i am a busy little bumblebee.

so, dear blog/ participants of my blog,
don't be butthurt that i post sporadically and with seemingly no relation to how exciting the things happening to me are. some days, i do particularly exciting things like go to amsterdam and don't blog about them at all, and other days i do absolutely nothing, get deeply inspired by a dutch cookie, and decide to write a page and a half.
one really needs to be in the mood for blogging.
lucky for you, today i am! and, DOUBLE LUCK, i actually did something wildly interesting yesterday!
first of all though, i just wanted to make an announcement. i am one exceedingly large step closer to not being an outsider. the language barrier was only step one. now i've overcome barrier two.
drop.

so many different assortments of questionable.

drop, as we know, is the salmiak [read: salt] flavored chewy licorice candy that the dutch love and everybody else thinks is absolutely hideous.
it is, to say the least, definitely an acquired taste. when i first got here, i was sort of like "meh, salty, weird woodsy aftertaste, very chewy, decidedly not terrible, but not something that i choose to voluntarily put in my mouth where more delicious things could be."
but then i met autodrop, dropberen, and schoolkrijt.

autodrop.

see dat bus? its half drop, but half fruit gummy. a genius invention. first type of drop i will willingly eat.
and that black car to the right of the bus? half straight up drop, half yummy chewy dropness i-don't-even-know-what. also a thing i would chose, over another thing, to consume. which says a lot, because i have spent 90% of my life absolutely despising black licorice.
its weird, but salmiak-smaak is kinda...good. sometimes. i've grown to crave that weird, woodsysalty aftertaste. sometimes.

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these cute little babies are dropberen. i only like the blackfaced ones, because they're more drop-y. I KNOW.
the white part on the ears is sweet marshmallow-y flufffluff.

finally, with a sort of candy that i find to be the most enjoyable for normal people, is schoolkrijtjes. this means school chalk, for those of you without common sense. :) they are hard and chalky on the outside, then a layer of salmiak, then a minty, fluffy filling. they are wonderful. weirdly medicinal feeling, but still wonderful.
ANYWAY. that is a full description of my accomplishments. which, kind of aren't that big if you consider the amount of people happy to wolf down piles of dubbel-zout. but still, i am definitely in the minority by being an exchange student with a soft spot for drop.
okay so onto the real blog story here.
yesterday i did two interesting things.
first, we had a potluck for AFS oost-nederland to see how everything was going. i had to bring an actual food, and not a dessert, which made me very uneasy because cooking for people sometimes makes me uncomfortable. i decided to make slider burgers, because very few things are more american :D
the most difficult part was admittedly finding a type of cheese that wasn't gouda to put on them. cheddar is a rarity, and obviously american cheese is just silly and not real. so we i think did use gouda, which was still yummy :P
we put some mustard in em, grilled the buns, yknow. all classy like. they were yummy, i was proud.
everyone else made lekker dingen, too. empenadas, chocolate cake, pannenkoek, pasta, chicken, arepas,  etc. omnom.
after a gezellig AFS meeting, i went off to go do my first night of volunteering at metropool! for a sold out show, no less :O
so spannend. i worked in the coat check, which was quite busy and ridiculous and i was beginning to foster a hatred for people who's jackets didn't have hangy-uppy bits, but it went really well! i didnt lose anything :D and the other people who work there are chill. they didn't even know i was american until late in the night. so i felt quite accomplished. i have now reached the status of "probable shy dutch person with a limited vocabulary who is not very interesting". AND I WILL TAKE WHAT I CAN GET.
after a long [but cut short, everything quieted down earlier than planned] evening, i rode on the back of alex's bike back home.
and then we ate 1 am cinnabons, because wencke is amazing and made them! :D perfect post-busy night snack.
anyway, i think i'm going to go work there again next week, because it was good.
tomorrow i have a doctor's appt, then saturday it's jelle's sister's birthday, wednesday chorus, blahblah. busy nice week ahead :)

being alive is hard. *super special unedited late post!

i am now transporting you back in time to a month ago. woOoOoowoOoOwoowoOoOoOoo~
~~~
 i am wearing a snuggie right now. that should give you an idea of how terrible my day was. let me explain;
every half year, they change the rosters at school and everyone gets a new schedule. all of my friends found their rosters online, but when i looked for mine i couldn't find it anywhere. which i wasn't really surprised about, since i'm not on a lot of the mailing lists and things, but i'm not sure which ones i'm not on cos y'know... i'm not on them.
so i was just kinda like "o-kay. i'll just ask about it monday."

the exchange students get all sad when you forget that they exist.

what i didn't realize is that the new roster started today. so i came into school first hour all ready for gym, and no one from my class was there. because on the new roster we don't have gym until second hour.
so i was like "uh craaap, i am probably supposed to be somewhere, i am a failure and they are going to be mad at me." because i figured that by some power of divine psychic connection, i was supposed to have my roster already. or something. i imagined the office people sitting around with a little pile of un-fetched exchange student rosters, collecting dust from not being picked up.

i ran into matt, the hungarian exchange student, in the hallway, so we went up to the administration to ask for our rosters. basically i was kinda like "it kinda sucks that they didn't tell us we had to pick up our schedules, but its my fault for not going earlier to get it." i thoughtthat them not emailing us anything or telling us anything meant that they expected us to get our asses over there and ask. doop de doop off we went to go apologize for waiting/ sort stuff  out.
BUT THEN.
when we got to the office, we were like "oh hey, can we have our rosters? cos we don't have them yet."
and the guy was like
"UHHH funny thing about that. i haven't actually made those yet. i'll get on that"

.... :| YOU WHAT.
so you're telling me that not only do we recieve absolutely zero information on how this system works or where our new schedules are or even that the schedules do, in fact, change, YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE THEM?
and you didn't think maybe "oh hey we should probably tell them not to come to school since they don't have rosters yet" or possibly "maybe we should give them something to do for the day because they don't have rosters yet"
because having us show up at school at 8.45 in the morning and not even have an inkling of a place to be because we ARENT ENROLLED IN ANY CLASSES was not a very well thought out plan.
like, i don't get it. what were they gonna do if we hadn't gone to go get our schedules, were they just gonna not make them at all?
*huff* anyway. so we sat in the hallway for the first two hours. after that i pointed out that they were definitely not going to have our schedules done by the end of the day, and maybe we could ask to just go home, since its pointless and stupid to have to wait around if we have no classes to be in. so we went to one of the office people and asked. and he told us to follow the roster of another girl out of our class. which, uh, good fine, but you couldn't have maybe started off with that plan? like two hours ago, when we asked the first time? instead of just leaving us to die? also, this girl had class until like 6th hour, which is BULLSHIT.
so i went to english class, helped out with my cvk project for a while, and then went home. because hey, i am not going to two extra hours of class that i'm not even in just because you forgot i exist.
like okay. i know i'm being rude about this, but really? i don't even. meh.
also, i have a bunch of other stuff crammed into the next three or so days and its FREAKING ME OUT and i do not want. that is all.

but enough about how i hate everything. let's talk a little bit about how i love everything! namely cats.
this weekend was actually quite good c: okay, maybe some of it was a little bit rotten. but only the beginning part!
saturday i had my taaltoets in utrecht, which i just narrowly made it to. first i missed my train by about .03 of a second, so while i had originally planned myself an hour to leisurely walk to the location of the test from the station, i wound up with 10 minutes. which woulda been cool, had it not been a 15 minute walk. through fucking maze-ville.
also apparently utrecht enjoys being sneaky jerks with their street signs, so that was fun.

nah it's cool, i'll find it.

BUT, i did make it, AND i had enough time to literally sprint-dash through the albert heijn to go and pick up a big american triple chocolate cookie.
which i then ate for breakfast before the test, for that extra boost of sugar energy.
the test itself was split into two parts, a reading and a listening. first was the reading. i had expected the reading part to be easier than the listening part, cos you can read at your own pace.
i had not expected that the subject matter of the reading part was completely ridiculous. they let you use a dictionary, but oddly enough that doesn't really help when trying to decode an informative pamphlet on laminated flooring. or a set of instructions for accepting shipments of food in a restaurant. or an application to have one's curtains washed.
the choice of odd reading material was to make sure nobody had a vocabulary advantage, i think. anyway, i think i did okay on that.
then we stopped for lunch and chilled out for a while. which was completely necessary. i had a krentenbol met  kaas. aka a raison roll with cheese. but the krentenbollen didn't come with cheese already in them, so i had to sneakily steal a piece of cheese from one of the other sandwiches.

i don't know why i think raisons and cheese are a wonderful combination.

thenn onto the luistertoets! which was actually easier than the other part :D admittedly, some of the questions were still a little weird ["can you tell us something about the chairs in your stadium?"] but it was a lot more fluid to understand than the reading part. though, remaining an active listener was difficult. in the first interview i was all like "yeah sarah, tell us about your job in the vegetable aisle at the supermarket!"
but then by the third or fourth interview my mind had definitely wandered to other places. so i sort of had to patch together some of the question answers.
all in all though, i definitely passed. which is good, because if i hadn't learned dutch i would probably feel worse about not doing much of anything else all year. C:
once the test was over, artur, jelle's hostbrother, and i went out into utrecht to look around a little.
we were walking down the street when something caught my eye.

is this real life?

... i did a double-take. in the window of a store, stood several boxes of american cereal. captain crunch, cheerio's, apple jacks. upon closer inspection, i also saw a giant box of reese's cups. OBVIOUSLY we had found meccha and NEEDED to go in.
my prayers were answered. they had almost legitimately every american thing that i'd been complaining about. duncan hines cakemixes and frostings, dehydrated milk, syrup, fluff, shortening, reese's cups, corn syrup, instant arizona tea, pretzel m&ms. IT WAS AMAZING. unfortunately, i didn't purchase anything because the idea of carrying around a box of cereal for the day was not appealing. BUT when i go back to utrecht, i know where i'm headed.
http://www.jacbostelaar.nl/
that's their website. i almost melted. THEY HAVE LUCKY CHARMS AND POP-TARTS YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND.
it was literally an amazing experience.
thenn artur n i went and got sushi, and then i walked around n stuff, n then i went to paula's sisters house to sleep.
the end!
the next day i went to a cat show with paula but ill talk about that later c:

a short, bubbley novella.

hoi blog :) this week+weekend has been treating me well. yesterday, i saw a kid get hit by a car! it was like a movie, he and his bike legitimately flipped over the car and landed in a pile on the other side. also, he was completely unharmed and proceeded to bounce back onto his feet and awkwardly run his hand through his hair a couple times. which, uh, cool but YOU JUST CATAPULTED OVER A MOVING VEHICLE WITH YOUR BODY, SIR.
i of course lost all control over my face and inadvertently shouted "OH, FUCK!"
cuz thats what you do when someone gets hit by a car.
anyway.
last week i had my photoshoot with jelle, if you remember back that far. i wasn't really quite sure what we wanted to do, so i just brought a bunch of stuff with me and hoped that it was the right stuff. y'know, communist beret, large pink fake fur shawl, fluffy pink bear onesie. the basics.
it was at his school in apeldoorn, which is a really lovely place. actually, let's be honest. it is kind of only sort of a lovely place. it's a very modern city, so a lot of it is lacking in the "old-timey brothers-grimm sparkle-wonderment" kind of charm that some of the other parts of holland possess.

amsterdam, mmm and all the houses are inhabited by wizards and troll-people!

oh... hey apeldoorn. yeah, i guess you could be like the "endless plane of concrete desolation" or something, idk whatever.

anyhow. first we walked around the city a little bit, stopped in at the asian market, saw sights. but my giant combat boots were giving me hellablisters, so eventually we decided just to go back and start shooting.
predictably, i'm not the most graceful person in front of a camera. i sort of just butt-ed around in my bear suit whilst jelle took pictures XD he definitely managed to catch a few of my chance shining moments, though. after the bear suit we took some normal fotos, but then that got boring. we decided normal fotos would be better drenched in fake blood. so we did that.

everything is better drenched in fake blood. 

my personal favorites of the day were the ones in the bear suit with the fake blood, it's a look i should really consider sporting on the weekdays. the juxtaposition of how ridiculous it is combined with how i'm just kinda sitting there herpin' my derp is what makes this shot truly beautiful.

glamour shots. 

when i can, i'll post some more favorites from the shoot c: there were actually a lot of shots that i liked. they will all eventually be online on jelle's website, i believe. wihiiiich i can link you to. i really can. soon.
i got to play photographer for a little while too, and i managed to take some photos of jelle with my exceedingly limited camera skills. it was a fun day c:
after that was a boring stupid day when nothing happened and everything was dull. so i won't blog about that.
but on saturday i went to a concert with debby, annemiek and bente! for my birthday, they bought me tickets to go see this band, only seven left, in hilversum. buuut, since [if you recall] holland picked that particular evening to shit snow gratuitously all over the country, we couldn't go. so then, because they are absolutely amazing, they bought me a ticket to come with them on saturday to the show in haarlem >w<
they played well, it was fun. c: also, i got my picture taken with all of the band members XD also also, i wound up talking to the guitarist of the warmup band, mimi soya, about hardcore bands and how they toured with cobra starship, it was a jolly time. i also scored some free stickers, a button, and their cd! because obviously, chris the guitarist and i are now close personal friends.

lookit that. so close n personal.

on a sidenote: 1. did you know that the mcdonald's here have toffee flavored milkshakes? they are better than all the other flavors. they just are. you are missing out.

sorry, america.

2. it was legitimately warm enough to go outside without a jacket on the night of the show! NOT warm enough to enjoy it at all, per se. simply enough to not y'know, freeze to death in a matter of minutes. which is good enough for me.
actually, the past few days its been hovering around 5-10 degrees, which is roughly 40-50 in normal people tempuratures. i don't have to wear two layers of gloves anymore! it's a joyous occasion. it's also allowed me to build up the will-power to dress in real outfits in the morning sometimes, and not "ohh god its going to be so cold i'm just going to wear this bullshit so that i can sit through the day in preparation for leaving again" clothes.   cos sometimes i can be stylish, i promise nederland! just cos you haven't seen it yet doesn't mean it isn't true.
~~insert appropriate segway here~~
yesterday was debby and my audition for my school's cultural night! we didn't actually know what we were doing up until that morning, so we had to find time to practice before. since i rarely have to do anything for anything, i managed to get out of english and music, and i had a tussenuur. so we had those hours of practice. we're doing yellow, by coldplay. first, we lowered it down 2 frets with the capo, so now it's actually legitimately in my range, and then we just practiced the hell out of it. the audition itself went great. i don't think people were expecting much out of two girls looking so grungy as we XD
anyway, the thingy is on march third so we're gonna get crackin' on making it sound godly amazing.
ALSO, the other interesting thing that happened to me yesterday;
somebody spit. on my neck. our school has free levels so you can like throw stuff down and crap, so the 1st floor is always kind of covered with debris. i was standing there and i felt this big wad of liquid land on my neck. i touched it, it was obviously spit, and i was like...
EW. EWEWEW. WHO FUCKING SPITS OFF THE SIDE OF THE STAIRS. EW.
it was pretty much the grossest thing ever.
i was going to run up the stairs, find the first year who has the balls to spit down the stairwell and tear them off,
but then i decided i wanted to wash the spit off in the bathroom instead. a more humane choice, i think.

anyway. after my audition i came home and felt really really painfully ill, i think because i've been eating loads of bread and wheat recently and i almost never do anymore, so my body is like HAHA WHAT? NOOO.
i stayed in bed and basically didn't come out until 10 o'clock this morning. today i felt better though, so at like 2 i got dressed and decided to go "wandelling" in the "lekker weer" we've been having :)
i usually go out towards the animal farm when i leave my house, but today i decided to do some adventuring and find out what happens if you go the other way. i found the hospital and walked by it, because there were some pretty duckponds on the side. then, i saw this little old church that you could walk through. sorrrta like a secret portal to another dimension. y'know. i walked through, and it was really beautiful and serene and just nice. but, on the other side, i couldn't believe my eyes. apparently, there is a huge section of borne, old borne, that i didn't even know existed until now. it's filled with quaint cobblestone streets, ADORABLE old houses, and big windows so you can creep and see inside everybody's beautiful living space. it reminded me of some of the older houses in providence a bit, they kind of have that "carriage-house" appeal.
actually, remember that "old-timey brothers-grimm sparkle-wonderment" charm i was talking about before? this place like, invented that. i seriously thought i was going to cry tears of pixiedust, my face was like

I THOUGHT I WAS IN A FAIRY TAIL MAGICAL TIME WARP GUYS IT WAS AMAZING.
the illusion was of course shattered when i walked a little further and wound up outside the library on my route home from school, which is not where i was expecting to be at all. borne is a dorp of MAZES and TRICKS.
also, the library is apparently directly on the other side of the hospital i began at. which freaks me out, i did not know that. as of today, i now have a better understanding of how borne internally connects to itself.
basically, i can't believe i lived here for 6 months and didn't even realize that this wonderland-y anachronism existed. paula said she didn't know about it for the first 6 years she lived here. if you don't have any business there, it isn't really the kind of place you'd just stumble into on the way to where you're headed. unless you're me, and you're headed nowhere and looking for adventure. which i always am.
so that was my fun discovery story of the day. i spent the rest of today napping and listening to dubstep on the couch.
tomorrow i have my volunteer thing for AFS with paula and jelle in coevorden. n then jelle is staying over for the night :3 YAY SLUMBER PARTY.
plus this weekend is pre-valentimes day. oh sweet lordy, i can't believe its been a year since last valentine's day. freaky.
anyway, i'll keep you all posted. <3

today has been good.

[i have another blog entry drafted but i wanted to write this one instead CHRONOLOGY IS FOR SUCKERS REMEMBER] also ill put pictures in this later, yum yum.

anyway c:

today i am going to apeldoorn to do a photoshoot with jelle <3 before that though, i had to go to school. but i only was supposed to have 3 classes and a between hour today, so i was like "okay i can handle this, i'll be out at 2.10 and then i can train over to apeldoorn."

so, i got to school, looked at the big airpport-type television to see if any of my lessons fell out. music, okay cool. so i'd be free at 12.45. i was pumped :D

then i went to my first class, dutch. the teacher messed up something with the schedule, long story short she gave us a free hour. so i commented "oh haha wow, i have this hour free and then next hour free and then bio and i can go home"

and susan was like "who do you have bio from?"

"the one with the... he- *motions hair*"

"the one who looks like einstein?"

"yeah."

"he's sick today, his lesson's cancelled."

...

C: OKAY THEN, RIGEROUS 1 HOUR SCHOOL DAY OVER, GONNA GO HOME NOW.

and the one hour was mostly travel time and figuring out which lessons were cancelled, i didn't actually have any classes. new record!

so, since i got home at 10.45, i realised something beautiful! i was gonna be home when the mailman delivered my GLOOMY BEAR KIGURUMI. which i wanted today for the photoshoot. if i hadnt been home, i wouldnt have gotten it until saturday. 

when i saw the post truck come, i was like ooh okay, gonna get my shit together so that i can get this package. BUT, my jerkbag of a mailman decided that no one was home, and without coming to the door, just left a delivery notice in the mailbox, as he always does. cos he's kind of a jerkbag.

OH NO YOU DIDN'T. DO YOU WANT TO GET BETWEEN A RABID TEENAGE FAIRY PRINCESS AND HER PINK ONESIE BEAR PAJAMA? I THINK NOT.

i ran outside as he drove away, and picked the notice out of the mailbox. seething, i came back inside and plotted. what could i do? he'd be delivering packages all day, so even if i went to the post office, they wouldn't be able to help me.

i decided to do what any logical minded person would do. hunt down his truck and ambush it.

viable plan.

i got all suited up for the elements and trekked outside with my notice. it didn't take long to find his truck, it was bright orange. i walked up next to the window and peered in with big innocent baby doe eyes. this must have been terrifying, because he looked ever so confused.

"ben je toon?" 

"ehh, ja."

"ik was thuis. mag ik mijn pakketje hebben? want ik moet eigenlijk het VANDAAG hebben."

"O_O maar je moet betaalen"

"weet ik al, 32.77, toch? *holds up sheet*"

he said he's come back to my house in 15 minutes with my box. and he did c: and i have it now c:

BECAUSE I AM A GO GETTER, MY FRIENDS. he was obviously a bit disgruntled. but, i did what i had to do.

ANYWAY my gloomy bear kigu is the best and most comfortable garment ever, i never want to take it off, ever. half because its so amazing, and half because the fastening is comprised of ten buttons. ten. thats a lot of work.

anyway, gonna go catch the train to apeldoorn in a few hours <3 but first i have to gather up all my photoshoot thingies. :D

toodles guys

ensche-day with alex!

today nothing interesting happened, so i'm going to talk about yesterday! actually, one interesting thing happened today, my maatschappijleer teacher brought our whole class suikerwafels and slagroom because it was our last lesson. i don't really need to describe suikerwafels, i will just say that that translates to "sugar waffle" and they taste several times better than you think they will.

the most interesting part of my day is a waffle. that's laughably pathetic.

also, i know there's a lot of stuff i need to talk about that happened before yesterday, but i'll get there. fear not.

this week it toetsweek. it is a thing they like to do here, sort of like exams except i don't have to take any of them. i just reep the benefits, which are only having to be in school 'till like eleven every day :D
i decided to take advantage of this opportunity and finally go to enschede to shop, which i had been telling myself i'd do all year. i figured it was also a good idea because i could visit alex too! who i hadn't seen since christmas. which is simply tragic.
so, after school was over, off i headed.
i *happened* to catch site of the albert heijn to go on the way out of the station, and *maybe* i went in and bought a cookie and ate it for lunch, maybe i didn't. who knows, not important.
anyway, enschede is a pretty self-explanitory place, and if you've been there once you can probably find your way around, so i wandered over to where most of the shops seemed to be and browsed around. even though i was there to shop, i am horribly thrifty, so i would up in the bargain fashion store, where most things are under 25 euro. these types of stores are plentiful, carrying mostly the same type of stock. or maybe it all just looks the same to me, since the entirety of their color palette is pastel pink, gray, white, black, army green, navy, and taupe. seriously, i was browsing the "taupe" section of the store when i realized WHAT IS WRONG WITH MY LIFE. also, most of the stock stems from questionable taste, and only comes in one size. even with those roadblocks, i did alright :D
i bought a black lace dress with a zip-up drop back [or i am just fashionably wearing it backwards, it doesn't have a tag] for 7 euro, and a pair of 4-inch lace up black pumps for 12. because girls here wear high heals on a regular basis, and my suh-weet doc marten work boots were starting to feel a little bit insufficient. you understand. but y'know, stuck to a theme of black because why would i need other colors? i will see your limited color scheme, nederland, and go one further.

cave into peer pressure.

after i was done shopping, i headed in the direction of alex's appartment c: i walked through the market on the way there and caught sight of a large piece of pink faux fur fabric. WHICH I OBVIOUSLY PURCHASED, because i didn't think it through very well :D so now i have that. it could be a shawl, or a uh, giant pink piece of faux fur have i mentioned that it is pink faux fur?

or i could make a this thing, don't judge me. 

found my way to alex's, we chilled out for a bit, he showed me his hamster who is ADORABLE and his name is Awesome :D he is not one of the large, rat-like hamsters, but rather one of the ever-so-tiny "sweet jesus how is it alive its so little and fluffy" hamsters. i am fairly sure it is a roborovskii, or one of the similarly impractically-sized hamster breeds.

but where is your leg part? do you have those?

then, since alex recently found a bulgarian supermarket in leeuwarden [he is bulgarian.], we snacked on some of the things he bought. apparently bularians don't eat like.. meat n cheese n stuff on sandwhiches. they mostly eat a vaguely tomato-sauce like paste or a supersalty spicemix, and some butter. or at least alex does. WHICH IS FINE WITH ME, it was actually weirdly delicious for being not a real food item. like i ate a piece of plain brown bread with butter and a thick layer of harena sol [colorful salt]

this stuff. 

and it was so delicious I ALMOST DIED. though admittedly, it could have also been the sodium content, i wouldn't challange you on that arguement.

this took me forever to find, internet. 

after that we went out and did some shopping. y'know, hamster cage had to be changed, cereal had to be bought, etc etc.
we would up purchasing this cereal that i've had my eye on for a while? its called tresor, and it is assumedly a young child's dream breakfast. seeing as how it is cereal pieces filled with that liquid chocolate stuff.

don't worry, it has nothing on lucky charms and fruity pebbles.

of course we didn't have any milk, so i ate it with chocolate pudding. same difference.
we also found an asian market in enschede. which is wonderful! they sell pocky/frozen sushi [questionable and wrong], and delicious crackers, and those little sugar covered bits of ginger. we also bought some lychee pudding, which was good, but not too good so i gave most of them to alex.
we came back home, ate dinner and spent some time with his housemates watching family guy c:
then, alex had a meeting at metropool, the poppodium where he volunteers in hengelo. he was like "YOU SHOULD VOLUNTEER TOO, COME WITH ME!"
an offer i simply could not pass up >w<
so i went, talked to the guy in charge, filled out some forms, and ta-daaa~ i am now a volunteer at metropool! c: which means i can work at shows, and if i do two a month, i get 5 free tickets. so basically i cannot wait and i hope its fun C: fun fact: the word for this type of work in dutch is "horeca".

and now you know.

that was the first image that came up when i searched horeca on googleimages. i just hope i can be as classy as that fine gentleman, goodness me.

so yeah, yesterday was full of new jobs and clothing and hamsters and bulgarian and i got my cookie. IT WAS GOOD C:

okay sidenote: my dog is the loudest snorer EVER and all she does is sleep all day all the time. make it stoppppp T_T lol

yes, i really am going to dedicate an entry to this. it's necessary.

dear blog,

i am sorry i neglect you. i know you get lonely and want to know about my life. as an appology offering, have this 100 page blog post about the last two weeks of my life. 

sidenote: i skipped over blogging about the holiday season, and you might just get a healthy helping of christmas in july if you're lucky. someday i'll share the oh-so-delicious details of my winter vacation with you. someday.

ANYWAY. just gonna uh, jump back into things. chronological order is for suckers.

first, i would like to croon to you my hardship. this is going to be a long rant. about something near to my heart, and vital to my well being. 

living in nederland is difficult. not because of the language, or adjusting to the system, oh no. no, i've discovered a serious flaw in the system.

THEY HAVE SHITTY COOKIES. at first i didn't realize it. but it's pretty much impossible to escape.

and you say "oh but angela, they have those little koffiekoekjes, those are cookies! you are just being ridiculous."

to which i reply,

i'm sorry, i meant like an actual cookie. 

not to be confused with 

i'm sorry zandkoekjes and shortbread, but you aren't actually worth eating.

but then they say "but albert heijn has chocolate chip cookies in a box, and those are good."

to which i say: 

.

okay, maybe i am picky about cookies. but if its not gonna be good, it isn't even worth it. 

cos like, in america, if you want a home-made cookie, *shhh secret* you don't actually have to make it. you can go to a cafe or a bakery or stop n shop and pick up one that they have baked. and then you have your cookie. or, OR, you can even pick up one of these babies

A BAG OF REAL COOKIES.

but here, they don't bake cookies for you. 

BUT. i have come across two ways to overcome this problem. first way! to actually bake my own cookies.

whiiiiich, after scouring every supermarket in borne on one particular day because i HAD TO HAVE A COOKIE, i finally did.

here is the recipe i used.

http://alpineberry.blogspot.com/2006/08/nutella-cookies.html

i used granulated salt instead of table salt on purpose [not just because i'm dumb] which actually was AMAZING, because then you get little bursts of saltiness sometimes to balance out the criminal amount of chocolate/nutella. 

and uh, to reflect upon the amount of patience i have in the kitchen, the recipe is supposed to make like 30 cookies. i carefully dolloped out 15 human sized cookies, and then, deciding i was fed up with rules and that the common sense could suck it, used the other half of the batter to just make 2 giant cookies on the other baking pan. this was *maybe* the best idea i've ever had.

anyway, so then i had my cookies. i would like to inform you that while they still existed, i started eating them for breakfast on occasion. exhibit A: last week i made myself a nutella cookie and stroopwafelijs [remember stroopwafelijs?] ice cream sandwhich at 6:30 in the morning. WANNA KNOW WHY BECAUSE I DON'T GIVE A SINGLE FUCK THAT IS WHY.

i don't need your rules, society.

anyway.  so that was solution number 1.

solution number two isn't really a solution, but still counts. i have found that there is one store that sells bakery cookies. that store is the albert heijn to go. not to be confused with the normal albert heijn, they don't do that kind of thing. actually, this solution sort of caused the problem. see, i didn't even know i WANTED a cookie before this cookie. i was contented with my cereal and apples and i guess the desire for a cookie was lying dormant in the back of my mind. but, when jelle and i were in amsterdam [i'll get there, this is about cookies right now. remember i said chronological order is for suckers?] i bought a "big american triple chocolate cookie" on the way back. 

worth 1000 words.

and it was so, so good. it ignited a fire within me, that burned and burned with the neverending desire to eat cookies for every meal. i kind of hate myself for having that cookie, because if i hadn't i wouldn't be having this issue right now, and i would be happy with the limited and unfulfilling selection of koekjes offered by the supermarket.
anyway. luckily, i thought, this cookie exists and i can purchase and subsequently eat it!

BUT LIFE IS NEVER SO SIMPLE. because the closest albert heijn to go is in enschede, which is a twenty minute train ride away. and i am not going to enschede for the sole purpose of acquiring a cookie. that is not a thing people do. BUT, this is a solution in that it proves that nederland does have good cookies, they are just exceedingly well hidden.

thank you all for listening to my story about cookies, i appreciate it. really. now onto real life*

*please see next entry for stories about actual life and not just my undying love for sugary baked goods.

guess what

guess what
guess what
guess what

ít's nothing!!

spannend, i know.
so i should probably blog about the holiday season so i can savor and cherish the memories always, but that will be like a straight up NOVELLA of words. so i am biding my time.
buuut if it makes you feel better, i have drawn up a full and detailed outline of my vacation, so i don't leave anything out. organizational tactics, whoop whoop.
but uh, in the mean time, HAVE A PICTURE OF NEW KIDS TURBO

fun fact! the netherlands apparently still considers the mullet a socially acceptable and valid hairstyle.

best movie ever. truly a masterpiece. i'm buying it on dvd and making every single one of you watch it with me and NO you don't have a choice :DDD