basically, for about the last week i have been up to my little ears in an ocean of stress. all those days in the winter i spent doing absolutely nothing have added up, and now i need to start doing things and seeing people with RECORD SPEED AND DENSITY.
my activity density is ridiculously high. i can't handle it. it is very fun, but i am slowly going insane. which would be cool, except i am filling the insanity void with cake. and my tummy doesnt like that very much.
besides the hideous amount of comfort food i've consumed in the last week, [i'm not the only one, emily and i decided that coming home and eating nine boterhammen was sometimes a perfectly acceptable cure. tears optional.]
anyway besides that,
this week has been really fun C:
let's start out with last friday. last friday i had two birthday parties to attend, and since i do not give up in the face of a party related challange, i decided i was going to go to them both. the first was a high tea for my friend susan's 18th birthday party. we all biked to her house in hengelo, where she had prepared a fabulous array of "hapjes" for us. she had little sandwiches, quiche, brownies, chocolates, muffins, oatmeal cookies, lots of yummy yumminess. and also tea, naturally. lots of it :) this was absolutely my type of party. we hung around and talked and stuff, it was very gezellig.
ALSO, i was introduced to another traditionally dutch thing. lisette brought with her a homemade arretjescake. for those of you who don't know, aka all of you,
arretjescake is a sort of icebox cake made from biscuits. and uh.. not a lot besides that.
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| looks questionable, but it's one of those foods has a sort of rough, farmery charm. promise. |
basically, it's a crumbley delicious mess because the the only ingridients are SUGAR, BUTTER, CHOCOLATE, and COOKIES. combined. oh yeah, and an egg, so the whole thing sticks together a lil' bit.
its heavy as hell and fabulous. so that was a lovely experience :D y'know, gotta experience the traditional dutch things!
anyway, after susan's delicious party, i made a quick pitstop at home and then headed back out to the pirate-themed 17th birthday party from teun, a boy from my class. pretty recently i've become friends with just about all the kids in my class that i'd wanted to talk to all year, and i was pretty souped that i got to hang out with them all outside of school :> better late than never, as they say.
on to the more important fact, uh, PIRATE THEMED PARTY. :D
i wanted to dress up as a pirate, but my disgusting and shamefully large amount of pirate accessories are all in america, so i just kind of put on a pirate inspired outfit. and i'll be the first to admit that pirates probably didn't have mini-dresses, but who are you even to judge.
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| yes, striking historical accuracy. good job. |
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| I KNOW I AM A GENIUS |
anyway. i made my way home in the wee hours of the morning, found some super special surprise leftover pizza in the microwave, nommed happily, and then crashed.
the next day i was a wee bit hung over, but not too much. whilst peeling myself out of the party clothes from the day before, i found ten euros i had stored in my bra! which i remembered thomas gave me. subsequently i remembered it was because i promised to wear my pink bear pajamas to school on the monday.
you know, these ones:
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| awesome idea on my part, good one. |
i couldn't nurse myself back to health that particular morning because we were going to the openlucht museum in arnhem with AFS. so i put on my game face, downed a good liter of water, ate an egg for protein, and we set off.
my expectations of the openluchtmuseum were far surpassed, to say the least. when they said "open air museum", i had been expecting some shitty outdoor garden full of modern art sculptures or something. why i thought AFS would put us through that sort of pain is beyond me, but i wasn't especially excited.
in reality, the openluchtmuseum is a humungous collection of old buildings and attractions taken from all around holland. basically, they hoard houses. they pick them up and put them in their pocket and plop them down awkwardly on this large expanse of grassland. and it is fabulous. we saw farmhouses, windmills, bakeries, hospitals, everything. it was exactly my sort of thing, getting to walk around cute little set up houses and make up stories in my mind. like the children's museum, or ikea. my favorite part was definitely this one miniature carnival themepark thing that was rockabilly themed. they had a few cute rides, such as swanboat swings, and the entire place was blasting bouncin' rockabilly hits the entire time. obviously, amy and i jumped at the chance to ride in the swan and jam out to some ace tunes.
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| JAMMING. |
anyway, great and adorable and informative.
we walked around there for a bit, then stopped at one of the restaurants there for pannenkoeken. i got a delicious thick bacon-egg-syrup pancake. it was super lovely @w@ also the beginning of my 3-day sugar rush.
after the openluchtmuseum, amy and i had to catch the train to jenny's dorpje to go to her going away party. she had to go home early because she's starting college in the fall and needed to go sign up for classes at orrientation. admittedly very important. so she had a party/bbq/sleepover at her house :> all the other american girls were there, which was awesome to see them all again. we hung out in the rain and talked more about how ridiculous and stressful and awful and wonderful this year was. we also ate a laughable amount of cake [i ate a piece of strawberry vlaai, arretjescake, kwarktaart, and a white cake topped with marzipan and filled with custard and jam. and an ice cream cone. aaand then we decided that it would be beneficial to midnight snack it up, and i had 2 more pieces of cake. good choices yeah!]
we stayed up late and shared stories of our questionable and hilarious experiences, wrote theoretical movies ["yeah, he was in this movie called uh, something whatever-" "oh yeah, something whatever, that was a really good one :I" <3] and said our goodbyes to jenny. who i am definitely going to miss a very lot :C i'm sad i didnt get to see her more this year, but she's going to zoomass, so i'll probably get to visit her sometime in the US. :)
we talked a lot about the differences between holland and america, and how hard it actually is to be an exchange student. like, you sort of don't realize it while it's happening, you think "this is just life, whatever", but in retrospect, we were all slightly severely depressed through the winter. in a good way, though. its hard to explain in a way for non-exchange students to understand, i think. looking back on it, you kind of have to say "it was stressful and full of low-points and i fucking LOVED it and wouldn't trade it for the world <3". and yes, it is and was full of LOTS of high points too :)
anyhow. the next day was sunday, and i had to navigate the trains alone back to borne. i was kinda depressed from all of the goodbyes and talk of emotions, and also extremely stressed. my trip back to borne wound up being 4 hours of switching trains and catching busses and being extremely dirty and tired, and when i arrived in utrecht in the middle of my trip, i was pretty much at breaking point. luckily, as we all know, eating to crush your emotions is how most if not all exchange students deal with their problems, so i stopped in at starbucks and bought myself a large piece of carrot cake. i'd been craving carrot cake for like 3 months and they don't have it anywhere, and YES, it was absolutely delicious and i enjoyed every sadness-ridden bite. thanks for asking.
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| carrot cake, i am at my wit's end. |
after such a large density of refined carbs and sugars in just 3 days, my whole-wheat non-dairy low-fat vegetable rich body was beginning to get a little bit confused and overwhelmed, and it decided to let me off with a warning. an extremely painful, gut-wrenching warning in the form of late night stomach cramps. message recieved, tummy.
monday i woke up and remembered something about having to wear my bear suit to school. so, in 80 degree weather, ON IT WENT. everybody already thinks i'm a little strange, so i figured what the hell, i like my kigu, why not? everyone who was at the party was very interested and excited to see that i had kept up my end of the bargain, cos y'know, i'm such an honest person :D
a lot of the people i am acquainted with thought it was adorable and ridiculous and *thumbs up*.
of course, many of the people i do not know laughed and informed me that carnival already happened this year and asked me what on earth was i doing. which i found hilarious. cos why not? why shouldnt you dare to wear a bear suit out in public? its just a stupid piece of clothing :9
anyway, teun took some foto's of me with some people, so if i can find those i will show you :)
the next day, i had planned for jelle to come over as usual, and then to go to my metropool meeting. but, while going through my winter coat pocket the day before, i found my 2 bargain day train tickets. which i had paid 15 euros each for. which happened to be expiring on thursday. with two days left to use my two tickets, i decided the day could be better spend galavanting around amsterdam with jelle than sitting in school doing nothing. plus, i still had to buy presents for people!
paula agreed with me, so jelle and i made some quick n dirty plans to go to a-dam. we left the next morning around 9. first, before amsterdam, we made a pitstop in bilthoven [aka "where the fuck is" bilthoven], home of the only lolita store in the netherlands, mirai fashion. need i explain why? i think not. i got to touch angelic pretty dresses, i almost died they were so beautiful and lovely and expensive. i wanted to try them on, but they didnt look like they'd fit, and i was sort of afraid of letting my germy gross human skin touch something so pristine and delicate.
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| I HAVE TOUCHED THIS DRESS *droolgiggle* |
after our excursion of beauty, we continued on towards amsterdam. we wanted to go to waterlooplein to do some secondhandmarket shopping and find dutch gifts for friends. we werent especially sure how to get there, but we decided that probably directly through the red light district was a good bet, so off we went. we wound up finding it fine in the end [go, us!]. it was super cool, i had missed giant stores full of gross used clothing <3 so savers. i also found some nice, not pricey gifts for my family. and a gift for shannon, because i like her.
after that we wandered around a bit, i decided i wanted a chocolate covered waffle, so jelle n i split one. then i sort of had some mental breakdowning, and jelle, being the wonderful tolerant man that he is, helped me dry my tears and gave me hugs till i felt better <3
then we found ourselves suddenly in little asia and looked at some stores with the biggest freaking woks i have ever seen.
then went to FOAM, a photography museum. the exhibit was photos from the war in the middle-east, they were all pretty cool. one artist had cut out the pople from her fotos, people with blindfolds, and pasted them onto separate panes of glass. which i thought was a really cool idea. there were other aesthetically pleasing and cool photo collections, it was a good museum pick :)
jelle and i have weirdly good luck with restaurants in amsterdam. we have eaten at restaurants in the red light district twice, and both times they were good and not poisonous. that day we were feeling in an asian-food/curry sort of mood, and after some walking and being picky, we decided on a little malaysian restaurant called nyonya. it was packed, and very small. but the food was superyummy, i thought :> i got squid with veggies in coconut spicy sauce. such a big yummy meal was very necessary after a day of shopping endlessly :P
after that we trained back to borne and he slept over :3
the next day, we had planned to take another trip, possibly to the beach, but we slept in nice and late first, so we decided that the 3 hour trip to and from the beach would be slightly ridiculous. i was really kinda tired from the day before, so we decided to just go bum around enschede instead. to make that a little more exciting for myself, i decided to wear my gloomy bear suit. because again, why not? jelle was not especially convinced that this was a great plan [i do not know why it sounds like a fabulous plan just by principle]
but he said he was okay with it and he took his camera with him to make some pictures :>
we just kinda looked around, no one really commented on the bear suit, i bought a cheap dutch book of hello kitty love quotes. it was a nice chill day.
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| majestic bear-girl |
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| me and my best friend, creepy winking bag of french fries that is weirdly omnipresent in the netherlands. |
then jelle and i set up camp in the living room and drew sketches of our future houseboat/pirate ship. its going to have a pirate bar on it, and be amazing, and you are all extremely jealous that i get to go live on a pirate ship. yes.
so that was wednesday, also good :) and i was less stressed from spending so much nice time with jelle.
this post is already unbelievably long. on-ge-loof-e-lijk.
so um i think i'm gonna end it here and talk about yesterday and the weekend in another post.
one more thing before i go!
JACQUE IS COMING TO VISIT ME THIS SUMMER I CAN'T BREATHE OMG C: also my parents said i can get a tattoo, and we're planning fun concerts to go to during the summer. so good good things! to hopefully drag me out of my pit of sadness from leaving the netherlands behind :P
this post got a little heavy in the middle there! hoo-woo goodness me i don't do that too often. probably before/ right after i leave we'll be getting a very serious and thoughtful blog installment. i know you are all writhing with excitement.
bye <3
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