin-orange juice soup and a cream cheese puff. one does not expect pumpkin and orange juice to be a super combination, but let me assure you IT WAS. it was all warm and spiced and creamy and i'm pretty sure i would have been satisfied if that were the only thing i ate that night. the cream cheese puff was also yummy.
then we had a raw fish/cold cut/something else course and i was like :I. but it was good.
n then we had a fish course, and a bird course with one little delicious bitterball. it was all very rich and warm and nice.
then, the main course was beef on top of mashed potatoes with sauce, and then one carrot and one french fry, precariously perches on top of a single potato. cos i guess they thought we'd only be needing one. which, to be fair, wasn't inaccurate.
basically it was so delicious i just wanted to sleep forever. you know what i mean? @w@
then for dessert we had caramelized pineapple slice [singular] with granola, a tiny piece of apple crumble, two white chocolate mousse stripes, and a scoop of ice cream. WHICH WAS HEAVENLY.
after that we had tea and coffee, and i was like ehh, i dont really want tea and coffee. but then, i saw that tea and coffee come with a plate of gourmet koffiekoekje selection. SO I NEEDED TEA AND COFFEE.
i was very content with my cookie assortment. they were delicious.
so that was a super gezellig night <3
i was going to pretty much stop talking right about now, but that was before i went with wencke and gjalt this afternoon to the plant superstore, intratuin. i assumed it would be your average plant filled warehouse, but i was so, so very wrong. it was the place that dreams, mine in particular, are made of. it's better than ikea. it rivals storyland. i need to go back and photographically document every inch of it.
just to give you an idea, the entrance has a river surrounded with giant red mushrooms and small fluffy animals. in the river, sit three bobbing purple flowers. and in each flower sits a laughing babydoll dressed up like a fairy. interspersed throughout the building are various lifesized stuffed deer, suits of armor, and elements of woodland holiday cheer. I AM NOT SHITTING YOU. it is absolutely magical. also, huge.
they have a bazillion christmas trees, indoor plants, ornaments, componants of miniature holiday town dioramas, pet supplies, house decorations, fireworks, and other generally ethereal things to spritz around your living space. in addition to this, they also offer a wide assortment of food in their cafeteria. ikea, eat your heart out.
i was fantasizing about how i could spent the entire day there when i realized that no, actually, i could spend my entire life there. they sell pillows shaped. like. toadstools. they sell snow white disembodied elk heads. anything you could possibly need to pimp out your santaland, they can sell to you.
the real deal.
some prime snapshots of the holiday wonderment
notice the babydoll flower fairies.
in case you are wondering what the red things behind the babydoll flower fairies are, those seemed to be red toxic waste barrels. yeah, i don't really get it either. but hey, whoever designed the place obviously knew what they were doing. or was insane. take your pick.
so basically, what you should take away from this blogpost is that i am almost seventeen, and i would enjoy nothing more than to be locked in intratuin playing jewelquest and eating gourmet koffiekoekjes for the rest of eternity. i know what you're thinking,
we have good times.
so, today i am here with an important announcement:
you know who's really smart? like, blindingly mind-bogglingly intelligent?
debby is. she might be the smartest person i know. i can't even handle it. she is also an artistic genius, as proved by her beautiful and artistic interpretations of justin bieber, sinterklaas, bram, and beards. you should come to hengelo and meet her! she will gladly deface BEAUTIFY your textbooks with justin biebers smiling face bowl cut.
this announcement has been paid for by the Committee for Debby Intelligence Awareness.
also, quick, non-debby related update. the snow. its slippery. i thought it wouldnt be so slippery, cos i mean COME ON, it's snow. but oh no, snow has taught me a lesson. snow, you may have won this time. but i will defeat you. me n my fiets are ready for the challenge.
...jk i hope i never have to leave the house ever again haha my fiets can fall in a ditch. <3
i am a maker of good decisions. professionally. [not really.] i have decided this because, this morning i exercised my ability to make good decisions so effectively that it just might have saved my life! or at least my extremities.
i woke up this morning, and it was not one of those "good morning sunshine, the earth says hello!" mornings. it was more of a "why am i even alive." morning. but anyway, i got outta bed and had to decide what to wear. usually, i just wear a pair of pants and a sweater, cos that's warm enough sometimes. but today, for some reason of divine enlightment in my subconscious, i thought to myself, "NOPE. today, i think i am going to wear a pair of leggings, pants, sweatpants, a long sleeve sweater, a zip-up hoodie, my german army jacket, a scarf, a hat, unox glovemittens, and my earmuffs." and my coat, of course.
i don't know what possessed me to wear approximately 5 more layers than i usually do, but it was a shining moment in my life. once i got to school, around second period, it started to snow. not like "teehee little fairy sprinkles in the skyyy~ @w@", more like "ow that snowflake just pegged me in the eye wtf".
they were giant mutant snowflakes, out for blood. and i biked home in them, with about half an eyeball of visibility, because my hair and the snowflakes combined in front of my face to form a frozen pink shield.
BUT THE THING IS, except for my face, i was completely toasty warm. do you know why? yes. because i have no shame, and proudly walk around looking like an assbutt in my bazillion puffy layers and earmuffs. i'm like an onion, each layer more socially unacceptable than the last.
laugh all you want, my fellow classmates. your shiny italy sportscoat isn't going to deter the hypothermia like my sweatpants and panda earmuffs.
i mean i really hope it's warm enough, for your sake.
besides the fact that i have to actually be outside with the snow, the snow itself is really pretty. it's getting me quite in the holiday spirit. i got home today and looked up the christmas song on youtube and totally got my jam on.
which reminds me, okay. every day i spend learning more about sinterklaas, the more utterly baffling the holiday becomes. at first it was just like "oh so it's like santa but not santa." but it is SO MUCH MORE INTERESTING THAN THAT.
so we do presents, but we have to wrap them up in a "suprise" for the other person. like hiding them, or putting them in a paper mache model kayak, for example. this is something that i do not even begin to "snap" but i'm gonna try my hardest. other people sometimes do poems too, to give to the person with their gift. but i'm pretty sure that is beyond my skill in every sense.
also, sinterklaas himself is just a neverending fountain of WHAT. he rides around on a stoomboot with his black slave-elves, and he comes from spain but he's actually turkish, and he leaves presents in your shoes. [as i have come to understand]. thats like 1000 times more creative than a guy from the north pole with flying reindeer. good job, holland!
oh, the merriment.
at the afs party on sunday [at which i won a christmas tree and dutch porcelain ornament from blokker :D] we were just sitting around, chillin, completely unawares, when we all hear accordian. i was mildly intrigued, since y'know. accordian is not something that enters your daily life very often.
and then, into the livingroom danced 4 zwart piet and sinterklaas, fully costumed and singing spiritedly. forcefully spreading their holiday cheer and merriment to several confused exchange students drinking tea. it. was. amazing. everyone else was just kinda like whaaaaat, but for me, this was an experience i could not handle. i proceeded to go into a state of utter, nonfunctioning glee. i'm *fairly* sure i grabbed my knees and rolled into a little ball on the floor, smiling like a giant doof.
an emotion best conveyed by spongebob.
to be fair, WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF SINGING SLAVE-ELVES STORMED YOUR HOUSE? because i feel like i had pretty much the right response.
anyway, that was probably the most surreal experience of my life thus-far. which says a lot, because i am here and every day is a surreal experience.
beyond that amazing experience, this weekend i also went to enschede with alex n eline to go to atak, which was awesome C: and briefly visited nijverdal. which was terrifying. only because the best way to describe nijverdal is "post-apocalyptic work camp". jacque and i had to stop there on our way to raalte because the other half of the traintracks in nijverdal have been demolished, and the main station is heavily under construction. there's just one track leading out towards hengelo. we then had to take a bus past what i'm pretty sure is an abandoned lace factory, and several gratuitously sized gun statues, to reach our destination. which was a sparse dirt-pile filled semi-wasteland. we had to walk through a tunnel made with a gigantic metal pipe through a dirt pile to get to the single set of traintracks where our train was. our final view of nijverdal was a huge, solitary factory building with two large red twisting pipes [basically water slides] attatched to the side. nijverdal made me feel like fallout 3, or a creepy future dystopia full of shelled remnants of yesteryear.
some inspiring google image results for nijverdal.
the death tunnel.
i'm sure it's a lovely place in the actual town, probably
no, really.
alright, i'm gonna go learn some sinterklaas songs now. care to join me?
hi everyone :) its a particularly lazy saturday afternoon, so i figured i'd busy myself with a blog entry! this post is really, really long. and probably doesnt make sense, because i have a sugar related headache the size of alaska and my fingers are shaking a little bit.
the last 2 or 3 weeks have been quite interesting. mostly average, but a few things have happened, and its been busy enough to get me out of a near comatose state of normality.
after the success of the chocolate cake i baked for jelle's birthday, i somehow became under the impression that i can bake things. like successfully. with my head full of dreams, i set out to work.
i felt kinda bad about purchasing 5 cups of walnuts for thanksgiving which i, post-thanksgiving, still had no intention of eating. so for the last week i've been baking walnut desserts pretty much nonstop. first i used half of them in meringue cookies, because i was like CRAP HOW DO I MAKE SOMETHING DELICIOUS WITH PRETTY MUCH NOTHING EXCEPT WALNUTS? [and eggwhites, and copious amounts of sugar.]
and walnut meringues drifted down from the heavens~ according to my parents, they were good :)
now, i must admit, i am one of those bakers who's baked goods always look sort of questionable. i wish i could bake things that were beautiful, but i'm pretty much just capable of sticking heart shaped sprinkles on top of my lopsided cakes and hoping for the best.
the next thing i baked is a good example of that. i had planned to bake some blondies for the sinterklaas thing afs is having this weekend. i *happened* to have some walnuts on hand, so i figured i'd throw 'em in and everything would be peachy.
blondies are delicious. they are gooey cookie-brownie hybrids, and they are probably one of the worst things you can put in your mouth. besides say, pure lard coated in sugar. paula deen would be proud. anyway.
i didnt have the proper sized pan handy, and i didnt feel like making conversions [I DONT BAKE BY THE RULES I FOLLOW MY HEART] so i just kinda winged it. i stuck them babies in the oven for the reccomended half an hour and didn't look back. i even checked them with a toothpick out of habbit, which came out coated in sugary-chocolate-ness. i did not care. the top was hard, and thats what mattered to me. who complains about blondies being too gooey in the middle anyway? certainly not i.
i decided that if they didn't cut into squares, i wouldnt bring them to the AFS thing because they simply were no beautiful enough. after letting them cool for like an hour, i cut them into... bars? slices? vaguely outlined 12ths of the pan? yeah. they didnt come out so much as "bars", but as "blobs of sugary, nut-y, chocolate-y deliciousness with some crust i guess" WHICH IS TOTALLY FINE WITH ME. i am now in a jittery, slightly crazed euphoria.
so, if you ever need a recipe that even if you fuck it up, it is still guaranteed to be pretty stellar, bake blondies.
okay, done blabbing about my love for baking.
so, the weather is getting colder. not like "ohh it's a little bit nippy noodles out thurr better wear a scarf" cold, like "FUCKING SNOT ICICLES IN MY FACEEE ohgod the tears are freezing in my eyeballs" cold.
like, i'm *fairly* certain an accident related to my fingers being too numb to use my bike breaks is imminant. like, sometimes i consider hybernation as a viable life option.
apparently this type of weather effects nobody but me, because while i'm biking to school in 3 layers of everything, a scarf, gloves, a hat, and earmuffs, there's chav-y guys cruisin' by next to me in naught but a shiny sports jacket. anyway,
cold weather, besides meaning being afraid to go outside, also means it's stamppot season C:
stamppot is a dutch dish that consists of potatoes and a bunch of other stuff mashed into a mash-y mush of stuff. some people love it, some people think it's nasty.
dutch cooking, like my baking, is not known for it's beauty and refinement.
i think it kinda just tastes like potatoes haha. i'm not really sure how someone could hate it, actually. it's pretty difficult to hate, its like hating bread or something.
but i guess we'll be eating a lot of it, since i purchased 3 packages of unox sausage yesterday. to give you an idea of what unox sausage is like, it come's in an sealed package and does not need to be refrigerated. which jacque and i decided is creepy. but, it came with free neon orange glovemittens and i needed them! actually, its really more like i bought a pair of 9 euro mittens that came with 3 free packages of sausage. which i'm okay with.
something everyone should have in their wardrobe.
also, i finally got around to changing my schedule at school! i dropped geography, because i explained to them that it was completely useless, which they accepted. and i switched into an easier math class. also, i got an extra period of CKV because i work ridiculously slowly in that class, because i have to spend extra time translating ridiculous, uncommon words in the questions into english. :D
this picture does nothing to help uitleg the opdracht.
nevertheless, i think my dutch is actually improving. like, i have conversations with people now c: and even if 90% of my replies are "ja," or "echt?" or "klopt", i still deserve an a for effort.
anyway, today i'm just dicking around drinking tea until like 5, and then i'm taking the train to enschede to spend the night with alex n eline c: we're gonna watch movies and then go out dancing or something. :D
and i'm planning to dump my pan of blondies on them, since i dont want to leave them in the house where i could potentially eat all of them. evil, i know.
aaand my birthday's comin' up. yup. got 2 packages in the mail today c: but im gonna wait till the 5th to open them. joepieee~
hurr durr durr a lot of other stuff happened recently too, but i kinda don't have enough brain power left right now to explain it in a way that isn't stream of consciousness. which, to you, would probably sound like "ashammalammarabbaropparoopadoopaaaa"
and nobody wants that.
finally, have i mentioned to you that this is the nicest thing i own? because it is.
a sorely trying daywith an exceedingly happy ending. this is a pretty complain-y post, not gonna lie. sometimes i am a bratty shit, this is one of those times. sorry :<
this morning started off rough. i did not want to get out of bed, at all. as i was groggily eating my breakfast and checking my email, i found i'd gotten some hatemail. so that was a good start to the day. essentially, what i wanted to do was sit on the couch and filterfeed until it was a socially acceptable hour to go back to sleep again.
today i had 5 hours of school. usually, at least one of my classes falls out. pretty much every day, actually. wednesday, for example, 4 of my classes fell out. FOUR OF THEM. THAT IS 2/3. i was at school for two hours and then i got to go home and drink tea all day.
but today, i actually had things to do. i had a hair appointment for 4 o'clock, and i also had to bake. i thought, "oh! if one of my classes falls out, i can leave early, bake, and then go to my hair appt while i wait for it to cool." FLAWLESS PLAN!
except, obviously, today, none of my classes fell out. i sat through every stagnant hour. also, my last period economy class let out whenever you finished the homework. which i dont do, which means i actually *could* have left an hour earlier. D: urr.
so i got out of school and biked sadly to my hair appointment. which was okay, i guess. i got to drink 2 cups of tea and read magazines. but she cut my bangs all funny, because she parted my hair in the middle. even though i came in with it parted to the side. i am confused by her logic and apparent lack of knowledge on how to cut bangs and have them not look like straw, but i'll deal with it.
after that, i stopped by the post office to pick up a package from my parents c: i biked it home, but didnt have time to open it just yet. because i had to get baking.
baking is serious business. you have to pay attention. you have to pay attention and not reach into the pre-heated oven to take out one of the oven racks with only one oven mit on. especially when you are baking something for which time-is-of-the-essence and running over to your laptop to look up "how to treat a mild burn" is not exactly convinient.
besides that, it wasn't too traumatic an experience, and it went pretty stellar.
also, i have learned that mixing batter, trying to work the insta-coffee machine, and nursing a burn simultaniously is a rather difficult task. its like a game show where you have to do a bunch of stuff at once, except the grand prize is a panic attack and a brain aneurism. :D
anyway, with baked good safely in oven, i decided to sit on the couch and wallow in my own pity for a while. but oh! i had forgotten my package.
i slowly tore open the cardboard box, and what i saw filled my soul with utter, sweet steamy melty applepie a-la-mode and glitter pony rainbow lasers of glee.
on top of the box sat a 20 pack of celestial seasonings apple cinnamon teabags.
under that was 4 boxes of pumpkin pie poptarts.
yet under that was an issue of nylon, an issue of psychology today, and the latest urban outfitters catalogue, on which my mother had sharpied in commentary.
my shitty bangs? FORGOTTON, IN A HAZE OF HOT LIQUID APPLEPIE.
my possibly 1st degree throbbing blisterburn? NNNNNNG PUMPKIN PIE TOASTER PASTRY NOTHING ELSE MATTERS
my steaming pile of internet hatred? CROCHET HOTPANTS I CAN'T EVEN.
erm, excuse me.
needless to say, without my package i would probably be having an emotional breakdown right now. possibly in the middle of the kitchen floor, covered in batter, sobbing and cradling my lightly singed claw-hand. who can say.
now, for a product review:
pumpkin pie pop-tarts.
take into account, that i have 1/3 of an actual pumpkin pie sitting in my crisper. so these were only a meer knock-off. they were totally delicious, all toasted n everything, but they did not fill the void in my heart where pumpkin pie goes. they were warm, pumpkin pie is cold. they were also rather cinnamon-y. with 200 calories per pop-tart, you would be better off eating an actual piece of pumpkin pie.
that said, if you don't have an actual pumpkin pie awkwardly stashed in the fridge like i do, these make a pretty rockin' substitute. they are probably the best flavor of pop-tart. they are better than cinnamon and brown sugar. I KNOW, INCONCEIVABLE.
so yeah, thought i'd mentally drool a little bit about my day. i have more to talk about, but this post is about my package. C: ur hur.
Monday 8 November 2010
oh sweet jesus, die antwoord and their stupid weirness is being weird all over my tv. this is seriously the stuff that nightmares are composed of.
anyway, this weekend was real good c: euhmm im kinda really tired though so im not going to say words about it right now.
i only have school until 11.45 every day this week C: and i got my gogol bordello tickets C: and thanksgiving is on saturday, for us C:
anyway. this week has been pleasurable. tuesday nijmegen met jelle, which was fun c: en i finally worked up the courage to wear my SICK DOUBLEBUNS to school. and people liked them C:
and uhh i actually finished my CKV homework after being 3 weeks behind.
yesterday a jazz concert at metropool, which was really actually very fun. i dont really have time to talk right now, im going to enschede to ice skate for the first time in aaaages, and then wencke is taking me to the party of one of her friends C: and then tomorrow i'm doing the art photoshoot for a girl in my chorus!
also, i joined this other alternative social networking site for dutch people, and ive been trying to speak a bit of dutch to them XD its going well. joepie.
so, uh, today you don't get any snark because my life is a pit of rainbows and fairy sneezes. but i'm sure something will go horridly wrong soon and you will get to hear alllll about it. promise :D
oh, hi blog. hi. how've you been? see, i meant to get right back to this after going to berlin, but of course my computer decided that was not going to happen. it was so adamant, in fact, that the only thing that works about it anymore it the power button and the fan. so, y'know. at least it will stay cool whilst struggling helplessly to do anything at all.
MRRRR BUT I AM TRYING SO VERY HARD LISTEN TO MY RIDICULOUSLY LOUD COOLING UNIT
anyway,
berlin was... interesting. we left on the bus at midnight and arrived at 8 in the morning. and we were supposed to get a hearty night's sleep on the ride there. i was more than happy to oblige, i was all cozily contorted in my bus seat, sooo ready to catch some z's. i think maybe i didn't understand the fact that the south americans, the new zealanders, and the belgians DO NOT NEED TO SLEEP. EVER. i'm not sure what superhuman ability posseses them to break out into song at 4 in the morning, but it made me sad.
eventually, we had to sit up like zombies and pretend to be awake. at 8 in the morning, the volunteers started blaring german songs throughout the bus. about 6 of them, in a loop, for the entire weekend. which, okay. the first time i heard "waspassiert"and "und warum" i was like okay this *might* be the worst thing i've ever heard. and the second time i heard them i was like SWEET JESUS KILL IT WITH FIRE. but the third and following times, they secured a place in my heart.
here, have a listen. by the third time, you'll actually find yourself wanting to hear it ever again.
waspassiert, i have come to know, was originally a dutch song called watskeburt, which is a really slang way of saying "wtf happened". my life was incomplete until this song was added to it. really, i don't know what i would do without this song.
doesn't it just make everything alright? because that it the effect it had on us.
anyway, after being awake all night on a bus, we started the tour of berlin! JOEPIEE. obviously, none of us really cared AT ALL. we slaved along past all the huge sites and buildings, we meh'd at the berlin wall and trudged non-committally around the checkpoint charlie museum. which, i might add, was expertly cobbled together and sort of looked like one of those crazy people homage museums people run out of their basements. had i not been so tired, it probably would have been totally awesome. since i was so tired, i really just wanted to sit and never stand up ever again. nevertheless, i dutifully took pictures.
to be honest, i thought i would like berlin a lot more. it was just so gray and cold and depressing. i think if i lived there i would probably kill myself, no lie. but it was interesting. they had a lot of stands on the street selling seedy vintage communist hats. i'm a sucker for hats, so i picked up a blue beret, THOUGH I WAS TEMPTED to purchase the giant black fluffy communist hat.
by the end of the day, we were ever so ready to go back to the hostel. which was actually a really awesome place. it was huge and sort of looked like a united skates of america. think "laser tag-themed teen hotel".
the next morning we ate breakfast at the hostel [FREE MUESLI HOLLAAAA] and then got on the bus to go to a concentration camp. it was my favorite part of the entire trip. i took a lot of pictures. our tour guide was this indy looking complacent german guy with a paperboy hat and a button that said "them". he was painfully sincere and, since his first language was german, soulfully blunt. he was the most amazing tourguide i have ever had. the things he said about it just made me hurt inside, the down to earth way that he described everything that happened there. i wish i had gotten a chance to thank him.
that night, we all went to the hostel bar to chill out. it was lots of fun, we danced and drank and actually socialized with the other exchange students.
the next day we did a bunch of stuff that was unimportant, and we went on an epic quest for a supermarket. i didn't realize how much my life actually depends on albert heijn until i was in a place with no supermarkets ANYWHERE. it was painful, i think germans just dont eat fresh fruit. just bread and curryworst, apparently. which is basically like a hot dog covered in red spicy bbq sauce but you have to eat it with a little teeny fork?
we were less than enticed.
anyway. along that line of thought, i really took for granted how much dutch i actually comprehend. because in germany, i literally understood NOTHING. and in the netherlands, i understand a good chunk of everything. also, german sounds really funny after having dutch funneled into my ears for 2 months.
okay, so enough about berlin. i would like to go back someday, but i still maintain that it depressed the hell out of me.
after the trip to berlin, jacque, the new mexican exchange student who lives near me, came to stay with me for the herfst vacantie. at first, we were like "PARTY ELKE DAG LETS DO THIS", but to be honest we spent most of our week dorpin' and watching life of ryan marathon on mtv. and we dont even like that show.
this kid has his own last name as a backpiece. i don't even.
but we did get some things done. on tuesday afternoon we baked a pumpkin pie. it took us a while to figure out how the crust worked, and admittedly we had to hand press it into the pie tin, but it came out fairly delicious. after our pie was finished, i dragged her to the costume shop to pick out a costume for the halloween party we went to that night. she bought a bowler hat and a mustache and went as charlie chaplin, and i bought my hot pink nurse costume for 3-5 year olds. needless to say, i made some alterations. namely, i sliced the dress in half and turned it into a skirt.
anyway, on the way to the party we stopped at the albert heijn to see if we could find any fun sized american candy to bring to the party, to bring on some halloween spirit. we managed to actually procure snickers, peanut m&m's, and twix bars. though, you have NO idea how depressing halloween is without twizzlers, reese's, and tootsie roll pops. really, none. pie and candy in arms, we headed to susan's house. debby, ahnemeek [spelled phonetically because at this point i dont care anymoreee, i accept the fact that i cannot spell it XD], and bente were also there, dutifully costumed. i was happy, because i love halloween, so SO much, and i got to share my passionate joy with other people.
anyway, susan baked beautiful cakes that tasted like donuts and bought popcorn and ice cream, so obviously we didnt go hungry. since jacque and i accepted that this was our halloween, we decided that it was completely acceptable to shove 3000 calories worth of feeling-stifling sugar product into our faces. we watched nightmare on elm street, which is the dumbest movie EVER, and then sisterhood of the travelling pants, which made me rethink calling nightmare on elm street the dumbest movie ever :/
all in all, it was a lovely and delicious night.
the next day, we had nothing to do. until i remembered that ikea is just a hop, skip, and a jump from my house. i decided i needed to go. ikea was the only thing that was going to pull me out of my candy binge related depression, and i had to have it. unamused, jacque agreed to go. upon arrival, we decided that ikea was the best idea ever. we toddled through, trying out all the couches and wishing our houses would ever be so funky and practical. we smelled all the candles and browsed the korting warehouse. right before we were about to leave, we saw a bin of stuffed animals for really cheap. at first, we were like "euhhmmm. they're ugly, whatever". but then we took a closer look. they were actually really intriguing. half panda, half pug, half log, doofy looking oddly placed legs, complacent grin. it wasnt ugly, it was PERFECT and we needed TWO. we named them both klootzak and each biked home with one in our arms. might be the best purchase i've ever made, maybe. might need to buy two more. might need to buy five more. might even need to commission a giant ten foot long klootzak to use as a sofa. just sayin'.
after klootzak renewed our faith in humanity, jacque and i decided we were ready to go out for the night. since jacque's bike died, she borrowed one of mine since i have like 5, and we went to hengelo at around 8:30. first, we sat down on a bench and had a serious heart to heart. it was good. then we found the late night store. then we decided we really needed to find some people we knew. i texted one of my late night acquaintences from last time, and he was in the building we were right outside of, conviniently. we hung out with him and his friends for a bit, i'm sure they found us amusingly drunk and american. also good.
then we decided we HAD to go into the club called twinstwins with ridiculously loud pounding bass. we needed to dance. badly. so we danced for an hour or so, generally being embarrassing and not caring at all. then we tried to order food from the yamyam eetcafe, because i remember it being freakishly delicious. unfortunately, we were preeetty much out of money, so we had to eat out of an automatic wall food dispenser. which was disgusting, and gross. but i was not above stuffing my face with a kip burger, oh no. that was riiight about on my level at the time.
classy eatin' bij the snackautomaat.at this point, you stop being worried about "tasty" and start being worried about "safe to actually consume"
after that, we decided it was really time to go home. cutting to the chase, i lost my bike key. i was unable to deal with this information at the time. somehow, jacque and i managed to get home on the same bike. i am constantly amazed by our faultless ability to not die. because i'm fairly sure we narrowly missed falling into more than one ditch. we decided we'd go back to hengelo the next day and get my bike. somehow. without the key. this plan was perfect and did not need to be further thought out.
the next day rolled around, and jacque and i rummaged through my purse completely and FINALLY found the key to the bike. cos, you know those moments when your stomach sinks and you think "THIS CANNOT BE HAPPENING TO ME."? well, so far in my life, that feeling has usually been resolved by the fact that whatever it is has not actually happened to me. i got lucky like that once again. amy, another exchange student, was in hengelo and told me my bike was still there, and i decided that meant it was alright to leave it there another day. at around 5, amy came over. we were going to go out with her for the night,we were even invited to a party. but jacque and i could not even deal with that thought at all, so instead we decided to go eat at het pannenkoekhuis and have a movie night.
het pannenkoekhuis, as always, was all kinds of delicious delicious. i got a bacon and cheese pancake, covered it with stroop, and was ever so pleased with myself. you dont understand what a wonderful combination cheese, bacon, pancake, and syrup are until you stuff it into your recently un-hungover face in huge, contented bites.
LOOK ITS HAPPY.
we also discovered putting peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the tosti maker. AN IDEA FOR THE GODS. all the pb and jelly swirl together and the bread is all warm n toasty, and its just good. inherintly good. ooh! and i made my very first omelette ever! and it turned out pretty edible i think! i'm just pumped because i'm finally learning to make real people food.
after our food excursion, we watched army of the twelve monkeys because brad pitt is incredibly at being batshit crazy. then we watched monty python and the holy grail, for nostalgia's sake. c:
anyway, jacque and amy both left today. i need to spend the rest of my herfst vacantie doing homework and going to ikea and buying more klootzaks. i have decided i'm going to gauge my ears, so im going to locate a shop to buy those at. also, i need to decide which classes i'm going to drop. i decided itd be a good idea to switch into math a instead of b and to drop the classes that im never going to follow or get american credit for. because lets face it, 3 hours a week in economy is a little excessive if all i am capable of doing in that class is sleeping and being completely confused. and i'd really like to pass the year.
tomorrow is halloween, and i am going to dress up in my costume and watch horror movies by myself.
forever alone.
monday i have school again and im going to fix my schedule to be less intense, and then tuesday i have off and i'm going to nijmegen with jelle! :D on saturday, ice skating with afs. I AM REALLY VERY EXCITED C: like a lot.
i'll update again soon, maybe, depending on how interesting my life is. honestly its cooling down over here, usually i dont have too much to talk about these days.
tot ziensss c:
golly its been a while. real sorry. sometimes i get caught up in the fact that i have a life and don't just stay home all day wallowing in my own sorrow anymore, and thus am kinda tired when i do get online.
instead of blogging during my long hours spent on the webbernet, i have been spending my time much, much more effectively.
by looking up recipes for baked goods, obviously.
when i got home today, i had the insatiable urge to bake. understandable, since this week i have probably spent a compiled 20 hours recipe hunting. seriously, it's gotten to the point where i daydream about cookies. i have a problem.
i told you about my cupcakes, i did not tell you about my cinnabonrock cookies, but i think i will skip those and go right to the cookies i whipped up today, which i have effectionately named "dusty peanut butter koffiekoekjes".
since we have sort of an odd assortment of ingridients on hand, i had to start out with a normal cookie recipe including just self-rising flour [because we have every kind of flour except just flour. who would need that?], golden syrup [is this something that most people keep handy in a stock-piled fashion like my family does? i didn't even know it existed], and sugar. then i added peanut butter and chocolate chips, because hey! the more the merrier.
the first batch i baked for several minutes too long cos i was like THEY DONT LOOK DONE. but they so were. so that batch was slightly, err, shall we say charred? my parents think the burned batch came out "lekker" though, they only taste a little bit smoky in my opinion. pleasently barbequed, even.
but i learned from my mistake and the second batch came out wonderfully. or, as wonderfully as "gee i guess ill just put this stuff together and bake it im sure it will work out" cookies can.
anyway, my thriving life as a master baker aside, i've had a pretty rockin interim between this blog post and the last one.
last saturday was my metal treffen met jelle! it had to be good, it was called a "treffen".
anyway, we took the bus to the club where the show was, and it was BUTT-ASS FREEZING out. we waited outside a little bit whilst my fingers and toes verged on shattering, but then we finally went in.
the atmosphere started out a bit slow, but once everybody got a few drinks in them [and it got past 7 pm], all was aglow with long haired middle-aged men in baggy pants and black t-shirts from other metal shows. whiiich, is apparently the dress code for metal shows that i just didn't hear about in time. either way, it was glorious.
we spent the night dancing, drinking, and generally chillin out. we saw a pagan metal band. also, a man with a 2 foot long braided beard. this, my friends, was a night for the record books.
because we're real winners.
by the end, i felt quite lovely. also INCREDIBLY hungry, so i had to run out to the snack bar and buy a delicious hamburger covered with weird customary dutch topping to snarf down before i fainted. another one of those "delicious because i am about to die" moments. also a "delicious because heated up" moment. and no, i didn't look pathetic at all bundled up, shivering, rosy-cheekenly drunk and slightly googly-eyed, stuffing a giant hamburger into my face. i swear.
we took the bus back to winterswijk with one of the bands who played, who decided that they wanted to be our BFF, probably because they were very shmammered and i am a beacon of light to those under the influence. do you want to know about his son yip? because i can tell you alllll about him. :D
once we got to winterswijk we went to this super gezellig bar and met up with artur and luke till 4 c:
~*BAR BROZ 4 LYFE*~
then we went back to jelle's house and i got to creep and sleep in his sisters room. anyone who has experienced it knows how odd it is to sleep in someone's bed when they are not there. it just feels so wrong.
so that was my brilliant weekend.
otherwise my week has been fairly average. got my "pony" trimmed [entirely in terribly dutch, i might add], devoured some books, and looked frantically for halloween costumes.
as a sidenote, i miss halloween. i would like to sincerely fuck everyone who is going to go out on halloween and bring back a giant pillowcase with enough twix bars, tootsie rolls, skittles, and reese's cups to last until december.
fun fact! 99% of this candy does not exist in nederland.
i'll just be here chillin' with my drop and disgusting pastel colored marshmallow bits. sobbing. oh, what i would give, even for the shitty candy that nobody likes~ seriously, send me all your malted milk balls and good 'n plenty.
though, to fill the void in my heart where good ol' butt-o-ween will be, me and my dutch friends and jacque are throwing a halloween party. so that will be fun. for that purpose, and since being without a costume on halloween would be super balls, i've been browsing around for a costume recently.
let me tell you about halloween costumes here. there are costume shops everywhere. i'm assuming for carnival in the spring, but really i don't even know how that would explain the exorbitant amount of them.
and they aren't just like iparty or something. we're talking basically warehouses full of every costume you could ever want. in every color you could ever want. you want to be a hot pink native american? a-okay! a bright orange flight attendant? GOT YOUR BACK.
i was tempted to be an eskimo for the two reasons that A. if i'm going to dress up as something blatantly racist, it might as well be here. and B. holland will probably freeze over by october 31st.
or possibly i could be a zombie! or a sailor! or a nurse! or a bunny!
my world was full of hopeful possibility.
but, of course, there is a catch. the smallest size adult costume they make is a 34. which is too big for me. even worse, usually the smallest size they actually carry is a 36 or a 38. which REALLY is too big for me.
so i spend my time browsing through the children's section like a giant creep, because that is where the costumes that fit me reside. and not like the "junior's" section, i mean the "i am 5 and my mother is dressing me up as a princess" costumes. also, not even the biggest ones. the second biggest.
obviously, i didn't find anything because all the children's costumes make me look like a womanbaby, which is not exactly the look i'm going for. i found a really great hot pink nurse costume for 3-5 year olds though, which i am considering purchasing and demolishing so that it fits me appropriately. because hey, its fairly cheap and comes with a stethoscope. score!
though less than great for costume shopping, i have found one uplifting plus about being abnormally small here, as i'm sure some other non-netherlanders have. i was shopping with my school friends yesterday in h&m and we saw this awesome boy's children's sweater with a skull face on it. they were all like "mehh i want it! but it probably won't fit". i, being an optimist, was more like "DAMN SKIPPY IT'S GONNA FIT," and preceded to take the biggest size to the fitting room. since i'm a 7 year old boy, it fit like a dream and i bought it. :D and it was way cheaper than it woulda been for an adult-sized garment.
so you know, all is not depression in my own personal world of midgetry. and honestly, i'm not even that small. there's plenty of justin bieberlings who are shorter than me.
that's everything i can think of now. maybe i'll whip out a part 2 tomorrow, i dunno. i'm kinda sleepy.
oh! vacation is happening noww C: tomorrow i head off to berlijn for a few days, then jacque comes to stay with me and we party and hang out. then on next tuesday i think hangin with jelle. it will be good!
tot ziensss
